Dive Club (Deep Dives) �‪�‬ Ridd

Julius Tarng is the ultimate generalist designer.He started the design tools team at Facebook where he made a massive impact on products like Origami.He then freelanced as a design engineer for companies like Felt, Anthropic, and even prototyped some of the early AI features for the Arc browser.Now he’s in his first-ever engineering role at Linear.So this conversation is a deep dive into what it looks like for designers to approach their work with an engineering mindset. We talk about Julius’s deep background in prototyping, how he collaborates with designers at Linear. And we also get into why the current state of design engineering is a missed opportunity.
If you’re looking to grow as a software designer then you’ll love this episode.
Julius’s twitterFelt — a better way to work with mapsDaniel Smith (Linear designer that Julius pairs with)Origami (Facebook’s prototyping tool)Brandon Walkin (ex: Facebook, Apple, now at OpenAI) who made the adaptive pointer for iPad.What are GPUs and Shaders? (Julius’s tutorial video)

When it comes to design founder stories, Raphael Schaad’s is one of the best. So this episode is the first-ever telling of how Raphael designed and built Cron (which became Notion Calendar). We talk about:
Sketching on paper vs. sketching in codeWhy shipping quality software is like campingHow Raphael identified the MVP of the problemWhat it was like building Cron in YC during COVIDWhy you should design dialogues as first-class citizensWhy Raphael didn’t invest much in the Cron landing pageThe differences between a design toolkit and a design systema lot more lessons from a successful first-time design founderRaphael’s TwitterThe OG Cron websiteScreenshot of the Cron dialogues in Figma

Alex Schleifer was the long-time Chief Design Officer at Airbnb where he grew the team from ~35 to over 600 people. So this conversation is an inside look at what makes design at Airbnb so special. We discuss:
How to create a culture of decisivenessWhy great design leaders are like chefsHow to succeed in executive CRITs at AirbnbHow designers should prepare for an AI futureWhat it means to operate with a “first team” mindsetWhat it takes to achieve Airbnb’s level of craft at scaleWhich elements of the Airbnb culture you can instill for your teama lot more

Alex’s Twitter and Linkedin
Alex’s “People vs. Algorithms” podcast
Mentioned Airbnb alumni:
Katie Dill (Head of Design at Stripe)Ethan Eismann (SVP Design at Slack)Karri Saarinen (CEO at Linear)

Noam Segal has led research at companies like Meta, Airbnb, Wealthfront, Twitter, and most recently Upwork. He also teaches the #1 user research course on Maven. So this episode is a masterclass in user research. We discuss:How to conduct better interviewsThe keys to an effective research planHow to become a masterful research storytellerHow AI is creating a new wave of research toolsWhen to rely on qualitative vs. quantitative tacticsThe modern user research tools you need to know aboutHow to ensure research is integrated in the product process
Noam’s modern research tech stack:SprigGenwayDscoutSteve Portigal’s book: Interviewing users (how to uncover compelling insights)Mr. Beast’s YouTubeLenny’s Podcast with Judd Antin: The UX research reckoning is here

Helen Tran was an early designer at Shopify and is now leading product design at AngelList. But in between those two roles she also ran her own startup for three years. So the goal of this conversation is to figure out how that period of time impacted her design practice so we can all learn how to design with a founder’s mindset. In this episode we discuss:
- How Helen is approaching design leadership differently this time around
- How Helen constructors hypotheses to influence product strategy
- Why Helen made sacrifices to her production skills
- The keys to designing in a pre-PMF company
- The #1 way to help founders
- + a lot more
Helen’s website - https://helentran.com/
Dive is where the best designers never stop learning 🤿
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Today we're talking with designer and entrepreneur, Hunter Hammonds, who has grown 5 different agencies to millions in revenue in less than a year. So in this episode we walk through the different stages of building an independent design business—starting from positioning yourself as a solopreneur all the way to scaling operations to 7 figures. We get into the weeds about:
- Hunter’s framework for selling yourself on a landing page
- The tactics OffMenu uses to convert more leads to customers
- Why Hunter thinks MRR is a misguided metric
- What operational fat you can trim to increase margins
- How you can improve your sales calls
- + a lot more
- Petr Knoll - https://twitter.com/iampetrknoll (design partner OffMenu)
- Christian O’Brian - https://www.linkedin.com/in/obrienchristian/ (CEO OffMenu)
- Sahil Bloom - https://twitter.com/SahilBloom (partner OffMenu)

- Agencies
- Instrument - https://www.instrument.com/
- Basic - https://www.basicagency.com/
- Ueno - https://techcrunch.com/2021/01/06/twitter-acquihires-creative-agency-ueno-to-help-design-new-products/
Dive is where the best designers never stop learning 🤿
🌐 dive.club 🐦 twitter.com/joindiveclub