Geoff Teehan：设计师如何在变革中前行

就像我们回头看这一切，会笑它当时多么渺小。就像数码相机刚出现时，人们还像用胶片相机一样用它，拍同样的照片，对吧？但还没有人用数码相机拍自己的停车位。我认为软件就处于这个阶段。同样的照片，但没有冲洗成本。而我们的停车位阶段还没开始。

Like we're going to go look back at this and laugh at how small this all was. It's like when digital cameras showed up, people used them like film cameras, same pictures, right? But no one was photographing their parking spot yet with their digital camera. And I think that's where software is. The same pictures without the development cost. And our parking spot phase hasn't started yet.

欢迎来到 Dive Club。我是 Rid，这里是设计师永不停歇的学习之地。本周的嘉宾是 Geoff Teehan，他是传奇设计机构 Teehan+Lax 的联合创始人，曾在 Facebook 长期担任设计负责人，目前是 Lightspark 的首席设计官。我们将深入探讨 Geoff 的历程，以及他如何思考应对当今格局中的一切变化。但在开始之前，我请他分享了他打造的那款爆红游戏 Dialed 的一些幕后故事。

Welcome to Dive Club. My name is Ridd and this is where designers never stop learning. This week's episode is with Geoff Teehan, who's the co-founder of the legendary design agency Teehan+Lax, longtime design leader at Facebook, and currently the chief design officer at Lightspark. So, we're going to do a little deep dive into Geoff's journey, as well as how he thinks about navigating everything that's changing in today's landscape. But before we get into it, I asked for a little behind the scenes of the viral game he built called Dialed.

我和我儿子出去玩。我拿到了他画的一幅画，但拿回来时，我记得它应该是另一种颜色。这让我想起大学色彩理论课上的教授，他提到人类对颜色的记忆力极差。正好我们公司要办黑客松，我就想，我要做个傻游戏，先给你看几秒钟的颜色，然后改变颜色，给你 HSB 控制器让你试着还原。然后用一个很简单的算法根据你与 HSB 数值的接近程度打分，给你 1 到 10 分。玩五轮，看看你记颜色有多厉害。因为我们是做支付基础设施的，我在黑客松里内置了赌博功能，只是内部玩，不是公开应用之类的。我把它放出去了，最初只是发在 Twitter 上的一个 Vercel 链接。不，其实我发在了 Threads 上。第二天就火了，我接了一些 Google Analytics，我记得大概三四天后，我把它换成了真正的网址 dial.gg。我记得周末坐在沙发上，看着实时数字往上涨。这只是一个简单的游戏，非常简单。第一版大概 6 小时就做完了。24 小时内就相当完善了。48 小时内就有了多人模式。我就一直往上加功能。总之，我看着数字往上跳，同时有大约一千人在用。就像过去 30 分钟有上千人那样。你知道他们怎么衡量实时在线人数，数字一直涨，我整天都在看，一度有 5000 人同时玩，我心想天哪，太不可思议了。完全病毒式传播。我根本没想到，这只是个傻傻的小东西。我把它做成了一个单独的 HTML 文件，只是隐藏和显示 DOM，非常基础。有 8000 行代码，好处是我能即时发布。任何改动都没有构建过程，直接发布。但显然效率极低。我把它连到了 SAS，因为 Cursor 让我用那个。我完全不知道自己在做什么。它就这么爆炸了。我还自己做了分析面板，大错特错，发出了太多请求。总之，我遇到了问题，我算是赶上了一辆移动的巴士。我有一份需要全神贯注的正职工作。所以这不再只是一个周末项目，因为规模变大，我需要降低成本。要做的事情太多了。于是我打电话给我儿子，他当时住在多伦多，在一家银行工作，每一分钟都讨厌。我说：“嘿，我做了个东西。”他知道，他朋友也知道。我说：“我要么把它关掉，因为我实在没法兼顾，要么我需要你帮忙。”于是他辞了职，现在基本上由他运营。我在周末和晚上有空时帮他，构思新游戏，帮他做一些东西，还有艺术指导和润色，因为他不是设计师出身，但很快就上手了。这很棒，因为现在有七款游戏了。我们刚在 O 上构建了。我们仍然用展示广告。他为 color 做了 iOS 应用，最受欢迎的游戏正在审核中。所以它变成了一门生意。这个小项目变成了生意，我们不得不认真对待。我们在 Upwork 上雇了一个专注后端的人，帮我们克服一些无法逾越的障碍。大发布时还会用他，但 95% 都是我们俩在做。

I was out with my son. I had gotten something he painted and when it came back, I remembered it being a different color. And then that made me think of a professor in college, color theory class, who mentioned something about just humans being incredibly poor at remembering colors. And so we had this hackathon coming up at work. And I was like, I'm going to make this dumb game where I'm going to show you a color for a few seconds. And then I'm going to change the color and give you HSB controllers to try and recreate it. Then I'm going to score you using at first just a really simple algorithm just about how close you are to the HSB numbers. Uh and then I give you a score one to 10. You run five rounds and I and then you see how good you are at remembering color. And for the hackathon, because we do payments infrastructure, I built in gambling just internal. It wasn't like a public app or anything like that. I put it out. It was like originally just a Vercel link that I put out on Twitter. No, actually, you know what? I put it out on threads. The next day it just lit on fire and I had like some Google Analytics hooked up and I remember maybe it was like 3 days in, 4 days in. I had now switched it over to an actual URL dial.gg. I remember sitting on my couch on a weekend and I was watching the real time numbers go up. This is just a single game. It's very simple. It took like I think I had the first version done in like 6 hours. In 24 hours it was pretty polished. In 48 hours I had multiplayer. I had like I just I just kept building on top of it. Anyway, I'm watching these numbers tick up and there was like a thousand people using it at a single time. It was just like a thou in the last 30 minutes. You know how they measure real time on and it kept going up and I looked throughout the day and it was like at one point it was like 5,000 people were playing it simultaneously and I was like oh my god this is incredible. Like total viral game. I had no idea. This was just a dumb little thing. And I had built it out as a single HTML file. And it was just using it was just like hiding and showing DOMs and like it was really really basic. It was 8,000 lines of code which was cool because I could ship it instantly. Any change was just like there was no build process, just ship. But it was obviously extremely inefficient. I'd hooked it up to like SAS because that's what cursor told me to to use. I had no idea what I was doing. It was just exploding. And I was and I'd also built out like my own analytics screen. Huge mistake. It was just making so many calls. Anyways, I had a problem though, like I kind of, you know, I I I caught the the moving bus. And I have a real I have a I have a day job that requires all of my attention. And so this was more than it had to become more than a weekend project because it because of the scale and I needed to reduce costs. There was just so much to do. So, my son, who was living in Toronto, working at a bank, hating every minute of it, I called him up and I said, "Hey, I did this thing. He knew about it. His friends knew about it. I said, "I'm either going to kill it because I just I can't afford to to do both, or I need your help." And so, he quit he quit his job and now he basically runs a thing. I help him out on the weekends and in some evenings when I can, ideating new games and helping him build out some things and, you know, art direction and some polish here and there because he's not a designer by trade, but he's quickly becoming one. And it's been awesome because the, you know, seven games now. We just built in O. We still use display ads. He built out an iOS app for color, the most popular game that's in review now. And so it's become a business. This little side project became a business and we had to take it pretty seriously. So we did, you know, we hired somebody on Upwork who focused in on backend work to really help us get over some of the hurdles that we just can't. We still use him when we need to do big releases, but you know, I'd say 95% of it, you know, it's it's he and I.

太酷了。我也很喜欢这个背景，因为第一周我绝对是 Vercel 账单爆炸的一部分，我在 Twitter 上看到了它，开始玩。我和全家人在一起，玩得很开心，我给他们看，说：“你想和我一起玩吗？”你刚发布了多人模式，我们在客厅里连续玩了三个小时。太让人上瘾了。向你致敬，做得非常好。

That's so cool. I love the back too because I was definitely part of the exploding Vercel bill in that first week even because I saw that thing on Twitter. I started playing with it. I'm with my entire family and I'm having so much fun. I'm showing it to my family. I'm like, "You do you want to play this with me?" And you had just released the multiplayer and we spent like three straight hours just playing that game in a living room. It was addicting. So tip of the cap. It was very well done.

谢谢。我觉得我们对所有游戏都努力做到零摩擦。不用下载应用，不用注册，输入网址就能立刻开始玩。这对留存不利，但对病毒式传播很棒，因为完全无摩擦。但留住这些人就成了问题，这就是为什么我们看到了大起大落。

Thanks. I think, you know, one of the things that we really tried to do with all of them was zero friction. So like don't download an app, don't have to sign up, you enter the URL and you immediately start playing. That sucks for retention, but it is awesome for like when something goes viral because it makes it absolutely frictionless. But retaining those people becomes the issue, which is why we saw such a rise and such a fall.

有道理。不过你确实做了完整的社交循环。我觉得你做得很好，就像我最初为 backyard designers 构思时，那个更小众，所以没有那种病毒式传播，但确实火了一周左右。我给 Claude 喂了两个网页游戏作为社交循环的灵感，Dialed 是其中之一，另一个是 82-0 那个 NBA 游戏。所以我一直在想这个产品。

It makes sense. Yeah. you did like the whole social loop though. I think you really nailed like when I was originally ideating for backyard designers which did not a little more niche so it didn't have that type of virality but like you know it really had a moment for like a week. I fed Claude two web- based games for inspiration on like the social loop. Dialed was one of them and the other one was 82 and0 the NBA game. So I have been thinking about this product since.

快速插播一条消息，然后我们继续。我最喜欢的新兴工具之一叫 DESN，因为他们的新画布能给你整个生产环境产品的实时视觉地图。只需连接你的代码库，Desen 就会自动列出每个独特的屏幕和状态。这样你就能看到真正的源头，而不是过时的设计文件。

Real quick message and then we can jump back into it. One of my favorite upandcoming tools is called DESN because their new canvas gives you a live visual map of your entire product in production. Just connect your repo and Desen lays out every unique screen and state automatically. That way you can see the real source of truth, not just a stale design file.

从那里，你可以复制任何屏幕来并排探索想法，与团队分享，甚至可以通过 Destin 的 MCP 直接合并到生产环境。在我看来，这就是现代设计工作流的样子。你可以成为第一批试用的人。只需访问 dive.club/desen 与他们的联合创始人 Gav 预约聊天。别忘了告诉他们是 Ridd 推荐你来的，这样你可以跳过排队。网址是 dive.club/desende。club/desendees ssn。我想可以肯定地说，这是你早期使用 Paper 的最后机会，感觉每个人都在 Twitter 上谈论它，嘉宾们也经常在节目中提起它。他们刚刚完成了巨额 A 轮融资，Paper 很快就成为了那些用智能体交付产品的人的首选设计工具。它真的感觉是专门为这种新的工作方式而构建的。这也是我每天使用它的一个重要原因。所以，如果你还在沉睡，请访问 dive.club/paper。我想你很快就会明白为什么这么多设计师正在转向它。现在，进入正题。

And from there, you can duplicate any screen to explore ideas side by side, share it with your team, and you can even merge to prod directly through Destin's MCP. In my opinion, this is what modern design workflows look like. And you can be one of the first to try it out. Just head to dive.club/desen to book a chat with their co-founder, Gav. And don't forget to tell them that Ridd sent you so you can jump the queue. That's dive.club/desende. club/desendees ssn. I think it's safe to say that this is your last chance to be early on paper and it feels like everybody is talking about it on Twitter and guests are constantly bringing it up on this show. They just raised a massive series A and Paper's pretty quickly become the design tool of choice for people shipping with agents. It really feels like it was built specifically for this new way of working. And that's a big reason why I use it every single day. So, if you're still sleeping, head to dive.club/paper. And I think you're really quickly going to realize why so many designers are making the switch. Now, on to the episode.

嗯，对于正在收听的人来说，他们可能还在想：“故事很精彩，但这家伙到底是谁？”你能给我们一点背景，讲讲你其余的旅程吗？因为你做的远不止开发病毒式传播的网页游戏。所以，也许可以带我们回顾一下你旅程中通往 Lightspark 的一些主要章节，也许你可以谈谈这如何塑造了你作为设计师的身份。

Well, for people who are listening who are still like, "Great story, but who the hell is this guy?" Can you give us a little bit of context about the rest of your journey because you've done a lot more than just develop viral web-based games? So maybe take us through some of the main chapters of your journey leading up to Lightspark and maybe you could talk a little bit about how that shaped who you are as a designer.

我高三那年，也就是 90 年代初，我开始设计锐舞传单。我真的很喜欢平面设计，因为我有一个邻居，他去学校学设计，为当地一家保时捷经销商打印了一本宣传册，我当时就想：“天哪，那是个工作。太不可思议了。我想做那个。”于是我买了一台电脑，开始设计，你知道，锐舞传单之类的，然后在一家印刷店工作。我真的很想做，但我真正想做的是成为一名品牌识别设计师。对我来说，那才是最高端的。那加上 90 年代的年报设计，简直疯狂。

My senior year, I started designing rave flyers back in the 90s, early 90s. And I was really into print design because I had a neighbor who he went to school for design, had printed out a brochure for a local Porsche dealership, and I was like, "Holy that's a job. That's incredible. I want to do that." And so got a computer, started designing, you know, rave flyers and stuff like that, then worked at a print shop. I really wanted to do, but what I really wanted to do was be an identity designer. That just to me was the up restaurant. that alongside annual report design back in the 90s was insane.

那真是巨大的预算，摄影师、插画师、处理信息图表的人、了不起的文案。你用的是真正高端的纸张，最后完成一件美丽的作品，交给那些投资你公司的人。一种真正令人惊叹的艺术形式，现在已经消亡了。

That's so like huge budgets, photographers, illustrators, people who deal with like infographics, incredible copywriters. You're dealing with like really high-end stocks and you're finishing off with this like beautiful piece that you're giving to people that are invested in your company. Really amazing art form that is dead now.

但那就是我想做的，我找不到这样的工作。所以，我去了一家印刷店工作，在大概 96 年的时候为一家互联网初创公司做了品牌识别设计，他们当时正试图以 1000 美元的价格把一些最早的公司放到互联网上。这就是他们的生意。基本上，就像一份菜单。你想要什么？我们买下 URL，然后为你搭建。他们给我提供了一份工作，去领导设计，领导设计。我当时是一家非常小的初创公司的设计师，我们试图做这个。那家公司失败了。

But that's what I that's what I wanted to do and I couldn't get I couldn't get a job doing that. So, I went and worked at a print shop, did an identity design for this internet startup back in like 96, I want to say, and they were just trying to put some of the first companies on the internet for a,000 bucks. That was their deal. Basically, it was like a menu. What do you want? We'll buy the URL and then we'll build it for you. They offered me a job to go lead design, lead design. I was a a designer at at a a very small startup where we were trying to do this. That company failed.

然后，那家公司里几个很棒的人和我聚在一起，我们又做了一家公司。我们使用 Future Splash，后来变成了 Flash。所以我们在几年里成为了一家 Flash 开发公司。然后有一家叫 Modem Media 的数字公司，Aqua 雇佣了我们。然后 2001、2002 年第一次泡沫破裂，我又一次失业了，就在那时我遇到了我的商业伙伴 Jon Lax，我们在 2002 年创办了一家名为 Teehan+Lax 的机构。2002 年，网络还做不了太多，对吧？就是广告和静态页面，随着网络在 2000 年代中期成长和成熟，微型网站开始成为一件事，那时你可以开始让它做事情。那就是我们真正对软件设计产生兴趣的地方。

Then a few people that were great from that company and I got together and we did another company. We were using Future Splash which became Flash. And so we became like a Flash development house for a few years. And then there was a digital company called Modem Media that Aqua hired us. And then 2001202 that first bubble burst and then again left without a job and that's where I met my p my business partner Jon Lax and we started an agency in 2002 called Teehan+Lax in 2002 the web didn't do that much right it was like ads and static pages and micro sites were becoming a thing as the web grew and became more mature in like the mid 2000s when you could begin to make it do things. That's where we really got interested in like software design.

所以，我们真正专注于摆脱广告工作，因为那些机构把全部时间和资源都投入到有钱的地方，也就是传统广告。嗯，那开始发生变化，我们不想在那个领域竞争。另外，我们只是觉得有更大的机会，而且没人在做，机构肯定不会去构建软件。不会很快。然后我们开始与大公司合作，你知道，有时是初创公司。所以，我们参与了 medium.com 最初几个版本的开发。我带着整个团队去了旧金山，我们在那里待了 6 个月到一年，开发 Medium。然后我们还有其他团队在为 Google 开发一些产品。我们还有其他团队在为 Facebook 做项目。最终，你知道，行业变化太大了，我们不得不改变我们的公司。你知道，我们存在了 13、14 年。行业变化如此之大，我们也变化如此之大。我们看到了另一个变化即将到来。东西越来越便宜，对吧？现在有更多的人在做这个。我们不再是城里唯一的玩家。我们故意定价很高。许多小公司也真的变得很优秀。而且他们收费低得多。我们并没有失去合同。我们只是看到了增长问题。

So, we then really focused in on getting away from the advertising work because the agencies, they were investing all of their time and resources into where the money was, which was like traditional advertising. Well, that was beginning to change and we didn't want to compete in that space. Plus, we just felt like there was a way bigger opportunity and no one was doing it and agencies sure as were not going to be building software. Not anytime soon. And then we started to work with large companies, you know, sometimes it was a startup. So we, you know, we worked on the first few v versions of medium.com. I took my entire team down to San Francisco and we were there for 6 months to a year working on Medium. And then we had other teams that were working on some products for Google. We had other teams that were working on projects for Facebook. And eventually, you know, the industry had changed so much and we had had to change our company. you know, we were around for 13 14 years. The industry changed so much and we changed so much. And we saw another change coming. Things are getting cheaper, right? Like there's more there's more people doing this now. There's like we're not the only game in town. We were expensive on purpose. A lot of smaller shops were really they were getting good, too. And they were charging a lot less. We weren't losing contracts. We just saw a growth problem.

通常在我们公司发生这种情况时，会发生的是，一个合伙人会承担整个业务，专注于确保资金流入和客户得到服务。然后另一个合伙人会花时间，我的意思是，你知道，大量时间重新思考行业走向以及我们如何走在前面。就在这一刻，我们想，你知道吗，我不介意承担客户工作。我喜欢那些东西，但我不想花两三个月思考未来以及我们如何重组一切，因为我们之前已经做过两三次了，我的商业伙伴也不想那样做。而且，我们有一些这样的公司，你知道，我们的客户，我提到的一些，试图挖走我们。呃，最终在 2015 年，当 Facebook 回来找我们说：“我们一直听到你的名字，我们厌倦了你不在我们这里工作。”所以我们更认真地对待了。那是一次引人注目的对话，我们四处看了看。Facebook 是一个合乎逻辑的选择，我发现自己进入了 Facebook，从事新闻推送的工作，在 2015 年，那是互联网上最大的界面。尽管我构建了很多软件，但我从未在那样的大公司工作过。所以我像一条离开水的鱼，有很多东西要学，我在那里学到了很多。那个地方对我来说太棒了。我真的理解了现代大规模软件是如何构建的，增长，以及许多其他事情，还有政治，以及如何在大型组织内部让事情发生。

And usually when that happened in our company, what would happen is one of the partners would take on the entire book of business and they'd just focus in on making sure that money was coming in and clients were being serviced. And then the other partner would take time, and I mean, you know, a substantial amount of time to rethink where the industry is going and how we're going to get out in front of it. And it was at this moment where we were like, you know what, I don't I don't mind taking on the client work. I love that stuff, but I don't want to spend two or three months thinking about the future and how we're going to restructure everything because we had done it two, three times before and my business partner didn't want to do that either. And so, and we had had some of these companies, you know, our clients, some of the ones I had mentioned, come try to hire us away. Uh, and eventually in 2015, we took it more seriously when Facebook came back to us and said, "We keep hearing your name and we're we're tired of you not working here." So uh that was a compelling conversation and we shopped around a little bit. Facebook was a logical choice and I found myself at Facebook working on newsfeed which was in 2015 like the largest surface on the internet. I was even though I had built a lot of software I'd never worked in a large company like that. So I was a fish out of water and I had a lot to learn and I learned so much there. That place was awesome to me. I really got to understand how modern software at scale gets built and growth and just like so many other things and politics and like how to how to get how to make something happen inside of a large organization.

就是在那里，我遇到了我现在的商业伙伴 David Marcus，他曾是 PayPal 的总裁。他当时负责 Messenger，并在 Messenger 中构建支付功能，还做了许多其他事情。他当时在 Facebook 启动了一个与加密货币有关的秘密项目。我的意思是，我那时对 Bitcoin 之类的东西很感兴趣，但我算不上加密货币专家。这听起来像是你想弄清楚如何处理加密货币，但现在你要弄清楚它要解决什么问题。我说，我没兴趣来做这个。然后他说服了我。他说，不不不不不，这远不止如此。我们只是还没公开谈论。进来给我 60 分钟。结果不到 5 分钟，我就完全被说服了。

That's where I met my now business partner David Marcus, who used to be president of PayPal. He was running Messenger and building payments into Messenger, amongst many other things. And he was starting a secret project at Facebook that had to do with crypto. I mean, I was into Bitcoin and that kind of thing, but I was like a crypto pro. This sounds like you want to try and figure out what to do with crypto, but now you're trying to figure out what problem it's going to solve. And I was like, I'm not interested in coming to work on that. And then he convinced me. He's like, no no no no no, it's way bigger than that. We're just not talking about it. Come in and give me 60 minutes. And I'd say inside of 5 minutes I was completely bought in.

真的吗？

Really?

对我们试图构建的东西。是的。就像，人们已经在 Facebook 的产品上汇款，但不是你想的那样。所以像 WhatsApp 并没有真正的支付集成。但人们一直用 WhatsApp 汇款。他们去西联汇款，拍下收据照片，然后通过 WhatsApp 发给朋友，然后他们的朋友或家人去代理点尝试兑现，希望系统没有宕机。所以我们说，我们可以解决这个问题。我们可以在其中创建支付，现在突然之间，你可以通过一个消息应用即时、免费地向世界任何地方的任何人付款。所以汇款就像发消息一样。这是一个非常有说服力的论点。Mark 支持它。我们有资源。我们把它建立起来了。但最终，有太多外部因素，而且我们是 Facebook，这让事情变得非常困难。

To what we were trying to build. Yeah. It was like, people already send money over the products at Facebook, but not in the way you think. So there's no real payments integration into something like WhatsApp. But people send money using WhatsApp all the time. And they go to Western Union, they take a picture of the receipt, and then they WhatsApp it to their friends, and then their friends or family member go to an agent and they try to redeem it, and hopefully the system's not down. And so we were like, we can fix that. We can create payments inside of this, and now all of a sudden you can pay anybody anywhere in the world instantly and for free using a messaging app. So sending money like sending a message. It was a pretty compelling argument. Mark was behind it. We had, you know, resources. We built that up. And ultimately, there were so many external factors and the fact that we were Facebook made it really difficult.

起初，这个想法听起来很棒，因为你会想，好吧，有公司支持，所以你有无限的资源。你可以接触到最优秀的人才。你不需要从内部招聘，而且你有一个非常好的想法，有受众，任何平台都已经搭建好了。你所要做的就是在上面构建一个功能。回想起来，这显然要复杂得多，但当时听起来很容易。

At first, the pitch seems great because you're like, okay, you have the company behind this, so you have unlimited resources. You have access to the best talent. You don't need to recruit from within, and you've got a really good idea with an audience, any platform already set up. All you're doing is building a feature on top of it. In retrospect, it's obviously way more complicated than that, but it sounded easy at the time.

然后四年后，项目失败了，但 David 和我并没有结束。我们只是想从不同的角度来攻克它。所以，显然，将支付构建到 Facebook 或 Meta 产品中是一个非常面向消费者的问题，这占了我职业生涯中 95% 的工作。我们要换一种方式。我们要构建基础设施，让像 Facebook 或 Uber 或其他公司能够进行支付或汇款。所以我们要构建基础设施，让其他人在上面构建产品。那就是 Lightspark。这就是我如何走到这里的快速版本。

And then after four years, the project failed and David and I were not done. We just wanted to attack it from a different perspective. So, obviously, building payments into Facebook or Meta products is very much a consumer problem, which has been 95% of what I worked on in my career. And we're going to take a different spin at it. We're going to build the infrastructure that allows companies like Facebook or Uber or whomever to do payouts or to send money. And so we're going to build the infrastructure to let other people build the product on top of that. That's Lightspark. And that's kind of a real quick version of how I got here.

那么，作为一个在消费者领域有着辉煌职业生涯的人，突然之间你不再做消费者，而是做 B2B。我的意思是，支付 API 就像是 B2B 的深水区。这是完全相反的一端。所以跟我谈谈这个转变吧。

What's it been like then as somebody who's had a story career in consumer and all of a sudden it's not that you're working at B2B. I mean, payment APIs are like the deep end of B2B. It's the opposite end of the spectrum. So talk to me a little bit about that switch.

我认为，在一个你接触到如此多不同垂直领域和不同类型工作的行业工作过，作为设计师，你会惊讶地发现什么会让你感兴趣。以前，当我有自己的 agency 时，你会想到像 Red Bull、Nike、Porsche 或 Apple 这样的大品牌。那感觉像是终极目标，对吧？你将能够为一个真正严肃的品牌工作，做真正有趣、前沿的工作，那可能很有趣。但我记得接到一个项目，为顾问重新设计一个共同基金网站。我的意思是，对于想着 Nike、Apple 和 Red Bull 的人来说，这听起来再悲惨不过了。我从那份工作中了解到，因为那是在构建软件。我们必须为这些人构建软件，他们并不精通技术。他们在财务上很精通，但对新网络并不精通。这大概是 2005、6、7 年的时候。构建那个产品太棒了，因为就像你真的在思考一个问题。你真的在解决一些真实、有形的东西。你知道，很多 Red Bull 的东西，就像你试图创造兴奋、病毒式传播，或者只是让某人感受到什么。我认为一些被认为更无聊的事情其实非常关键。我认为它非常有用，非常有影响力。这就是我喜欢的。这就是我真正从中得到的。另外，一般来说，我不想把所有 B2B 都一棍子打死，因为我认为所有设计都在崛起，但你知道，10 年前这些系统，这些 B2B 系统，大多数仍然很糟糕，我认为设计在其中有一席之地。这些系统最终还是由人类使用的，如果设计得非常好，他们会更多地使用它。他们会更高效地使用它。他们会更积极地看待它。他们会更信任它，他们会成为你的拥护者。这对我们这样的公司很重要。我认为对每个人都很重要，但我觉得在这样的领域我可以带来很多价值，即使最终消费者不一定是我们要设计的对象。

I think having worked at an industry where you touch so many different verticals and so many different types of work, you can be surprised at what you'll find interesting as a designer. I used to, when we were, you know, back when I had my agency, you'd think about clients like Red Bull or Nike, Porsche, or some big brand that you would like to or Apple. You that feels like the end goal, right? Where you're going to be able to work on a really serious brand, working on really fun, interesting, cutting edge work and that stuff can be fun. But I remember getting a project to redesign a mutual fund site for advisors. I mean, that sounds it sounds as miserable as anything you can imagine for somebody who is thinking about Nike, Apple, and Red Bull. What I learned by taking that job on because it was building software. We had to build software for these people and they're not savvy. They're savvy financially. They're not savvy for the new web. This is like 2005, 6, 7 or something like that. And it was so awesome to build that product because it was like you were really thinking about a problem. You were really solving something real, tangible. You know, with a lot of the Red Bull stuff, it's like you're trying to create excitement, virality, or just make somebody feel something. And I think that some of the more perceived boring things are just so critical. And I think it's so useful and so impactful. That's what I like. That's what I really take out of it. Also generally I don't want to throw all B2B under the bus because I think all design's rising, but you know 10 years ago these systems, these B2B systems, most of them are still terrible and I think design has a place in that. These are still human beings that are ultimately using the system and if it's designed really well they'll use it more. They'll use it more efficiently. They'll think more positively about it. They'll trust it more and they'll become your advocate. And that's important for a company like ours. I think it's important for everybody, but I just feel like I could bring a lot to the table in a space like this even though the end consumer wasn't necessarily the thing we were designing for.

现在，我们做的很大一部分是咨询，我们向客户和合作伙伴推销使用我们的技术栈，这意味着我们必须设想集成可能是什么样子。如果你是一家拼车公司，你必须向全世界数千万人付款，那非常昂贵。我们可以设想你的软件，所以我们会制作模型，有时甚至是完整的原生应用，一对一地让他们可以点击浏览，真正理解支付系统或付款系统如何在他们应用内运作。所以我们仍然做很多消费者工作。只是不是我们自己的。你甚至可以在营销方面看到消费者风味。我玩过，显然它很漂亮，但你甚至可以看到悬停状态上的小声音设计，就像 DNA 就在那里。你能看到。

Now, a large part of what we do is we consult, we pitch clients and partners to use our stack, which means we have to envision what an integration might look like. If you are a ride sharing company and you have to pay out tens of millions of people all over the world, that's very expensive. We could envision your software and so we will mock up and sometimes just like full-on native apps that are one-to-one where they can tap through and really understand how like a payment system or a payout system could work inside their app. So we still do a lot of consumer work. It's just not ours. You can still kind of see the consumer flavor even on the marketing side. I was playing obviously it's beautiful but you even have the little sound design on the hover states and like the DNA is there. You can see it.

是的。我的意思是，你仍然可以认真对待这一切，对吧？仅仅因为它是全球支付基础设施，并不意味着你不能给它一些生命力。

Yeah. I mean you can take it all seriously still, right? Just because it's, you know, global payments infrastructure doesn't mean you can't like give it some life.

说到给它一些生命力，你能给我们讲讲 rose.gg 背后的故事吗？这是你做的另一个工具。我一直在分享它。我觉得它太棒了。你为什么做那个？你是怎么做的？还有，这说明了你怎么看待软件在这个新世界中的角色？

Speaking of giving it some life, can you give us a backstory behind rose.gg which is another tool you made? I've shared it endlessly. I think it's incredible. Why did you make that? How did you make that? And also like what does that say about how you even think about the role that software plays in this new world?

所以 rose 基本上是一个项目跟踪器，但你可以用它来跟踪任何东西。你想读的书，或者只是跟踪我们的项目。我喜欢让我们团队的一切都极其轻量级。我们稍后可以再深入讨论，但这就是它的起源。

So rose is basically a project tracker, but you could use it to track anything. Books you want to read to just track our projects. I like to keep everything on our team extremely lightweight. We can get into that a little bit more later, but that's where this stems from.

我们当时在用简单的 Google 表格，上面列着项目、负责人、描述、相关链接等一些东西。我们会开会讨论，调整安排，标记完成等等。很简单，也管用，挺好的。后来我们开始把办公室的一些工具正式化，于是 Notion 就进来了，Notion 挺不错的。一开始你打开它，会觉得“哦，这就像我在建数据库，有这么多视图。”我们最终也尽量把它调教到最好，但它还是做了远超我们需要的事。一个五人设计团队的需求和一个庞大工程团队的需求天差地别，对吧？所以像 Rose 对他们就不适用。他们需要的是更大的东西，所以他们用的是 Jira。于是某个周末我就想，我要做一个超级简单的东西，只给我们用。就像只为我们设计团队服务的软件，只服务我们自己。所以我做了那个，对吧？它不是产品，就是一个页面加上一些交互之类的。然后我们开始不断推进，因为我们开始用它，我们每天早上开会点评作品。哪怕只是偶尔用一下，我就会想，怎样能让这个更好？这个或者有人会说，“哦，我刚做了这个。我们应该有类似 command Z 的功能。”然后在会上就说，“好，现在能用了。”直接发布。砰，搞定。

We were using a simple Google spreadsheet and here's the projects, here's who's on them, here's a description, any associated links, few other things. And we'd meet about them and we'd shift things around, mark them as done, etc. Pretty simple and it worked. It was fine. Then we were starting to formalize some tools around the office, and so then Notion came in and Notion was pretty good. At first you kind of open it up and you're like, "Oh, this is like I'm building a database and there's so many views." And we eventually dialed it in, I guess, as best we could, but it was still kind of like it still did way more than what we needed. The needs of a five-person design team versus a huge engineering team are vastly different, right? And so like Rose wouldn't work for them. So what they needed was something even bigger. So they were using Jira. So one weekend I was just like I'm just going to build something super simple where it's just for us. Like it's just software just for our design team and it's going to service us and us alone. So I built that, right? It wasn't a product. It was like a page with some interactions and that kind of thing. Then we just started taking it further and further because we started to use it because we meet every morning and we critique work. Even just using it here and there, I was just like, you know what would make this better? This or somebody be like, "Oh, I just did this. We should have like command Z." And it's just like in the meeting just like, "Okay, now it works." Like just ship it. Boom. Done.

它变得足够有价值，我们觉得“这真的很棒”。我想其他人可能也会觉得它很棒。于是问题就变成了：你选择让它永久化吗？你赋予它永久性吗？你把它提供给其他人吗？因为如果你这么做，在我看来就伴随着承诺，尤其是像这样的东西，对吧？当然，你总是可以把数据拉出来。我确信大团队反正不会用这个东西，但你仍然要尊重别人付出了时间和信任。所以你必须兑现这一点。把它变成产品，把 Rows 变成产品，工作量要大得多。不仅要做营销网站，还需要做注册流程。我们得做删除机制。要做的事情无穷无尽，才能把它从内部工具变成其他人可以使用的产品。

It became valuable enough for us where we were like, "This is really great." And I think other people might find it great too. And so the question then becomes, do you choose to make it permanent? Do you give it permanence? Do you provide it to other people? Because if you do, that comes with the commitment in my opinion, especially for something like this, right? Like yes, of course, you could always pull your data off. And I'm sure huge teams aren't using this thing anyway, but you still just want to be respectful that somebody has given their time and their trust to you. And so you have to honor that. Turning that into a product, turning Rows into a product was a lot more work. Not only just did you have to make a marketing site, but then you needed we needed to do signup flows. We had to do like deletion practices. We had to do like there's just the list is endless of the things that we had to do to turn it from an internal tool into a product that other people could use.

你最近发推引用了 Jack Dorsey 的话。我记得大概是“让每个细节完美，但限制细节的数量”。对我来说，这就是那个理念的体现：产品只做大概六件事。它就像一个 CRUD 机器，仅此而已。但你在每一个小交互上都精益求精。我们会在节目笔记里附上链接，但就连删除功能，粒子蒸发的方式，都远超预期。

You tweeted recently the Jack Dorsey quote. I think it's something like make every detail perfect but limit the number of details. And to me, this is the embodiment of that idea where the product only does like six things. It's like a CRUD machine and nothing more. And yet you sweat the details on every single little interaction. And we'll include the link in the show notes, but even just the delete and how the particles evaporate, like it's just above and beyond.

完美。

It's perfect.

我是说，有些地方太夸张了，我觉得几乎有点好笑。

I mean, some of it is so over the top. It's almost funny, I think.

但正是这一点让它如此出色。它让我开心。使用它让我开心，而这是一款你不会预期会引发那种反应的软件，我看着它想，“是的，也许这不是你会采取的大规模商业化方式。”但突然间，随着软件变得便宜，你知道，长期来看几乎免费，这就是我希望从中产生的，对吧？就像你对某个甚至可能不值得的东西投入了如此多的关怀。拥有那种关怀会是什么样子？

But that's what makes it so good, though. It made me happy. It made me happy using it, and it was a piece of software that you wouldn't expect to invoke that type of response where I look at that and I'm like, "Yeah, maybe that's not the mass commercialization approach that you would take." But all of a sudden now with software becoming like cheap and, you know, borderline free in the long run, it's like that's what I hope comes out of it, right? It's like you put so much care into something that maybe didn't even deserve it. What does it look like to have that?

那么，你把这种心态的多少应用到了你正在做的实际 B2B 工作中？

Like how much of that mindset do you apply then to the actual B2B work that you are doing?

我觉得我的团队比我更痴迷于这类东西。而我已经很痴迷了。他们真的在乎所有细节。我想你在营销网站上能看到，在博客文章里能看到，在我们的仪表盘上能看到。嗯，你看不到，但它无处不在，在我们做的每一件事里。我知道这很重要，比如我们的文档。我们设计博客里还有一篇文章，讨论文档还能做什么，我们这里的一位设计师 Pat 重新思考了文档能做什么，做出了我认为有史以来最酷的文档网站之一。它不仅让你看到代码，还让你可视化地选择东西，给你一个示例，展示它可能如何在前端实现。所以你真正全面了解了我们的软件如何工作、输出是什么，以及它可能如何实际显示。我们之前就有好的文档，它管用，但像这样的质疑：什么能让它更好？它如何能不同，但不是为了不同而不同？我想我们一直在问这个问题。

I think my team are more obsessed about stuff like that than I am. And I'm obsessed. They really care about all the details. I mean, I think you can see that in the marketing site. You can see that in the blog posts. You can see that on our dashboards. Well, you can't, but like it's everywhere in everything that we do. I know it matters like our documentation as well. Like there's another piece in our design blog where we talk about what else could docs do and one of our designers here Pat he rethought what docs could do and built out I think it's one of the coolest doc sites ever. It lets you not only see code, it lets you choose things visually, it lets you it gives you an example of like how it might get implemented on the front end. So you really get like a full picture of like how our software works, what the output is, and how it might actually display. We just had good docs before it worked, you know, but like it's questioning those things like what could make this better? How could this be different but not just for a different sake? And I think we ask that question all the time.

现在让它变得很棒的是这种充裕的概念。你不必为了知道你的想法好不好而辩论、排优先级、获得批准、分配团队。你把它做出来，然后决定。以前恰恰相反。

What makes it awesome now is that this notion of abundance. You don't have to debate an idea, prioritize it, get approval, assign a team just to learn if your idea is any good. You build it and then you decide. It used to just it was the reverse before.

是的。

Yeah.

因为它太便宜了。我不是说你在构建，我们不是在构建，你知道，我们后端的接口，比如内部工具和这样转移资金的客户。那里有非常不同的方法。但我们绝对可以测试原型，做类似的事情。

Because it's so cheap. And I'm not saying like you're building we're not we're not building, you know, our interfaces for our backend like for our internal tools and and customers that are moving money this way. There's a much different approach there. But we can definitely test prototypes and and and do things like that.

是的。就连文档网站的工作方式，你能想象五年前向关键利益相关者提出这样的建议，说我们应该在这上面投入这么多吗？

Yeah. Even the way that the doc site works like can you imagine making that pitch to like a key stakeholder 5 years ago how we should invest this much into that

首先，构建那个可能得花四个月。

First of all it would probably take like 4 months to build that.

没错。所以那绝不可能获批。

Exactly. So there's no way that's getting approved.

这就是我喜欢的地方，尤其是在，你知道，我不知道在 Meta 工作现在是什么样子。我确定和我四年半前在那里时大不相同。但我知道在像这样的小公司，80 到 100 人，这就是你可以工作的方式。而且很不可思议。我不是在说什么新东西。大家都知道。但它真的在改变事情，因为我认为它给了我们尝试然后决定的能力。我不认为这意味着我们会更快地做出同样数量的软件。我认为它真正意味着我们会做出多得多的软件。有些可能只为你存在。比如你可能只是构建一个工具来调整你正在构建的东西上的某个东西，然后它就消失了。你可能构建一个为少数人解决一个问题一周的东西，也可能构建更实质性的东西。你就是要构建，你会有更多的东西。

That's where I like this especially at the you know I I don't know I don't know what it's like to work at Meta anymore. I'm sure it's a lot different than when I was there four and a half years ago. But I know at a smaller company like this, you know, 80 to 100 people, it is how you can work. And it's incredible. I'm not saying anything new. Everybody knows this. But it's really changing things because I think it just gives us the ability to just try things and then decide. And I don't think it means that we're going to make the same amount of software faster. I think what it really means is we're just going to make way more software. Some of it might just exist for you. Like you might just build a tool to tweak something on something that you're building and it disappears. You might build something that solves one problem for a few people for a week and you might build something much more substantial. You're just going to build you're going to have a lot more stuff.

但我觉得问题在于，当这个小软件变得重要时——这又回到玫瑰那件事上。当它变得有些重要时，就必须有人拥有它，对吧？只是做出来和让它永久留存，是两个截然不同的决定。我觉得这就是一个很大的区别：我们将拥有这种丰裕。我们需要弄清楚什么能持久。

But I think the problem becomes when this little piece of software becomes important, and this goes back to the rose thing. When it becomes somewhat important, somebody has to own it, right? Just making something and then making something permanent are two really different decisions. I think that's just a big distinction: we're going to have this abundance. We need to figure out what lasts.

我想回到你之前说的一件事，就是你团队里的人比你更在乎。这显然是一个很高的标准。跟我聊聊你是如何着手在你周围组建设计团队的，理想的形态是什么样的，你希望它如何运作。你拿到了一张白纸。你经验丰富，见过不同形态的团队。这一次你的方法是什么？

I want to go back to something you said about how the people on your team care even more than you do. Obviously a very high bar. Talk to me a little bit about how you approached building the design team around you and what the ideal shape looked like, how you wanted that to operate. You kind of get this blank canvas. You've been around the block, you've seen different shapes of teams. What was your approach this time around?

我不想要任何被大公司磨得世故的人。我觉得更多是：我需要找到一些真正在乎作品、想要变得更好的人。就是没有自我。这不用说，但我真的非常强调没有自我这一点。我合作过一些人，他们不给你看任何东西，直到它完美为止。我合作过一些人，如果你给他们反馈，他们就直接搁置否决，或者忽略，或者随便怎样。而且千万别让你团队里有人觉得他们可以随便改一改。我想要的是完全相反。你可以踩任何人的脚。没人会在意。我们都只想赢。我们都只想让作品尽可能好。我们想成为更好的设计师。我们想向别人学习。所以我的第一个招聘就是：我需要一个非常全面的人，因为前六个月只有我一个人。然后我招了 Jay，Jay 各方面都很棒。他是个不可思议的视觉设计师。他是个出色的产品思考者。他非常主动。他不需要很多手把手指导。应该说，他不需要任何手把手指导。他直接跳进来，立刻就能产出好作品。然后下一个招聘，同样如此。我觉得每一次招聘，现在我觉得我已经到顶了——我觉得在我们公司的规模下，甚至在我们想要达到的规模下，我不认为我需要比今天更多的人，也就是我自己和四个设计师。我真的不需要。我认为我们拥有的马力水平，不仅仅是因为人，还因为工具、人、我们的文化和我们的产品，我觉得已经足够了。然后我想的是：你带来了什么我团队其他人没有的超能力？你怎么让我们更上一层楼，对吧？因为如果我招的都是同一种原型，我们都关心同样的事情，那很好。真的很好，但可能没有人会像你希望的那样进步。另外，你会有缺口。哦，没人擅长动态图形。好吧，那我们外包吧。但那样的人不一定与我们一致。他们不一定拥有并理解质量对我们意味着什么。所以我认为我招的每一个人，他们都带来独特的东西。他们有一个伟大的基线，然后他们有一个超能力。我认为这是很大的一部分。

I didn't want anybody jaded from big companies. I think it was more just around: I need to find some folks that really care about the work and wanting to get better. Like no egos. This kind of goes without saying, but I really mean the no ego part so much. I've worked with people where they won't show you anything until it's perfect. I've worked with people where if you give them a piece of feedback, they just kind of pocket veto it or ignore it or whatever. And god forbid you have somebody on your team that maybe thinks they could just take a riff on it. And I want the exact opposite of that. You can step on anybody's toes. No one's going to care. We all just want to win. We all just want the work to be as good as it could be. We want to get better as designers. We want to learn from other people. So the first hire for me was just like, I need somebody super well-rounded because it was just me for the first six months. And then I hired Jay and Jay was great all around. He was like an incredible visual designer. He is a great product thinker. He's very proactive. He doesn't require a lot of handholding. He didn't require any handholding, I should say. And he just jumped right in and was immediately producing good work. And then the next hire, same thing. I think for each hire, and now I think I'm maxed—I think at our company size and even as big as we want to get, I don't think I need more than what I have today, which is myself and four designers. I really don't. I think that the level of horsepower that we have, not just because of the people, but because of the tools and the people and our culture and our product, I feel like that is ample. Then I think it's like: what's the superpower that you bring that none of my other team has? Like how do you level us up, right? Because if I hire all the same archetype, like we all care about the same things, that's great. It's really great, but like no one's going to really improve as much as maybe you want. Plus, you're going to have gaps. Oh, no one's good at motion graphics. Okay, so I guess we'll just outsource. But now that person is not necessarily aligned with us. They don't necessarily have and understand what quality means to us. And so I think that each hire that I've brought on, they bring something unique. They have a baseline of greatness and then they've got a superpower. And I think that that has been a huge part of it.

有一个问题我忍不住一直问自己。如果公司申请来跟你谈，而不是反过来，会怎样？这个问题是全新 dive 人才网络的基础。而且它正在奏效。就像现在，我正在帮助我认识的许多最令人兴奋的初创公司，招聘收听这档节目的设计师和构建者。所以，如果你好奇外面可能有什么，或者你想进入我的名单，又或者你正在寻找你的下一位设计招聘，请访问 dive.club/talent 今天就加入。

There's one question that I can't stop asking myself. What if companies applied to talk to you rather than the other way around? And that question is the foundation for the all-new dive talent network. And it's working. Like right now, I'm helping many of the most exciting startups that I know to hire the designers and builders who listen to this show. So, if you're curious what might be out there and maybe you want to get on my list, or maybe you're even looking for your next design hire, head to dive.club/talent to join today.

你之前跟我说的一件事是，你给了大量反馈，并且真正优先考虑这种反馈文化。所以我想知道你是否能帮我们做一只墙上的苍蝇，观察一下。也许分两部分。第一，我很好奇，你是否觉得这些年来你改进了自己的反馈方式；第二，你是否发现自己今天经常提出一些共同的主题，那也会非常有趣。

One of the things you said to me earlier was how you're just giving a ton of feedback and really prioritizing this culture of feedback. And so I'm wondering if you can help us be a fly on the wall for that. Maybe kind of two parts. One, I'd be curious if there are ways that you feel like you've refined your approach to feedback over the years, but then also like if there are any common themes that you find yourself bringing up today, that would be super interesting as well.

在大群体中给反馈很有挑战性，因为有太多不同类型的人需要以不同的方式听到东西，而大型评审会压垮一些人，另一些人则会主导它。所以我觉得在 Meta 时这对我来说一直是个挑战。我在 Meta 每周会主持两次评审，因为我真的——我可以管理人。我可以管理团队。这没问题。但那不是我的力量所在，我的超能力是：试图从人们那里得到伟大的作品，并把我多年来学到的一些东西灌输到那项工作中。而且这是双向的，因为当我分享东西时，我也会得到反馈。所以，你知道，我们每天早上见面。时间是 9:15。通常有人会提前在群里发消息，看看我们是否需要见面。我们大多数早上都会见面。我在博客上也写过这个。我们要做的就是过一遍 rows 列表，看看，然后逐条过，比如它的状态是什么。有时这个会议——有时我们不开会。有时会议开 15 分钟。其他时候我们会花三个小时，因为没有其他会议。我不做一对一。我们不会进行一堆职业谈话。事情不顺利时你会知道，顺利时你也会知道。所以当谈到工作时，我们试图移除除了这个会议之外的所有其他会议。我认为我们这里的倾向是尽早分享，经常分享。我知道这是很常见的事，但很多人仍然不这样做。这是毫无保留的。一切都非常非常尊重。我不怕第一个跳进去。在更大的评审中我会非常避免这样做，但我们是一个紧密得多的团队。而且我不——并不是我总是第一个发言，但有时在这个环境里我会，而在另一个环境里我通常不会。有时反馈是高层面的，但很多时候是非常细节的。是细节，以及我们如何能让这个更好？有很多时候，有一种文化就是人们直接指出来，就说：“哦，你有没有想过这个？你有没有想过那个？”有时甚至不那么礼貌，因为你知道，我觉得在评审中你被教导要礼貌。就像你试图让它成为他们的想法。你试图建议事情。就像：“不，老兄。就告诉我它哪里不对。”如果你觉得这个看起来像——就告诉我它看起来像。也许你有一些想法，也许你没有。没有想法也没关系。

Feedback in large groups is challenging because there's so many different types of people that need to hear things different ways and large group crit can crush some people and others can dominate it. And so I think that was always a challenge for me at Meta. And I would run two crits a week at Meta because I really—I can manage people. I can manage a team. It's fine. But that's not where my power, my superpower is: just trying to get great work out of people and instilling some of what I've learned over the years into that work. And it's a two-way street because when I share stuff, I get feedback, too. And so, you know, we meet every morning. It's at 9:15. Somebody usually pings the group before to see if we need to meet. We meet most mornings. I wrote about this on the blog, too. What we do is we will just go through the rows list and see and we'll just go down each one like what's the status of it. Sometimes this meeting takes—sometimes we don't do the meeting. Sometimes the meeting takes 15 minutes. Other times we'll spend three hours because there's no other meetings. I don't do one-on-ones. We're not having a bunch of career talks. You're going to know when things aren't going well and you're going to know when they're going well. And so we try to remove all other meetings except for this one when it comes time to talk about work. And I think our tendency here is to share it really early and to share it really often. I know that that's a common thing but a lot of people still don't do that. It's no holds barred. It's all very, very respectful. I'm not afraid to jump in first. I would very much avoid that in larger crits, but we're a much different tight-knit team. And I don't—not that I always speak first, but sometimes I will in this environment where I wouldn't normally in another environment. And sometimes the feedback is like high level, but a lot of times it's like really in the weeds. It's details and how can we make this better? There are plenty of times and there's just a culture of people calling things out and just saying like, "Oh, have you thought about this? Have you thought about that?" And sometimes not even being so polite about it because that's, you know, I think how you get taught to be polite in critique. It's just like you try to make it their idea. You try to suggest things. It's just like, "No, man. Just tell me what's wrong with it." If you think that this just looks like—just tell me it looks like. And maybe you have some ideas, maybe you don't. It's okay if you don't have ideas.

另外，如果你有想法，就拿着代码库或 Figma 文件。我猜现在这种情况不多了。然后就去即兴发挥，或者我们在会议上一起即兴讨论。每个人都会打开笔记本电脑，说：“嘿，大家花 15 分钟，帮忙弄清楚这里的问题是什么。我们不一定能敲定答案，但会给那个人足够的东西去借鉴，然后把它变成自己的，或者做得更好。”事情就是这样运作的。我们就是在工作中，不只是谈论它。我们有时就是直接动手做。

Also, if you have ideas, take the repo or the Figma file. I guess that doesn't happen so much anymore. And then just go riff, or we'll all riff on it in the meeting. Everybody will just have their laptops and be like, "Hey guys, let's just spend 15 minutes and help try and figure out what the thing is here. We won't necessarily nail the answer, but we'll give that person enough to go yoink and then make it their own or make it better, too." And that's just how it works. We're just in the work, not just talking about it. We're sometimes just doing it.

我喜欢这种花 15 分钟、大家一起解决一个挑战的方式。我觉得我以前没参加过这种会议。

I love the just taking 15 minutes and everybody working on a challenge together. I don't think I've been in that type of meeting before.

他们说：“我们来个闪电轮吧。”通常是在一天结束时，可能有人一直在纠结某个问题，他们就会说：“哟，我真的很纠结。我们今天下午 4 点来个闪电轮好吗？”然后所有设计师会花一个小时，然后讨论，问题几乎总能解决。

They said, "Let's do a lightning round." Usually, it's usually at the end of the day there's like maybe somebody's been struggling with a problem and they just like, "Yo, I'm really struggling. Can we do a lightning round this afternoon at 4?" And all the designers will spend an hour and then they'll just discuss and then problem solved almost always.

你之前提到的一件事是，你的儿子也是这些新员工之一，我觉得这是这个故事中非常精彩的部分，也是文化中非常有趣的一环。所以，我想多听听这方面的背景。

One of the things that you mentioned earlier was that your son is one of these hires, which I think is just a phenomenal part of this story and such a fun piece of the culture. So, I guess I'd like to hear a little bit more of like the context for that.

是的，是的，是的，是的。我的儿子，我的大儿子科尔，他当时在学设计，去了 SCAD。疫情发生了，他没怎么体验到。而且他本来就想家。所以他回到多伦多，完成了工业设计学位。他一开始学的是产品设计，大概两年前毕业了。当时我们大概只有两三个设计师。他经常在洛杉矶待着。他住在多伦多，但会过来拜访，然后待一段时间。他没工作，在找工作。他正准备在多伦多参加一些面试，去一家初创公司做一个应用，我当然非常鼓励。然后我们正在举办一个叫 Sync 的合作伙伴会议。我们真的需要帮忙。我们只需要多一双手，而他对 Figma 挺在行的，早期的时候，你知道，刚毕业但挺有能力。所以他就进来开始帮我们，那就是他在工作中学习，他的工作越来越好，然后他也在做其他事情。他回家了，然后我说你应该来和我们一起工作，因为我觉得你和这些人一起工作会很快学到很多。他们是真正的好人。不仅仅是想把工作做得更好。他们希望每个人都变得更好。所以我让杰伊，也就是他的经理，把他招进来，开始做一些事情。一开始主要是销售材料和为推销构建模型。但现在，你知道，现在他在提交代码，构建真正的工具，供销售人员使用，供我们的客户使用。想想都觉得不可思议，因为，我不知道，作为一个父亲，你会想到那些父子公司的故事，那种怀旧感，而我能亲身经历，是的，这太棒了。

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. My son, my eldest son, Cole, he was studying to be a designer, went down to SCAD. COVID happened. Didn't really get to experience it. Was missing home anyways. So went back up into Toronto and finished his degree actually in industrial design. He started out in product design and graduated I guess a couple years ago now. And we were, I guess we were two, three designers maybe at the time. And he was hanging out a lot down in LA. He was in Toronto, but he'd come down for a visit and just stay for a while. He wasn't working. He was looking for work. And he was getting ready for some interviews up in Toronto to go work on an app, a startup, and I was obviously very encouraging of that. And then we were throwing like a partner conference called Sync. We really needed some help on it. We just needed another pair of hands and he was pretty capable with like Figma early days, you know, new grad but he was pretty capable. So he just came in and started to help us out and that was just like him learning on the job and his work just got better and then he was working on some other things. He went home then I was like you should just come work with us because I think you're going to learn so much so quickly working around these people. They're genuinely good people. It's not just about wanting to get the work better. They want everybody to be better. And so I had Jay, who is his manager, bring him on and start working on stuff. It was mostly like sales material and building out mocks for pitches at first. But now, you know, now he's shipping code and building, you know, real tools for salespeople to use and for our customers to use. It's surreal to think about it because it, I don't know, as a dad you think about those father and son companies, you know, the nostalgia of that and like the fact that I get to live that is yeah it's pretty awesome.

我觉得这如此迷人的另一个原因是，现在变化太多了。我认为即使对听众来说也有很多不确定性，他们可能对这个角色的未来感到有些不确定。而你已经经历过几个这样的周期了，所以你觉得你儿子现在可以做什么，才能避免有一天醒来发现，哦，这就像年度报告一样，就这么消失了，你知道吗？

Another reason why I find it so fascinating is that there's so much change happening right now. And I think a lot of uncertainty even for people listening, they maybe feel a little bit of uncertainty about what the future of this role looks like. And you've kind of navigated a couple of these cycles already, you know, and so what do you think your son can be doing right now where he doesn't wake up one day and realize, oh, like this is the equivalent of the annual reports, like it's just gone, you know?

这甚至不像互联网最早的时候，尽管那时也在爆炸式发展。要看得那么远非常难。那时要看得那么远也非常难。现在我觉得这不可能。我甚至不知道。我觉得，看，我觉得很幸运能和我的两个孩子一起工作。我知道找工作有多难，因为他们都找了很长时间。我也很了解他们的朋友。我知道他们也很挣扎。我所能做的就是尽量看得足够远，确保我们至少不落后。如果你现在不交付软件，你就落后了。我只想至少站在最前沿。我不需要有水晶球，不必远远领先。我想把这一点灌输给他。就是一天一天来，但不要因为习惯了工具或工作流程什么的，就忽视了新事物。

It's not like it was even in the earliest days of the internet, even though that was exploding. It's incredibly hard to look that far out. It was incredibly hard to look that far out back then. Now I think it's impossible. I just don't even know. And I feel, look, I feel lucky to get to work with both of my kids. And I know how hard it is to find work because they both looked for an extremely long time. And I know and I know their friends really well, too. And I know they're really struggling as well. All I try to do is just try and look out just far enough to make sure we're at least not behind. If you're not shipping software now, you're behind. I just want to at least be at the forefront. I don't have to have a crystal ball and be out ahead of it so much. And I think that I just want to instill that in him. It's like it's one day at a time, but like don't lose sight of like what's new just because you're used to the tool or your workflow or whatever.

我觉得这是很中肯的建议。我觉得很难做到，因为我知道即使对我来说，我现在打开 X，就像，天哪，一天的时间都不够尝试所有这些事情。我敢肯定这里面有一些很棒的东西。我觉得你至少得把握脉搏。

I think that's sound advice. I think it's hard to live by because I know even for me, I open up X now and it's like, holy, there's not enough time in the day to try all these things. And I'm sure there's some amazing stuff in here. I think you just have to have your finger at least on the pulse.

这是一个相当大胆的说法，就像如果你不交付软件，你就落后了，尤其是你已经经历过几个这样的周期了，所以几乎可以看到相反的情况。就像，哦，你知道，这不是关于工具。你知道，设计，有一条设计的主线贯穿所有这些不同的时代，但这是一个相当大胆的声明。

It's quite a claim the whole like if you're not shipping software, you're behind, especially as again like you've seen a few of these cycles now, you know, and so I almost could see it going like the other way. It's like, oh, you know, it's not about the tool. You know, design, you know, there's a strand of design that kind of goes through all of these different eras, but that's quite a statement.

是的，是的。但就像工具，它们只是在加速。我想这就是可怕的部分。就拿设计工具为例，对吧？我会用设计工具，然后我会用另一个关于设计工具的类比，你知道，随便吧。一开始是 Photoshop，Photoshop 和 Illustrator 的混合，如果你做印刷可能还会用 Corel Express，然后对于网页设计，你知道，主要是 Photoshop，你学会了它，新版本出来了，你学会了它，你想办法让它服从你的意愿。然后 Flash 出现了，那太疯狂了。完全不同。可以做 Photoshop 永远做不到的事情，CSS 也做不到，任何其他东西都做不到，对吧？达不到 Flash 的程度。全新的工具。然后我们基本上又回到了基础，因为 iPhone 的出现，它不得不消失。然后我们转向了 Sketch，更好，不同，在某些方面更好，在其他方面更差。然后是 Figma。Figma 就像，“天哪，这太不可思议了。”就像我们可以构建完整的设计系统，有自动布局，就像我得到了代码，我几乎在构建。我现在几乎在构建了。

Yeah. Yeah. But like the tools, they're just accelerating faster. I guess that's the part that's scary. Just use design tools as an example, right? I'll use design tools and then I'm going to use another analogy with design tools, you know, whatever. Started out with like Photoshop, a mixture of Photoshop and Illustrator, probably Corel Express if you were doing print and then but and for web design, you know, it was mostly Photoshop and you learned it and new versions came out, you learned it and you figured out how to like bend it to your will. Then Flash came out that was crazy. Totally different. Could do completely different things that Photoshop never could, nor could CSS, nor could any of that, right? Not to the degree that Flash could. Totally new tool. And then we just kind of went back to the basics cuz that had to go away because of the iPhone basically. And then we turned to Sketch, better, different, better at some things, worse at others. And then Figma. Figma was like, "Oh my god, this is incredible." Like we can build out full design systems and there's like auto layout and like I'm getting code like I'm getting I'm almost I'm almost building. I'm almost building now.

现在你有了 AI，就像我在构建。曾经有一段时间，还是很多 Figma，然后一点点 AI 来尝试构建，然后这就翻转了。

And now you have AI and it's just like I am building. There was this window of time where it was like a lot of Figma still and then a little bit of AI to try and build it out and then that's just gotten it's just flipped.

这个工具加速得快得多，而且形态和设计工具很不一样，因为设计工具一直以来都是大同小异。这是一个很不一样的设计工具，但对我来说它仍然是设计工具。从 Sketch 到 Figma 的那次跳跃，你确实可能在那次跳跃中被落下，但不一定是因为 Figma 在产出上做了什么太激进的不同。我觉得它在很多方面 UX 更好，但 Figma 的关键在于：这里是协作发生的地方。你必须用这个工具，因为如果你不在这个工具里，你就没法和其他团队成员协作，因为它完全基于网页，这正是价值主张的核心，尤其是在早期。有意思的是，现在有了所有这些 AI 工具，我们在某种程度上几乎放弃了协作。一起工作难多了，摩擦大得多——你不能随便跳进别人的 Figma 文件。但能力已经飙升到一定程度，让我们觉得：不不不，现在这才是王牌，你确实可能再次被落下。

This tool is just accelerating much faster and it's just a much different shape than the design tools, because the design tools have all kind of been same but different. This is a much different design tool, but to me it's still a design tool. The thing about the Sketch to Figma jump is you actually could get left behind at that jump, but not necessarily because Figma did anything too radically different in terms of the output. I think it was a better UX in a lot of ways, but Figma was: this is where collaboration happens. You have to use this tool because you cannot collaborate with the rest of the team if you're not inside of this tool, because it's all web-based, which was the crux of the value proposition, especially in the early days. It's interesting now with all of the AI tools we've almost punted collaboration in some ways. It's much harder to work together, there's a lot more friction—you can't just hop into somebody's Figma file. But the capabilities have skyrocketed to a degree where we're just like, no no no, this is now the trump card, where you can actually get left behind again.

是的。我想用的另一个类比是摄影。在摄影中，胶片成本让你在按下快门前先思考，对吧？你只有 24 张，或者你胶片里有多少张。你对你拍的东西非常在意，对吧？你不会给你的午餐拍 12 张几乎一模一样的照片。但当数码摄影出现时，我们并没有开始只多拍 20% 的照片，对吧？因为成本基本上为零。所以我们会什么都拍，对吧？就像我们以后回头看会笑这一切多么小规模。因为当数码相机出现时，人们像用胶片相机一样用它，拍同样的照片，对吧？但还没有人用数码相机拍自己的停车位。我认为软件就处在这个阶段：同样的照片，但没有冲洗成本，而我们的停车位阶段还没开始。这就是我认为‘什么值得留存’的问题所在，以及你承诺做什么，因为构建将变得免费。你会从这套疯狂的流程——先决定构建什么，然后构建它，然后测试和迭代——变成：我需要这个，现在我就有了可用的软件。你有没有眯起眼睛想象过丰裕的二阶效应会是什么样？就像如果我们真的只是处在一个过渡时期，对吧？所以我觉得那会是什么样子？

Yeah. The other analogy I would use for this would be like photography. With photography, the cost of film made you think before you press the shutter, right? You had 24 shots or whatever you had in your film. You were being really mindful of the things that you were shooting, right? You weren't taking 12 nearly identical shots of your lunch. But when digital photography came out, we didn't start just taking 20% more photographs, right? Because the cost was essentially zero. So we would take photos of everything, right? Like we're going to go look back at this and laugh at how small this all was. Because when digital cameras showed up, people used them like film cameras, same pictures, right? But no one was photographing their parking spot yet with their digital camera. And I think that's where software is: the same pictures without the development costs, and our parking spot phase hasn't started yet. And that's where I think the 'what deserves to last' comes in, and like what do you commit to, because building is going to become free. You're going to go from this crazy process to determine what to build, then to build it, then to test and iterate, and it's just going to be: I need this and now I have working software. Do you ever squint your eyes and imagine what some of the second-order effects would be of abundance? Like if we really are just in a transitionary period of time, right? So I think what does it even look like?

其中 95% 会很烂，对吧？而烂软件很容易处理。它因为烂就消失了。没人——你知道，它只是个小插曲，因为在无论多小的百分比里，都会有一些非常好的东西。我认为会发生的是，人们会认出好东西，要么创造它的人把它做实、做成永久性的，要么有人复制它、把它做实、做成永久性的，并把它变成一门生意。我认为这其实也是一个风险，因为复制的成本是免费的。回到 Dialed，我没有 iOS 应用。现在也没有。对。这是我二月份第一次发布 Dialed 的时候。一开始就有一大堆抄袭网站，你知道，甚至用我们的名字。他们基本上就是告诉某个智能体复制这个游戏，然后 iOS 和安卓商店也被克隆淹没了。而这还是早期，老兄。它们是完美的复制品吗？不是。但人们在下载和使用它们。这将是另一个挑战：模仿和复制，然后试着做出更好的东西，会变得很容易。那会很棒。同时我认为也会很糟糕，因为你可能碰到了一个非常大的东西，然后 24 小时内就有人能拿走它、做得更好并成为赢家。

95% of it is going to be shitty, right? So and shitty software is easy to deal with. It just goes away because it's bad. No one—you know, it's a blip because inside of whatever small percentage, there's going to be some really good stuff. And what I think will happen is like people will recognize the good stuff and either the person who created it will make it real and permanent or somebody will copy it and make it real and permanent and turn it into a business. And I think that's actually a risk too, is like the cost of copying is free. To go back to color, I didn't have an iOS app. Still don't. Right. This was February when I first launched Dialed. It started with just a ton of copycat websites who were like, you know, even like using our name. They basically just like told whatever agent to copy the game and then iOS and the Android store, like they just got inundated with clones as well. And this is early days, man. Were they perfect copies? No. But like people were downloading them and using them. That's going to be another challenge is that it's going to be easy just to mimic and copy and then try and make something better. That's going to be awesome. And it's also I think going to suck a lot because you might hit on something really big and then in 24 hours somebody can take it, make it better and become the winner.

那会大量发生。我为设计师们想到这一点。甚至 Shadienne 最近在 Twitter 上发了个帖子，读得我心都痛了，因为他把心血倾注到这个组件和一组交互里，然后他说不到 24 小时就有人完全抄走了，还把它当成自己的。而那——我是说我们才刚进入这种动态的第一局，以及在那个世界里做软件制作者意味着什么。会变得很怪。

That's going to happen a ton. I think about that for designers. Even Shadienne had a post recently on Twitter and it like it hurt my heart to read, because he had like poured his heart and soul into this component and set of interactions and then he's like it was took under 24 hours and somebody had ripped it completely and positioned it as their own. And that—I mean we've we're in the first inning of that dynamic and what it means to be a software maker in that world. It's going to get weird.

所以这种事一直存在。只是达到那里的速度在变。我再给你一个古老的例子。让我们老牌代理公司出名的一件事是这个叫 iPhone PSD 的东西。基本上就是 iPhone 发布时，每个人都想给应用做原型，但没有原型工具，苹果也没提供任何素材。所以有一天晚上，我把 iPhone 上的每张截图都拿来，用矢量、渐变和所有东西重画，尽量让它看起来尽可能接近，并做成组件，这样你只要打开这个 Photoshop 文件，就有所有模板和素材，全部可编辑，按钮能正确拉伸，然后我就把它放到网上。它变得非常流行，但很多人开始偷它，然后试图收费。所以我们就说：‘不不，就免费放出去。这对我们有好处。就像免费广告。’然后即使在那时，人们也开始偷它并据为己有。他们会挪动一些东西，但我们在文件里放了一堆东西。这些很有意思。如果你不知道什么是陷阱街道，你可以在维基百科上查，但我会解释。陷阱街道是制图师——做地图的人——画地图时会故意放几个错误，这样如果有人试图复制那张地图并扩展它、据为己有，他们就会知道自己在用别人的财产。所以我以前在那个文件里就这么做，我总能抓出人来，说：‘别骗我。我知道这是我的，因为这个、这个、这个、这个和这个。’但对软件来说这不会成立，对吧？就像那样。这会是一件完全不同的事。是的，我确实这么想。我不知道那会走向哪里。

So this has always existed. The speed at which you get there is changing. So I'll give you another ancient example. One of the things that put our old agency on the map was this thing called the iPhone PSD. It was basically when the iPhone got released, everybody wanted to mock up apps, but there were no mockup tools and Apple didn't provide any assets. And so one evening I took every screenshot from my iPhone and I redrew it like vector with gradients and all the things to try and make it look as close to one as possible and created components so that you could just open up this Photoshop file and you have all the templates and all the assets and they're all editable, the buttons stretch properly and I just put it out in the world. It got really popular, but a lot of people just started to steal it and then try to charge for it. So, we were just like, 'No, no, just put it out there for free. It's good for us. It's like free advertising.' And then people just started to steal it even back then and make it their own. They'd move things around, but we put a bunch of things in the file. These are really interesting. If you don't know what a trap street is, you can look it up on Wikipedia, but I'll explain it. A trap street is when a cartographer, somebody who makes maps, would draw a map and they would purposely put a few mistakes in it so that if somebody tried to copy that map and extend it and make it their own, they'd know that they were using their property. And so I used to do that in that file and I would be able to call people out all the time and be like, 'Don't lie to me. I know it's mine because this, this, this, this, and this.' But that's not going to be true for software, right? Like it's just like that. It's just going to be a totally different thing. Yeah, I do. I don't know where that's going to go.

而且这甚至不只是关于点子。显然，如果你有一个像 Dialed 这样的好点子，当然，现在有人在抄它，但如果你今天发布 Dialed，我敢肯定我可以把 Fable 5.1 指向它，然后在大概 90 分钟内吐出一个看起来极其相似的东西，你知道，大概如果它是 8,000 行代码，最多 90 分钟。

And it's not even just about the idea, too. Like, obviously, if you have a good idea like Dialed, sure, people were copying it now, but like if you would release Dialed today, I'm sure I could point Fable 5.1 at it and spit out something that looks really freaking similar in like what, 90 minutes, you know, like probably if it's 8,000 lines of code, 90 minutes tops.

它已经不是 8,000 行代码了。

It's not 8,000 lines of code anymore.

我知道我一说出口就觉得自己把它扔到零分以下了。但你还是明白我的意思。有创意的抄袭。还有视觉识别，比如风格品味，从我们身上流露出来的表达，现在你把它放到 Twitter 上，你看到了，拍张照片喂给 Claude，就说“嘿，我们能不能把我们的东西做成这样？”然后你就得到了某个东西。或者一个小交互，有人真的在交互细节上死磕，你可以录个视频喂进去，把那些全都抄下来，效果还挺好。一方面，这无疑是一种很棒的工作方式。我不是白痴，我知道什么东西好。我看到了，就会想，哦，这对我的产品这个部分的这个组件来说太棒了，我可以直接开一个工作树，40 秒内就开始干活。但另一方面，我不知道。这很难。我几乎觉得有点愧疚，但这是不可避免的。

I know as soon as I said that I was like, I threw it under zero on there. But still you get the point. There's the idea copying. There's also the visual identity, like the stylistic taste, this expression that comes out of us that now you put on Twitter, you see it, you take a picture and you feed it into Claude and just like, "Hey, can we make our thing like this?" and then you get something. Or a little interaction and somebody really sweats the details on an interaction and you can take a video and feed it and just copy all of that and it's pretty good. On one hand it's undeniably an amazing way to work. I'm not an idiot. I know something is good. I see it and I'm like, oh that would be fantastic for my component in this part of my product and I can just spin up a work tree and start the work in 40 seconds. But on the other, I don't know. It's hard. I almost feel bad, but it's inevitable.

我觉得像这样的小事。我觉得就像向开发者或设计师致敬，这很好，因为我也做过类似的事。我又开始用长破折号写作了，因为我想，我不在乎你觉得这是 ChatGPT 写的。是我写的。还有 X 上的某个人，我真希望现在能说出他的名字，但我不能。但他们在自己的网站上做了个东西，如果你把鼠标悬停在长破折号上，它会显示“由人类撰写”之类的。我就想，我要把这个偷过来。我想，我写了他们。我想，我要把这个点子偷过来。我觉得这太棒了。

I think small things like that. I think just like a hat tip to the developer or whoever designer is like good, because I've done things like that. I started to write with em dashes again because I was like, I don't care if you think ChatGPT wrote this. I wrote it. And somebody on X, and I wish I could name check them right now, I can't. But they had done something on their site where if you hover over an em dash, it says written by a human or something like that. And I was like, I'm yoinking this. I was like, I wrote them. I was like, I'm yoinking this idea. I think it's awesome.

还有其他的，比如他们想出了一个处理网页上 iOS 玻璃效果的绝妙方法。我觉得有时候你借鉴这些东西，可以只是点个头致意，但我觉得一个完整的想法，那完全是另一回事。现在做设计师有点疯狂，而且这甚至是对的词吗？我们只是在构建软件。你谈到了发布软件。这就是为什么再回到你能和你儿子一起工作这个想法上，这太酷了，因为这是行业历史上最疯狂的时刻之一。

And other things too, like they came up with a really amazing way to deal with iOS glass on the web. And I think sometimes you take these things and you can just give a nod, but I think a full idea, that's a different thing entirely. It's a bit of a wacky time to be a designer and also is that even the right word? We're just building software. You talked about shipping software. It's why again coming back to the idea of you having the ability to work with your son is so cool because this is one of the most insane times to navigate in the history of the industry.

你知道，我也能亲眼见证，因为他进入这个领域时真的很生涩，对吧？就像刚毕业，在编程方面对 AI 的经验很少。而令人难以置信的是，在合适的人和环境周围，他进步得有多快。这不仅仅关于我儿子。这是关于那一整代人。他们都在以那样的速度进步。我打开 X，就想，“天哪，这真是一件了不起的作品。”而且不总是那种闪亮的东西，比如哇，用粒子效果的方式太疯狂了。有时候就是，这是一个非常好的想法，执行得也很好，而你可能在这个行业才四年，这太疯狂了。

You know, I get to witness it firsthand, too, because he came into this really cold, right? Like brand new graduate, very little experience with AI in terms of coding. And it's insane how being around the right people in environment, how quickly he's progressed. And it's not just about my son. It's about that whole generation. They're all progressing that quickly. I open up X and I'm like, "Oh my god, this is an amazing piece of work." And it's not always just like this shiny object where it's just like oh wow what an insane way to use a particle effect. Sometimes it's just like this is an incredibly good idea well executed and you have probably been in this industry like four years and that's insane.

是的。对我来说，就是看到那些真正是 AI 原生的人。我们都说是 AI 原生，但我们不是 AI 原生。我们可能是 AI 流利，但我们是在适应。对我来说，就是看到他们如何工具链，你会想，我根本不会想到把工具组合起来创造那种工作流程，对吧？这完全超出了我的大脑。然后你点进他们的个人资料，发现是某个 24 岁的人，你就想，你是谁？你是什么？我甚至不知道。我看很多作品集，你能分辨出那些背景更丰富、几乎在试图重塑自己品牌的人，和这个人，他们甚至不试图把自己描述为设计师或设计工程师。就像我构建了软件，这是我构建的所有东西，天哪，他们会超过我。

Yeah. For me it's seeing how people who truly are AI native. We all say AI native but we're not AI native. We're like we could be AI fluent but we're adapting. For me, it's like seeing how they tool chain and you're like, I just wouldn't even have thought to combine tools and create that type of workflow, right? It's just so far out of my brain. And then you click through to their profile and it's somebody who's like 24 years old and you're just like, who are you? What are you? I don't even know. I look at a lot of portfolios and you can tell the difference between somebody who has a little bit more of a storied background that is trying to almost rebrand themselves and then this person who they don't even try to describe themselves as like a designer or design engineer. It's just like I built software and here's all the things that I built and man they're going to fly past me.

我想知道那些已经在这个行业待了十多年，或者十多年，也许 15 年的人会怎样。他们要么是高级经理、副总裁，要么是设计主管。那些公司会变。大公司总是需要结构和领导者之类的。但那些中层管理者会怎样？他们也许不是最好的手艺人，但他们很擅长管人，而现在你需要做的管理少了。你没有提供足够的价值。这是一个大胆的声明，不是对每家公司都适用，但我为那些不深入 IC 工作或没有能力做好 IC 工作的管理者感到担忧，因为我认为中层管理不会很多。我认为会是那些像 IC 一样构建的经理，他们只是多了一个额外的角色，叠加在上面。他们不一定要产出那么多工作，因为上面还有别的工作。但我确实想知道那些已经离开设计游戏很久、不再实验、在开发方面不贴近底层的人会怎样。我不知道那些人会怎样。

I wonder what happens to the folks that have been around a while like a decade plus or yeah a decade plus maybe 15. They're all either senior managers, VPs, or heads of design. Those companies are going to change. Large companies are always going to need structures and leaders and stuff like that. But what happens to these middle managers who maybe weren't the best crafts people, but they're really good at managing people, and now you need to do less of that. You're not providing enough value. This is a bold statement and it's not for every company, but I fear for like the managers who are not deep in IC work or like capable of good IC work because I think that there's not going to be a lot of middle management. I think it's going to be managers who build just like IC's and they just have an extra role on top that just gets layered on top. It's not necessarily going to be expected to produce as much work because there's other work on top. But I do wonder about what happens with those folks that just have been out of the design game for a long time and aren't experimenting or close to the metal when it comes to development. I don't know what happens to those people.

这就是为什么我钦佩你的旅程，Geoff，你能够在行业实际上在你脚下发生变化时多次重塑自己。你经历了这么多，取得了这么多成就，而现在你在一家快速发展的初创公司里，在一个小设计团队工作，每个人都在发布产品。我认为这不仅证明了作为设计师的你，也证明了作为人的你。所以，我很感激你今天来，不仅分享你的故事，还有你看待世界的方式以及你正在思考的不同事情。这很有趣。所以，谢谢你抽出时间。

That's why I admire your journey, Geoff, is that you've been able to reinvent yourself multiple times as the industry's effectively just changed underneath you. And the fact that you have been through so much, accomplished so much, and yet here you are working on like a little design team in a startup that's moving fast and everybody is shipping. I think it's a testament to not only who you are as a designer, but who you are as a person. So, I appreciate you coming on today and just sharing about not only your story, but how you see the world and the different things that you're thinking about. It's been a lot of fun. So, thanks for the time.

非常感谢，Red。太棒了。真的很感激。

Thank you so much, Red. Awesome. Really appreciate it.

嘿，如果你喜欢这一集，别忘了每周四我都会和 Tommy Gio 一起直播 Dive Radio，我们会深入探讨热门话题，并听取业内众多不可思议的设计师的意见。所以，如果你想把它加到日历上，就去 dive.comclub/radio。我们周四下午 4 点（东部时间）见。

Hey, if you enjoyed this episode, don't forget that every Thursday I go live with Tommy Gio for Dive Radio, where we deep dive into trending topics and hear from a ton of incredible designers in the industry. So, if you want to get that on your calendar, just go to dive.comclub/radio. And I'll see you on Thursdays at 4:00 p.m. Eastern.