OpenAI 设计主管谈产品设计的未来

今天我的嘉宾是 OpenAI 的产品设计主管 Ian Silber。Ian 担任这个职位已经三年了，在 AI 时代这算是很长的时间。在加入 OpenAI 之前，他在 Artifact 工作，那是 Instagram 创始人做的新闻应用，我个人非常喜欢。再之前，他在 Instagram 工作了 8 年。设计这个角色现在正处于一个非常有趣的阶段，Ian 对未来产品设计以及我们日常使用的 AI 工具会是什么样子，有着非常独特、深刻且迷人的见解。非常感谢 Cleo 和 Joel Loenstein 为这次对话提出话题建议。在我们开始之前，别忘了访问 lennisproass.com，可以免费获得一年全球最热门、设计最精美的 AI 产品，这些产品仅对 Lenny 的新闻通讯订阅者开放。接下来，有请 Ian Silber。Ian，非常感谢你来到这里。

Today my guest is Ian Silber, head of product design at OpenAI. Ian's been in this role for three years now, which is a lifetime in AI time. Prior to OpenAI, he was at Artifact, the news app from the founders of Instagram that I absolutely loved. Before that, he spent 8 years at Instagram. The role of design is in such an interesting place right now and Ian has such a unique and insightful and fascinating take on the future of product design and what the AI tools that we use everyday will look like in the future. A huge thank you to Cleo and Joel Loenstein for suggesting topics for this conversation. Before we get into it, don't forget to check out lennisproass.com for a year free of the hottest and most beautifully crafted AI products in the world available exclusively to Lenny's newsletter subscribers. With that, I bring you Ian Silber. Ian, thank you so much for being here.

我非常高兴能来到这里。感谢你的邀请。

I'm so excited to be here. Thanks for having me.

我更加兴奋。有一件事我特别想听听你的看法。我不知道你是否看过我做的这个调查，过去几年我一直在做科技从业者的情绪调查。我认为这是同类调查中规模最大的，我们基本上调查科技从业者对他们的职业、工作、角色的感受，尤其是去年 AI 兴起之后。有点令人惊讶的是，设计师和用户研究员在每一个维度上都是最不开心的，真的是每一个维度。他们最感到不知所措、最焦虑、最不乐观、最担心、最疲惫，也最不愿意向进入职场的人推荐自己的角色。我很好奇你自己在设计社区是否也看到了这一点，如果是的话，你觉得是怎么回事？

I'm even more excited. Something that I'm very excited to get your take on. I don't know if you've watched me doing this, but I've been doing this sentiment survey of the tech workforce over the past couple years. I think it's the biggest survey of its kind where we basically survey people in tech about how they're feeling about their careers, their work, their roles, especially with the rise of AI this last year. And kind of surprisingly, designers and user researchers are just the most unhappy on every dimension, like every actual dimension. They're the most overwhelmed, the most anxious, the most the least optimistic, the most worried, the most tired, also the least likely to recommend their role to people entering the workforce. I'm curious if you're seeing this yourself in the design community, and if you are, what do you think is going on?

首先，这是一项了不起的调查，作为行业来说，拥有这样的信息非常好。我认为我们需要深入探讨。我确实看到了各种情况。我想我最能代表设计领域发言。我和很多设计师聊过，他们非常乐观、非常兴奋。所以在我所处的环境中，幸运的是，我看到了很多这样的例子。但我完全能理解为什么人们可能会感到非常不确定，对吧？因为有太多讨论，比如：角色在改变吗？我的期望应该不同吗？还有，我需要做 X、Y、Z 吗？我需要每天发布代码吗？那些可能接受过传统工作方式训练的人，现在会觉得：“天哪，我真的需要彻底改变一切。”对我来说，现在这种不确定性，我完全能理解，对吧？因为作为工程师，我认为人们已经经历了那种转变。我们看到工程师的工作方式完全不同了。还有一件事我确实听到，而且这在我自己的团队中也经常出现，当我们做类似的内部调查时，出现的一个大问题是，我们看到工程师的生产力提高了 10 倍，有时甚至 100 倍，但我们的设计团队没有，对吧？因为设计过程仍然需要时间。有时候你仍然必须尝试很多东西，然后扔掉它们，对吧？相比之下，和编码智能体合作，你让它做某事，现在它相当二元化，通常能做得很好。但设计过程仍然非常混乱和流动。你以为你有一个好主意，你尝试了，结果很糟糕，然后你再试一次，还是很糟糕，然后你把它交给用户或内部人员，得到内部反馈，发现是错的，你仍然必须经历那个艰难、混乱但非常有趣的过程。这并没有真正压缩，你可以更快地产生更多想法，但你仍然需要那个完整的反馈循环。还需要协调很多人，尤其是在像这样的大公司里，这仍然有很多开销。所以重点是，我认为我们现在不清楚设计师的期望是什么，而这种缺乏清晰度，我完全可以看到会导致一些恐惧或不安。但另一方面，我看到了我们的设计师，OpenAI 的伟大之处在于，我们是一家非常实验性的公司。我们由研究驱动，我们把公司当作研究实验室，我们完全拥抱这一点。这是我真正学到并开始喜欢 OpenAI 的一点，它最初是一个研究实验室，这种 DNA 深深植根于我们所做的一切。作为设计师，我们寻找那些没有 AI 背景但对工具及其可能性非常好奇的人。我们发现，只要支持这种探索的热情，人们就会感到压力更小。这不是说你必须改变工作方式，而是鼓励探索。

First of all, it's an incredible survey, and it's such great information to have as an industry. And I think it's something we need to unpack. And I see a mix for sure. I think I can speak most to design. I talk to a lot of designers that are very optimistic and very excited. And so in my world, luckily, I see a lot of that. But I can totally understand why people might be feeling very uncertain, right? Because there's so much discussion about, well, is the role changing? Should my expectations be different? And you know, well, do I need to do X, Y, and Z? Do I need to be shipping code every day? And someone who might be classically trained in a certain way of working now feeling like, "Oh my gosh, I need to really change everything." And I think it's to me right now it feels like the uncertainty of that I can totally understand, right? Because as an engineer, I think people have already sort of gone through that shift. We see that engineers are working totally different. And one thing I do hear, and this came up a lot in my own team when we did similar surveys internally, one of the big things that came up was that we see that engineers have 10 or sometimes like 100x their productivity, but our design team hasn't, right? Because the design process still takes time. It's still sometimes you have to try a bunch of things and throw them out, right? Versus maybe working with a coding agent, you ask it to do something, it's pretty binary now at this point, it usually sort of gets it pretty well. But the design process is really still very messy and fluid. You think you have a great idea and you try it and it sucks, and then you try it again and it sucks, and then you give it to users or internal, you get internal feedback and it's wrong, and you still have to go through that arduous and kind of messy but really fun process. And that hasn't really compressed in that you can get much more ideas out fast, but you still need that whole sort of feedback loop. There's the alignment of getting many people, especially in a bigger company like that, that still has a lot of overhead. So the point is that I think that we're unclear right now what is expected of a designer, and that lack of clarity I can see totally lead to some fears or some unease I guess. But on the other hand, I've seen that our designers, what's been great about OpenAI, is that we're such an experimental company. We are driven by research, and we treat our company as a research lab, and we totally embrace that. And that's a new thing that I really kind of learned and have come to love about OpenAI, is that it started as a research lab, that DNA is like deeply embedded in everything we do. And as designers, we look for people that don't have a background in AI but are really curious about the tools and how it can. And we found that just by supporting that excitement to explore, that people feel less pressure. It's not like you need to change the way you work, but it's more about encouraging exploration.

如果你看看工程领域，和几年前相比，这完全是一份新工作。我很好奇这如何转化到产品设计上。

If you look at engineering, it's just a completely new job versus a few years ago. I'm curious how that translates to product design.

工程师的生产力提高了 10 倍，有时甚至 100 倍，但我们的设计团队没有，因为设计过程仍然需要时间。有时候你仍然必须尝试很多东西，然后扔掉它们。仍然非常混乱和流动。我们和 Claude Code 的设计主管 Jenny 做过一期播客，她谈到传统的设计流程是原型、模拟、测试、研究、迭代，而现在根本没有时间做这些。

Engineers have 10 or sometimes like 100x their productivity, but our design team hasn't because the design process still takes time. It's still sometimes you have to try a bunch of things and throw them out. Still very messy and fluid. We had a podcast with head of design Claude Code Jenny when she talked about there's been this traditional design process prototype mock test research iterate and now there's just no time for that.

对于 ChatGPT 的某些功能，我们真的非常执着，花了很多时间，我们尝试 100 个东西，扔掉 99 个，最后发布一个，而其他事情我们真的拥抱公开构建，我们大胆尝试，然后快速学习。你认为 AI 会成为一个极其出色的产品设计师吗？

There's certain features for ChatGPT where we really obsess and we really spend a lot of time we try 100 things we throw out 99 we finally ship one and other things we really embrace building in public we take big swings and then we learn quickly. Do you think AI will ever be an extremely good product designer?

我认为它已经是一个令人难以置信的产品设计师了。

I think it already is an incredible product designer.

当我们做到这一点后，我去和我们公司里非常资深的设计师以及刚起步的设计师交流，他们都特别兴奋——因为我在这次对话之前真的问了一些人，想听听不同的看法——他们，你知道，我觉得他们的感受是，他们有了更多的创造力，能更好地表达自己，能尝试糟糕的想法然后抛弃它们。你可以快速尝试很多不同的想法，这成了一种不可思议的创作方式。而且我从团队身上看到的是，标准在提高。他们越用这些工具，思考就越深入。所以，我觉得对于那些开始拥抱这一切的人来说，他们开始感到非常兴奋，意识到作为设计师，他们有了更多的自主权，也有了更大的能力去产生真正高的影响力。

And when we've done that, when I go and talk to both very senior designers and early career designers at our company, they're so excited because—I was literally just asking some people before this because I wanted to get some different takes—and they, you know, I think the feeling is that they have so much more ability to be creative, to express themselves, to try bad ideas and throw them out. You can just really move through lots of different ideas, and it becomes this incredible way to create. And the things that I'm seeing from my team, the bar is raising. The thinking is getting stronger the more that they're using these tools. So, I think for the people that are starting to embrace this, they're starting to feel really excited and realizing that they have so much agency as designers, and so much more ability to have really high impact as a designer.

本期节目由本季的呈现赞助商 WorkOS 呈献。OpenAI、Anthropic、Cursor、Replit、Sierra、Clay 以及数百家其他成功的公司有什么共同点？它们都由 WorkOS 提供支持。如果你正在为企业打造产品，你一定体会过集成单点登录、SCIM、审计日志以及其他大公司所需功能的痛苦。WorkOS 通过一个专为 B2B SaaS 打造的现代开发者平台，把这些交易障碍变成了即插即用的 API。实际上，我投资的每一家开始向高端市场扩张的初创公司，最终都会与 WorkOS 合作。那是因为他们是最好的。无论你是试图拿下第一个企业客户的种子期初创公司，还是正在全球扩张的独角兽，WorkOS 都是成为企业就绪并释放增长的最快路径。它本质上就是企业功能的 Stripe。访问 workos.com 开始使用，或者直接去他们的 Slack，那里有真正的工程师等着回答你的问题。WorkOS 让你通过愉悦的 API、全面的文档和流畅的开发者体验更快地构建。今天就访问 workos.com，让你的应用企业就绪。

This episode is brought to you by our season's presenting sponsor, WorkOS. What do OpenAI, Anthropic, Cursor, Replit, Sierra, Clay, and hundreds of other winning companies all have in common? They are all powered by WorkOS. If you're building a product for the enterprise, you've felt the pain of integrating single sign-on, SCIM, audit logs, and other features required by large companies. WorkOS turns those deal blockers into drop-in APIs with a modern developer platform built specifically for B2B SaaS. Literally, every startup that I'm an investor in that starts to expand upmarket ends up working with WorkOS. And that's because they are the best. Whether you are a seed-stage startup trying to land your first enterprise customer or a unicorn expanding globally, WorkOS is the fastest path to becoming enterprise-ready and unblocking growth. It's essentially Stripe for enterprise features. Visit workos.com to get started, or just hit up their Slack where they have actual engineers waiting to answer your questions. WorkOS allows you to build faster with delightful APIs, comprehensive docs, and a smooth developer experience. Go to workos.com to make your app enterprise-ready today.

在这次对话中，我想做的是帮助那些处于“这太糟糕了，事情进展不顺利”状态的人，因为正如你所说，这正是我们在调查中发现的：大约一半的人正处于职业生涯中最美好的时光，玩得最开心，对未来最乐观，而另一半人则过得很艰难。而且正如你所说，那些过得很开心的人报告的最强相关性是，他们感到被 AI 放大。AI 确实让他们变得更好。这就是你描述工程师的方式；他们现在看到了这一点。他们会说：“天哪，我能做这么多。”所以，为了强化你的观点，想想那些表现良好的人的特点：感到被放大、非常好奇、有时间探索、觉得自己更有创造力。还有没有更多类似的模式，关于那些表现良好、过得很开心的人，可能对现在不开心的人有帮助？

What I'd love to do in this conversation is help folks that are in that bucket of 'well, this sucks and things aren't going well,' because as you said, and this is exactly what we found in that survey, about half of people are having the best time of their career, having the most fun, the most optimistic about where things are going, and then the other half are not having a really hard time. And exactly what you said, the people that are having a great time report—the strongest correlation—is they feel amplified by AI. It's actually making them better. And that's the way you described engineers; they're seeing that now. They're like, 'Holy, I can do so much more.' And so just to kind of reinforce the point you're making, think attributes of people that are doing well: feel amplified, very curious, have time to explore, feel like they can be more creative. Is there any more thing more along those lines, just patterns of people that are doing really well and having a great time, that might be helpful for people to hear that are not having a good time?

我在那些真正拥抱这一切的人身上看到的是，他们在流程的每一步都用它来帮助自己，对吧？而且我认为这有帮助——我们当然有一个设计师社区，大家都在共同尝试。所以如果有办法找到那种方式，这是我们作为更广泛的社区应该更多思考的，我们如何互相帮助。但我认为学习不同的工作方式，对吧，所以可能可以这样：“我有个想法，让我先试试，如果我把这个直接扔进 Codex 或 Claude 或你用的任何工具，比如扔给一个智能体来帮你思考，帮你做原型，就试试不同的工作方式。”这不一定非得是正确的方式。但我不知道。我觉得我们发现那些拥抱这一切、适应性强的人——我认为适应性是我们现在经常听到的另一个词，但它非常真实。就像知道这些东西变化很快。昨天不奏效的今天可能就奏效了。我的意思是，在六个月内，整个行业都变了。我记得去年年底我休陪产假，当时在做一些副业项目。我尝试了一些编码智能体，它确实能工作，但总是遇到一些小问题。然后大约一个月后，Codex 发布了，我再试一次，就像“天哪，它就这么工作了。”我认为这改变了很多设计流程，因为现在如果你有个想法，你可以直接把它放进去试试。所以无论如何，我认为关键就是不要害怕。我觉得另一件要考虑的事情是，我们还非常早。我们正处于整个演进的早期阶段，对吧？感觉事情已经变了很多，也许我们已经走得很远了。但对任何想设计或进入设计领域的人来说，无论你是早期职业还是晚期职业，或者你从未真正设计过任何东西但一直在考虑，好消息是我们都在摸索中前进。没有人对设计流程应该如何运作有完美的答案。而且你认为今天有效的东西，可能明天又会变。所以我认为令人鼓舞的是，现在没有人应该觉得自己落后了。我认为如果你今天才开始，你会比大多数人更有优势。而且只要真正思考如何做出伟大的东西。有太多机会去改变你的工作方式，或者只是做出伟大的东西。我们今天认为最前沿的东西，一年后就会显得非常过时，更不用说一个月了。这是我学到的——我在 OpenAI 工作了三年，我想起我刚加入时我们正在做的事情。我记得我们早期语音模式的演示，还没发布，或者几乎不能用的计算机使用功能。现在它已经成了我们设计流程的一部分。我们用这两个工具来构建软件。所以无论如何，重点是变化非常快。我们都处于这个过程的极早期，没有人真正搞明白了。

What I see in the folks that I think are really embracing this, right, they are using it every step of the process to help them, right? And I think it helps—we have a community, of course, of designers that are all trying this together. So if there's any way to kind of find that, and that's something that we should think about more as a broader community, how we kind of help each other. But I think that learning different ways of working, right, and so it might be okay: 'I have this idea, let me just actually start by trying what if I just threw this right into Codex or Claude or whatever tool you use, like throw it into an agent to help you think about it, to help you prototype it, just try a different way of working.' It doesn't necessarily mean that that has to be the exact right way. But I don't know. I think we found that people that are embracing this, that are adaptable—I think adaptability is another term that we all hear a lot now, but it's so true. It's like knowing that this stuff changes very quickly. What didn't work yesterday might work today. I mean, literally within six months, this entire industry has shifted. I remember I was actually out on paternity leave towards the end of last year, and I was working on some side projects. I was trying some coding agents, and it just worked, but it just kept running into these hiccups. And then like a month later, Codex drops, and I try it again, and it's like, 'Oh my gosh, it just works.' And that I think changes a lot of the design process, because now all of a sudden, if you do have an idea, you can like plop it in there and just try it. And so anyways, I think it's just really about not being scared. I think another thing to think about is that we're so early. We're like so in early innings of this entire evolution, right? It feels like things have changed a lot, and it feels like maybe we're pretty far into this shift. But the good news for anybody who is trying to design or get into design, whether again like if you're early career or late career, or you never even actually designed anything but you've been thinking about it, is that we're all figuring this out as we go. Nobody has some perfect answer about how the design process should work. And it's whatever you think is working today will probably change again. And so I think what's encouraging about this is that nobody should feel like behind right now. I think that if you literally started today, you're going to have a leg up on pretty much most people. And just really thinking about how you can just make great stuff. And there's just so much opportunity to change the way you work or to just make great things. And what we think is really cutting-edge today will look so archaic in a year, let alone a month. And that's something I've learned—I've been at OpenAI for three years, and I think about the stuff that we were working on when I first joined. I mean, I remember getting a demo of our early voice mode that we hadn't shipped, or computer use that barely worked. And now it's become—it literally has become part of the process of how we design. We use both of those tools to build software. And so anyways, the point is it's changing very quickly. We're all extremely early in this process, and nobody really has it figured out.

我很喜欢你之前也说过，在我们今年聊天的时候，你告诉我你相信这是历史上成为设计师的最佳时机。

I love that you've also, when we were chatting ahead of this year, you actually told me you believe this is the best time in history to be a designer.

是的，我真心相信这一点。我甚至无法想象……来点历史课：当我开始接触设计时，我还在青少年时期。要学习东西，我学着设计和编程，你可以查看 HTML 网页的源代码，看看东西是怎么构建的。那就是你必须学习的方式。当时有像 Dreamweaver 这样的工具，其实很酷。但和今天相比，如果我现在才开始做设计，你能学得这么快，几分钟内就能从想法变成可用的版本——这太有表现力了。我认为任何人都可以成为设计师。随着越来越多的软件和产品被制造出来，设计中的人性元素会变得越来越重要。一直以来，拥有优秀设计的公司都能脱颖而出，但我觉得这会变得更加重要。当任何人都能做出任何东西时，那些真正理解用户并创造出令人愉悦体验的产品，将成为产品最重要的维度之一，人们也会以此评价产品。所以设计师就站在这个核心岗位上。除此之外，设计师被赋予了更多权力。我和一些朋友聊天，他们想创业，我们讨论了设计与工程的比例。在初创公司，可能是一个设计师对十五个工程师。但他们说也许会有两个设计师和一个工程师——一个真正优秀的工程师来确保工程稳固，但两个真正有创造力的人来思考如何构建产品。所以设计师有巨大的机会。在内部，我们越来越多地看到：设计师完全有能力把一个想法或早期研究概念，包装成人们想用的东西，解决客户未满足的需求。这就是设计师的工作。所以也许会有更多人开始把自己视为设计师。不管怎样，我真心认为这是成为设计师的最佳时机。

Yeah, I mean, I truly believe this. I can't even imagine... So, history lesson: when I was getting into design, I was in my teenage years. To learn things, I was learning design and code, and you could view source on an HTML web page and see how things were built. That was how you had to learn. There were tools like Dreamweaver that were actually really cool. But to compare those to today, if I were just getting into design, the fact that you can learn so quickly and go from an idea to a working version in minutes—it's just so expressive. I think anybody can be a designer. And as more software and products are made, the human element of design is going to become more and more important. It's always been the case that companies with great design can stand out, but I think it's going to be even more important. Products that fully understand their users and make something delightful, when anybody can make anything, that's going to become one of the most important dimensions of a product, and that's how people will evaluate it. So designers stand at that core job. On top of that, designers are much more empowered. I was talking to some friends thinking about starting a company, and we discussed the ratio of design to engineering. At a startup, it might have been one designer to fifteen engineers. But they were talking about maybe two designers and one engineer—one really good engineer to make sure the engineering is rock solid, but two really creative people to think about how to build the product. So there's a huge opportunity for designers. Internally, we see that more and more: designers are completely empowered to take an idea or an early research concept and figure out how to package it into something people want to use, solving an unmet need. That's a designer's job. So maybe more people will start to think of themselves as designers. Either way, I truly think it's the best time to be a designer.

顺着这个思路，当马克·安德森上播客时，他用一种搞笑的方式描述了当前产品世界的状态。他说，基本上有三方对峙。产品经理、工程师、设计师——他们都认为其他角色会消失，而自己最终会胜出。就像蜘蛛侠表情包那样，互相指着对方。我很好奇，因为我能看到每个角色成为主导角色的理由。我完全同意你的看法，随着所有工具被推出，产品数量呈千倍爆炸式增长，有源源不断的东西需要关注。你会觉得设计应该是差异化并脱颖而出的机会。但我还没看到设计招聘的加速，也没看到你说的那种爆炸，比如两个设计师对一个工程师。你觉得这会到来吗？为什么你认为这还没发生？你觉得是不是像你说的，还为时过早，人们会意识到“哇，我们需要更多设计师”？你觉得现在是什么情况？

So along those lines, when Mark Andre was on the podcast, he had this hilarious way of describing the state of the product world right now. He's like, basically there's this three-way standoff. PMs, engineers, designers—they all think the other roles are going to go away and they're the ones that are going to win in the end. It's like the Spider-Man meme where they're all pointing at each other. I'm curious because I can see a case for each role becoming the dominant role. And I completely agree with you that with all the tools being shipped, there's like a thousand-fold explosion in products being shipped, endless streams of things to pay attention to. You'd think design would be such an opportunity to differentiate and stand out. I haven't seen that yet in an acceleration of design hires and an explosion as you said, like two designers to one engineer. Do you think that's coming? Why do you think that hasn't happened yet? Do you think it's as you said, just early, and people will realize, oh wow, we need a lot more designers? What do you think is going on?

我们可能会开始看到这种情况更多发生。或者，我们可能会看到工程师想变得更注重设计。我也认为设计师的生产力在提高。这不一定是像工程师那样直接 10 倍输出，但我们确实看到设计师能做的事情更多了。但我的意思是，这是我们一直在思考和演变的事情。我还想谈谈产品经理、工程和设计之间的区别——它们是不是都在融合？我的观点是，它们确实在融合，而且据我所见，一直都有重叠。我见过一些设计师，他们很像优秀的产品经理类型，但也能做设计；我也见过一些设计师，他们很像优秀的打磨型工程师。所以我一直觉得，这些孤立的单一角色定义其实没有意义。只是在大公司，你得有晋升阶梯来安排人，以便组织。但实际上，当你观察一个团队时，你会看到有不同优势和不同角色的人。所以我一直这么看。这些界限一直很模糊，但肯定越来越模糊了。但另一方面，我仍然认为——也许这是从稍大公司的角度来看——你仍然需要有特定职责的人。因为如果一个人被期望做设计、团结团队、协调整个公司、做产品经理的所有工作，同时还要设计和工程，那可能很难找到一个擅长所有这些技能的人。所以，例如，我仍然觉得有一个优秀的产品经理很有价值，他能帮助团结多个团队，锐化团队关注的观点或问题空间，并帮助解决资源问题。所以我确实认为，专注于项目或产品不同部分的人仍然会有价值。

We might start to see that happen more. Or if anything, we might start to see engineers wanting to become a little bit more design-focused. I also think that designers are getting more productive. It's not necessarily the same direct output of engineers 10xing, but we are seeing that designers are able to do a lot more. But no, I mean, I think that that is something we're always thinking about and evolving. The other thing I wanted to talk about is the difference between PM, engineering, and design—are they all blurring together? My point of view is that they definitely are, and there's always been overlap as far as I've seen it. I've seen designers that are like really good product manager type archetypes but can design, and I've seen designers that are like really good polish engineer types. So I've always found that these single-siloed role definitions don't really make sense. It's just that at big companies you have to have a ladder to put people on so you can organize. But in reality, when you look at a team, you see people with various strengths and different roles. So I've always seen that. The lines have always been blurry, but they're becoming blurrier for sure. But the other thing is, I do still think—and maybe this is from a slightly larger company perspective—you still need people with certain responsibilities. Because if you have one person expected to design, rally a team, align a whole company, do all the work a PM does, and also be designing and engineering, it might be hard to find one person good at all those skills. So I still find a lot of value, for example, in having an excellent PM who can help rally multiple teams, sharpen the perspective or problem space a team focuses on, and help with resourcing. So I do think there will still be value in people focusing on different parts of building a project or product.

这并不意味着角色之间没有更多的流动性，但有一个总体负责这些事情的人，或者一个确保输出完全可靠并最终能服务于整个系统的工程师，仍然很重要。

That doesn't mean there isn't more fluidity between roles, but having someone generally responsible for these things, or an engineer who ensures the output is sound and leads to something that works for the broader system, is still important.

我完全同意。所以确认一下我理解得对不对：大家都在说角色会模糊，也许我们都会成为建造者，什么都做。而你说这不会发生。我想象的是产品、设计、工程的维恩图在交汇，但你说它们会保持各自的角色——会有产品经理、设计师、工程师——但每个人都能更多地承担其他角色。

I completely agree. So just to make sure I understand what you're saying: there's talk about all the roles blurring, like maybe we'll all just be builders and do everything. You're saying that's not going to happen. I'm picturing Venn diagrams of product, design, engineering converging, but you're saying they'll continue to stay their own roles—there'll be a PM, a designer, an engineer—but each can do more of the other roles.

我想这是对的。再说一次，这不是一概而论，因为如果你在创业公司，情况就非常不同。如果我现在要创办一家公司，我会雇佣我能想到的最优秀的通才——那些能在不同角色间灵活切换的人。但也许这一直都是如此。不过，在大公司里，我见过一些设计师，他们设计能力很强，但确实需要产品经理来帮助他们打磨思维以及整个工作流程。关键是，抛开具体的人，要构建优秀的软件需要扮演不同的角色，而这些角色仍然是重要的职能。

I think that's right. And again, this isn't a blanket statement, because if you're at a startup, it's very different. If I were starting a company right now, I'd hire the best generalists I could think of—people who can fluidly move between roles. But maybe that's always been true. At a bigger company, though, I've seen designers who are incredible at designing but could really use a product manager to help hone their thinking and the operations of it all. The point is, taking the people out of it, there are different hats you need to wear to build great software, and those continue to be important functions.

这就引出了一个问题：你认为 AI 会成为一个极其出色的产品设计师吗？问你这个问题很有意思，因为一方面，你会说“哦，是的，ChatGPT 会在所有事情上变得不可思议”。另一方面，设计主管很难说“哦，不，设计会被 AI 完成”。我很好奇你的看法。这听起来很疯狂，但工程师们从未想过 AI 能像现在这样写代码。所以，你对 AI 能达到多高水平有什么想法？

This begs the question: do you think AI will ever be an extremely good product designer? It's interesting to ask you this because on one hand, you're like, 'Oh yeah, ChatGPT is going to become incredible at everything.' On the other hand, it's hard for a head of design to say, 'Oh no, design will be done by AI.' I'm curious to get your take. It sounds crazy, but engineers never thought it would be able to write code the way it does now. So, thoughts on just how good AI will get?

也许可以这样说：我认为它已经是一个不可思议的产品设计师了。它确实已经很出色了。酷的是它对每个人都是可用的——它是任何人都能使用的工具。但这并不意味着它是最好的视觉设计师，或者最擅长信息层级、排版，甚至用户体验和交互设计。它不一定在这些方面是最强的。我们无法预测事情会如何发展。正如我之前所说，三年内变化有多大？当然它们会继续变得更好。但我们的思考方式——我真心相信这一点——是我们正在构建工具，让人们更有创造力，做得更多，构建更多。所以它已经是一个伟大的设计师了，但如何利用它并发挥其最大价值，就掌握在你手中。

Maybe one way to put it is: I think it already is an incredible product designer. It really is already great. The cool thing is it's accessible to every single person—it's a tool anyone can use. Now, that doesn't mean it's the best visual designer, or best at information hierarchy, typography, or even user experience and interaction design. It's not necessarily the best at any of those. It's impossible to predict where things are going. As I said earlier, how much has changed in three years? Of course they'll continue to get better. But the way we think about it—and I really believe this—is we're building tools to enable people to be more creative, to do more, to build more. So it's already a great designer, but it's at your fingertips to figure out how to use it and get the best out of it.

随着 AI 在产品设计方面变得更好，你认为人脑在哪些方面仍然最有价值？我们还有哪些领域可以发挥作用？

Where do you think human brains will continue to be most valuable as AI gets better at product design specifically? What are the remaining areas for us to be useful?

真正理解人们的需求。观察人们使用某物并理解其中的人性反馈循环。发明新事物。然后当然还有纯粹的人类视角——比如“哦，有人做了这个，有人对此有自己的观点”。我认为这会越来越突出。对设计师来说，真正磨练自己的观点很重要：我的观点是什么？我为谁而建，为什么？随着 AI 变得越来越好，总会有机会脱颖而出并推动——你如何能进一步推动这一点？

Truly understanding what people need. The human feedback loop of watching people use something and understanding that. Inventing something new. And then of course there's the pure human take—like, 'Oh, somebody made this, somebody had a point of view about this.' I think that will stand out more and more. It's important for a designer to really hone: what is my point of view? Who am I building this for and why? As AI becomes better and better, there will always be an opportunity to stand out and push—how can you push that even further?

是的，这让我想起我和 Codex 的产品经理的一次对话。我问他为什么 AI 不擅长设计？实际上，自从那次对话以来（也就一两个月前），它已经变得更好了。他给出了几个原因。一个是，优秀的产品设计的一部分是做一些新的事情。所以如果它是在今天所有最有趣的网站上训练的，那就像“好吧，但那已经不再有趣了”。他提出的另一点是，AI 研究人员本身并不天生擅长设计，所以他们可能不完全理解训练一个模型真正擅长设计需要什么。你怎么看？你认为要让 AI 在产品设计上变得更好，需要什么？

Yeah, that touches on a conversation I had with the PM of Codex. I asked him just why is AI not good at design? It's actually gotten better since that conversation, which was just a month or two ago. He had a number of reasons. One is that part of great product design is doing something new. So if it's trained on all the most interesting websites today, it's like, 'Okay, but that's not interesting anymore.' The other point he made is that AI researchers aren't innately great at design, so they may not understand exactly what it takes to train a model to be really good at this. Thoughts? What do you think it'll take to get AI to be much, much better at product design?

新事物很有趣，对吧？因为我们所做的一切都是在尝试设计以前不存在的东西。看看过去 10 年或 20 年里的伟大产品，比如 iPhone——我们当时在为多点触控设计，这开启了一个全新的交互范式。没有针对它的训练数据。你必须真正去理解这个新事物。然后是 Instagram，它拥抱了每个人都拥有手机这一事实。Snapchat 是另一个伟大设计的好例子——它是一种奇怪的交互相式设计，但它完全颠覆了人们可能想要交流的方式。对我来说，这就是伟大的设计：真正理解人们有这个问题或未满足的需求，并以独特的方式构建它。所以是的，有那种全新的方式。而现在有了 AI，我们正在设计如何用语音与 AI 对话，或者如何使用智能体为你执行任务？没有太多先例。所以我认为人类能够很好地评估什么是好的，或者至少尝试很多事情，并在这个过程中与人一起学习。

The new thing is interesting, right? Because everything we're doing is trying to design something that hasn't existed before. If you look at great products from the last 10 or 20 years, take the iPhone—we were designing for multi-touch, and that opened up a whole new interaction paradigm. There's no training data for that. You have to really try to understand this new thing. Then you had Instagram, which embraced the fact that everybody had mobile phones. And Snapchat is another good example of great design—it was a strange interaction design, but it completely flipped on its head the way people might want to communicate. To me, that's great design: truly understanding that people have this problem or unmet need, and building it in a unique way. So yes, there's that fresh new way. And now with AI, we're designing how do you talk to AI with your voice, or how do you use an agent to carry out tasks for you? There isn't a lot of precedent. So I think humans are able to do a really good job evaluating what good is, or at least trying a bunch of things and learning along the way with people.

所以，嗯，我不知道，但同样，所有这些东西变化都很快，很难说，但我觉得，嗯，我认为有很多原因使得人类参与其中变得如此重要。顺着这个思路，当你现在招聘设计师时，什么趋势在上升？你在寻找什么？你认为如今成功的设计师，尤其是在 OpenAI，哪些特质越来越重要？有什么在下降吗？

And so um I don't know, but again, like all this stuff changes really quickly. It's hard to say, but uh I think um I think there's a lot of reasons why uh having that human in the loop is going to be so important. And kind of following that thread of the human in the loop when you're hiring designers these days, what's kind of trending up in what you look for, what you think is more and more important in the designers that will be successful today, especially at OpenAI, what's trending down with anything?

这可能是拥有稍大团队的奢侈，但如果你，你知道，在我们这个规模，嗯，你知道，但即使在初创公司或小公司，我认为这仍然成立。我坚信要招聘一个全面发展的团队，拥有许多不同的优势。所以，我认为重要的是要有一些，或者说适当比例的通用型人才，他们能胜任各种工作，但我们也招聘出色的视觉设计师，或者我们有一个非常棒的品牌团队，帮助我们表达品牌，无论是在外部还是在产品内部，或者优秀的原型制作人员，或者，你知道，我认为这样能补全团队，或者优秀的产品思考者，他们更具战略性，或者那些真正痴迷于这些事物前沿的人。我还没发现一个设计师能同时满足所有这些条件。我认为人们自然会倾向于某些事物，我认为在组建团队时拥抱这一点，实际上，如果你有这个奢侈的话，是非常有价值的。好的，这是我的一个宽泛的说法。但至于我们寻找什么，我们确实，你知道，我总是告诉候选人，我们不期望你有 AI 背景，因为再说一次，这发展得太快了，但我们确实期望你对它有高度好奇心，以及快速投入学习的能力，学习你将如何在你的流程中使用它，它如何工作。而且不仅仅是你如何在流程中使用它，尤其是对我们来说，你将如何创建工具让更多人使用它。所以，我认为更多的是好奇心，这是我们真正推动或寻找的。然后，当然，原型制作，原型制作是我职业生涯中一直重视的。但我只是觉得，你知道，它变得越来越容易获得，所以这确实是我们与候选人交谈时通常会很突出的东西。然后我确实认为，是的，就像对事物的发展方向有观点，或者对人们工作过的任何工具有观点，并真正思考战略性思维。我想最后一点是系统思维，它变得越来越重要，尤其是在我们的世界里，有趣的是，我们试图构建超级智能，它拥有所有这些不同的能力，我们需要更多地思考我们可以构建的底层原语，这些原语可以相互叠加，对吧？嗯，你知道，我认为 Notion 早期做得很好，就是我们要构建这些积木，对吧？然后一切都可以组合。我认为这变得非常重要，当你思考时，我们不想构建所有这些一次性的孤立体验。我们希望能够构建和交付可以相互叠加的系统，这样当有人使用我们的产品时，感觉就像一个连贯简单的东西，模型可以推理如何将所有这些整合在一起。所以，真正理解系统并思考这一点变得更重要，尤其是因为它可能做的事情非常复杂。

This might be a luxury of having a slightly larger team, but if you're, you know, at our scale, um, you know, but even at at a startup or a smaller company, I think this still be true. I really believe in hiring a well-rounded team that has many different strengths. So, I think it's important to have kind of like your handful of or or the right ratio of sort of generalists that can kind of do everything, but uh you know, we also hire like incredible visual designers or we have like like a really amazing sort of brand team that helps us with kind of like the sort of maybe Yeah. expression of our brand both out and in a in the product um or great prototypers or um you know um and so I think that rounding that out or or great sort of product thinkers that are a little bit more strategic or people that are like really obsess over like the very cutting edge of where these things are going and I haven't found that one designer necessarily checks every single one of those boxes. I think people just naturally are, you know, drawn to certain things and I think embracing that when you build a team is actually like um if you if you have the luxury of doing that is like really valuable. Okay. So that's like my a broad statement. But then as far as what we look for, we do definitely, you know, I always tell candidates, we do not expect you to have a background in AI because again, this is evolving so quickly, but we definitely expect high curiosity about it and and and a high aptitude to jumping in and learning how how you know how you're going to use this in your process, how it works. and not just how you use it in your process, but how especially for us like how you're going to create tools to enable more people to use it. Um, and so it's more about the curiosity I think um is something that like we really push on uh or look for. And then um definitely prototyping um prototyping is something I've always valued in my career. Um, but I just think that, you know, it's become more and more accessible and so that's something that, uh, I think really does stand out usually when we talk to to candidates. And then I do think that, yeah, just like having some having a point of view on on where where these things are going or or just like any of the tools that people have worked on and really thinking that strategic thinking. I guess last last one on this is like systems thinking um is becoming more and more important and um you know especially as you're I like in our world we're it's interesting because we're trying to build you know we're building the super intelligence that has uh that has all these different capabilities and we need to think more about the underlying primitives that we can build that can kind of build on top of each other, right? Um, you know, this is something that I think like notion did really well early on was like we're going to build these building blocks, right? And then like everything kind of is composable. I think that's becoming really important too as you think about like well we don't want to build all these sort of one-off siloed experiences. We want to be able to build and ship systems that can build on top of each other so that you know when someone goes and uses our product it feels like one cohesive simple thing and the model can reason about how it can pull all these things together. So that like idea of like really understanding the system and thinking about that is becoming even more important especially because it's kind of complex of all the things that it could possibly do.

这是我连续做的第五个播客，其中系统思维作为一项人们越来越寻求的技能出现，这太有趣了。我需要一个系统思维的宾果卡，但这很有道理，我认为从设计师的角度来看尤其有道理。如果我们回到为什么我认为设计师现在感到沮丧和压力，那就是做传统设计流程的时间更少了。事情发展得太快，工程师每天提交 5000 个 PR，所以正如你所说，积木和设计系统语言，以及一个供人们构建的平台，感觉非常重要。

This is the fifth podcast in a row I've done where systems thinking has come up as a skill that people are more and more looking for and it's it's like so funny. I need a bingo card for systems thinking but it makes so much sense and I think it especially makes sense from the designer perspective. If we come back to just why my take on why designers are kind of frustrated and and stressed right now is just there's less time to do design the traditional design process. things are just moving like engineers are shipping 5,000 PRs a day and so to your point this idea of building blocks and design system langu and and just a platform for people to build on feels incredibly important.

完全同意。这很难，但我，嗯，是的，这很有趣，我们有过这样的对话，我说“少做点”，我的鼓励是少做，如果没必要就不要设计。也许已经有一个现有的系统或组件，我们可以在此基础上构建，或者我们甚至不需要这个功能。我们实际上只需要扩展一个现有功能。嗯，我认为这很重要，其中一部分是跳出你正在做的事情的界限思考，对吧？跨所有事情思考我认为变得越来越重要，速度肯定是现在如此重要的原因。

Totally. It's very hard but I um I yeah it's like it's funny we've had these conversations where I'm like just do less like my encouragement has been do less there like don't design it if you don't have to. Maybe there's already an existing system or component or something that we can build on top of or maybe we don't even need this feature. We actually just need to kind of uh uh like you know extend an an existing feature. Um I think that's an important thing and and part of that is like thinking outside of the bounds of what you're working on, right? and thinking across everything I think is becoming much more important and the speed for sure I think is is a reason why that's so important right now

顺着这个思路，因为感觉这是设计界一个相当大的变化。以前，我们曾与一位嘉宾做过播客，她是 Claude Code 的设计主管 Jenny Wen，她谈到了这个，我认为这震惊了很多人。传统的设计流程是原型、模拟、测试、研究、迭代，然后交给工程构建、迭代、发布，但现在没有时间做这些了。所以在她看来，这个角色已经转向大局规划，引导人们朝正确的方向前进。这有共鸣吗？设计师的世界发生了多大变化？

just to follow that thread because that feels like a pretty big change in the design world there used to be this we had a podcast with u she was head of design club code Jenny Wen and she talked about this and I think it blew a lot of people's minds just there's been this traditional design process prototype mock test research iterate okay cool ready for engineering build it iterate ship it and now there's just no time for that. And so the role in her eyes has just moved to big picture planning and just like steering people in a good direction. Does that resonate? How much is that has changed in in the world of a designer?

我认为 100% 我们就是这样工作的。这取决于情况。我认为对我们来说，这取决于你在流程的哪个阶段，或者产品进展如何。对于 ChatGPT 的某些功能，我们确实非常投入，花了很多时间。我们尝试一百万种东西，然后扔掉，我们尝试 100 种，扔掉 99 种，最后发布一个。

I think that 100% we we do work that way. It it's it depends. I think for us it depends on like what sort of what stage you're at in the in the uh sort of process or um you know uh how uh maybe how far along the product is. There are certain features for chatbt where we really obsess and we really spend a lot of time. We try a million things and we throw out you know uh we try 100 things we throw out 99. We finally ship one.

嗯，你知道，作曲家每天都在变，我们尝试很多东西然后扔掉。你可以把这一点套用到 ChatGPT 里的很多不同事情上。然后还有其他东西，比如编解码器，你知道，我不知道。我的意思是，超级应用就是一个很好的例子，我们确实在快速尝试各种东西。我觉得我们真的很拥抱公开构建，这是一种不同的工作方式。但我认为，当你习惯了之后，这其实非常令人满足，因为你可以尝试新东西，并立即获得内部和外部的反馈。但没错，我的意思是，它确实发展得很快，我觉得这取决于具体情况，对吧？就像我说的，有些事情我们非常注重细节，我们会测试，做 A/B 测试，做用户研究，然后大量迭代和演进。而其他事情我们则大胆尝试，然后快速学习。但没错，我不知道。我觉得最重要的事情是拥抱技术可能在一个月内就发生变化的事实，也许你需要的某个交互或设置或别的什么不再需要存在，或者现在需要一个新的，或者出现了一个新能力，或者延迟特性变了，让你可以重新思考。所有这些能力都在变化，或者智能水平变了。所以你必须反应非常快，也许在它达到“好吧，这已经稳定了，我们不认为它会因为技术而明天就变，所以让我们把它做到最好”这个点之前，不要太过于珍视它。

Um, you know, the composer is changing every single day, and we try many things and throw them out. And you could take that for many different things within ChatGPT. And then there are other things like Codex where, you know, I don't know. I mean, the super app is a good example where we definitely are just trying stuff really quick. I think that we really embrace building in public, which is a different way of working. But I think that when you get comfortable with it, it's actually really gratifying or satisfying because you can try stuff and get instant feedback both internally and externally. But yeah, I mean, it is moving really fast, and I think it just depends, right? Like some things we really sweat the details and we test, we A/B test, we do user research, and we kind of iterate and evolve a lot. And then other things we take big swings and then we learn quickly. But yeah, I don't know. I think the biggest thing is embracing that the technology might change in like a month, and maybe a certain interaction or setting or whatever that you needed doesn't need to exist, or now a new one does need to exist, or a new capability is there, or the latency profile has changed such that you can rethink this. All these capabilities are changing, or the intelligence has changed. So you have to be really quick on your feet and maybe not be so precious about it until it's at the point where, okay, this is kind of hardened, we don't think this is necessarily going to change tomorrow because of the technology, so let's make this the best it can possibly be.

我们正在大量思考如何演进，真正思考让 ChatGPT 深度嵌入你的个人生活，以及应用应该给人什么感觉。这不是我们一定要一夜之间设计并发布出去的东西。我们正在投入，我们真的在思考这个问题，我们在尝试一堆不同的想法，把它们写在白板上，或者在 Figma 里做设计。我们在做原型。我们很可能会在发布任何东西之前，先内部试用一堆不同的想法。但这是一个更大的项目，对吧？然后还有其他事情，我们就像“从想法到发布”只要 4 小时。

We're thinking a lot about how we should evolve, really think about ChatGPT becoming deeply embedded in your personal life, and how should the app feel. That's something that we're not going to necessarily design and ship overnight and just put it out there. We're spending, we're really thinking about that, and we're trying a bunch of different ideas, and we're putting it up on a whiteboard or doing some design in Figma. We're prototyping it. We're probably going to dogfood a bunch of different ideas long before we ever ship something. But that's a bigger project, right? And then there's other things where we're like idea to ship in like 4 hours.

这完全说得通。基本上，我听到的是你选择你的战场，把设计精力集中在那些持久且不会改变的事情上。

This all makes sense. Essentially, what I'm hearing is you pick your battles and you focus the design effort on the things that will be durable and not change.

完全正确。是的。是的。而且很难知道那是什么。

Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And it's hard to know what that is.

是的。

Yeah.

嗯。

Yeah.

本期节目由 Mercury 赞助。这是一家深受超过 30 万企业家喜爱的、彻底不同的银行。现在还有 Command。我使用 Mercury 已经超过六年了。我从未想过要离开。Mercury 基本上就是当银行由产品人员而非银行家打造时会发生的事情。他们让发送发票、转移资金、为团队成员设置虚拟卡变得如此简单，我敢说是很有趣。你的银行有 API、终端原生 CLI 或 AI 就绪的 MCP 服务器吗？我觉得没有。就在最近，他们推出了 Command，一个直接内置在 Mercury 中的对话式界面，充当你的财务操作员。我一直在用 Command 转账、弄清楚我在哪些类别上花费最多、分析我的现金流，就在今天，我用它查了过去一年从某个特定赞助商那里赚了多少钱。我只是问：“过去一年我从 X 那里赚了多少？”10 秒后，我就得到了答案。这太酷了。访问 mercury.com 了解更多信息，并在几分钟内在线申请。Mercury 是一家金融科技公司，不是 FDIC 保险的银行。银行服务由 Choice Financial Group 和 Column NA 成员 FDIC 提供。

This episode is brought to you by Mercury. Radically different banking loved by over 300,000 entrepreneurs. And now with Command. I've been a customer of Mercury's for over six years. I have never once thought about leaving. Mercury is basically what happens when banking is built by product people, not by bankers. They make it so easy, dare I say fun, to send invoices, move money around, set up virtual cards for folks on my team. Does your bank have an API, a terminal native CLI, or an AI ready MCP server? I don't think so. And just recently, they launched Command, a conversational interface built directly into Mercury, which acts as your financial operator. I've been using Command to transfer money around, to figure out what categories I've been spending the most money in, analyze my cash flows, and just today, I used it to find out how much I've made from a specific sponsor over the past year. I just asked, "How much have I made from X over the past year?" 10 seconds later, I have an answer. It is so freaking cool. Visit mercury.com to learn more and apply online in minutes. Mercury is a fintech company, not an FDIC insured bank. Banking services provided through Choice Financial Group and Column NA members FDIC.

所以，我问了一些很了解你的人该和你聊什么。Joel Loenstein，他恰好是 Anthropic 的设计主管，是你的好朋友，我很喜欢。他说他想象你工作中最难的部分是平衡 ChatGPT 现有十亿月活跃用户的需求与创新、推进、迭代和发明的需求。所以我很好奇你是怎么看待这个问题的，你怎么在知道必须兼顾两边的情况下找到这个平衡。

So, I asked a bunch of people that know you well what to talk to you about. And Joel Loenstein, who happens to be the head of design at Anthropic, is a good friend of yours, which I love. And he said what he imagines the hardest part of your job is is balancing the needs of the existing billion monthly active users of ChatGPT with the need to innovate and push and iterate and invent. And so I'm just curious how you just think about that, how you find that balance knowing you have to cater to both sides.

这是个很好的问题，也是我们工作方式中非常有趣的部分。我认为我们有非常不同的受众，真的非常非常不同。我从未在如此广泛的领域工作过。比如在 Instagram，我在那里工作了八年，我们有十亿用户，或者几十亿用户，也许。我实际上不知道他们现在有多少，但那是很多人。但产品相当简单，而且只有几种使用方式。我们确实考虑过创作者和有大账户的特殊需求，但这完全不同，有人用这个来帮他们想出今晚的食谱，或者头脑风暴下一个发型之类的。然后还有人正在改变他们的耕作方式，帮助自动化他们在日本的农场之类的。这真是最广泛的谱系。总的来说，我们看到的是，我们相信这种“能力过剩”的想法，即绝大多数人只得到了他们能从瓶子里得到的真正价值的一小部分。这不一定是一件坏事。许多人仍然获得了大量价值。但我们发现，我们确保专注于为许多人创造极其简单、流畅的体验。然后我们把所有前沿的东西都放进去。我们也确保把它提供给那些关心的人，并确保他们真正容易获得。当然，挑战在于不要过度索引，不要把人们可能不理解的东西放在十亿用户面前。但总的来说，我们看到的是，我们可以尽早与真正关心的人进行实验，这就是我们拥有桌面应用和编解码器的地方，现在 ChatGPT 正在进入更广泛的受众，我们对此感到非常兴奋。最终我们想要的，也是我们在设计中考虑很多的，是当数十亿用户不必考虑开关或模式或类似的东西时，事情才会真正为他们而存在。

That's a great question and it's a really fun part of the way we work. I think that we have vastly different audiences, like really really different. I've never worked in this kind of quite a spread. Like at Instagram, I spent eight years working at Instagram, we had a billion users or billions of users, maybe. I don't actually know what they're at now, but it was a lot of people. But the product was pretty simple and it was sort of a couple ways you could use it. We did think about creators and larger accounts that had special needs, but this is like vastly different where you have someone who's using this to help them come up with the recipe to eat tonight, or brainstorm their next haircut or something like that. And then there's somebody who's transforming the way they're doing farming, helping to automate their farm in Japan or something right. And it's just like the broadest spectrum ever. Generally what we've seen is that we believe in this idea of this sort of capability overhang where the vast majority of the people are getting a sliver of the true value that they could out of the bottle. That's not necessarily a bad thing. Many are still getting tons of value. But we found that we make sure to focus on creating an extremely simple, streamlined experience for many many people. And then we put all of the cutting edge stuff. We also make sure to give that and make sure that's really accessible for the people that care. The challenge of course is not necessarily overindexing and putting something that people might not understand in front of a billion users. But generally what we've seen is we can experiment early with the people that really care and that's where we have our desktop app and we have Codex and now ChatGPT is kind of stepping into a much broader audience which we're really excited about. And eventually what we want, and we think about this a lot in design, is that things will truly become for billions of users when they don't have to think about a switch or a mode or anything like that.

所以我们知道最终它必须被提炼成那种主要体验。但这是一件需要平衡的有趣事情，我们必须考虑从每天免费使用的人到付给我们数百美元的人，他们有着各种不同的需求。这是一个平衡的问题，作为设计师，这确实增加了许多复杂性。你真的必须对每种不同类型的用户抱有同理心。但这肯定让它变得有趣。

And so we know that eventually it has to get distilled into that main experience. But it is a really fun thing to balance, and we have to think about people using this for free every day to people paying us hundreds of dollars, with lots of different needs. It's a matter of balancing, and as a designer, it adds a lot of complexity. You really have to have empathy for every different type of user. But it makes it fun for sure.

你关于 ChatGPT 和 Codex 使用频谱的观点真是令人大开眼界。我之前没这么想过。有没有一款产品有如此宽的频谱，从“我手指上这是什么皮疹”到构建 Salesforce？

That is such a mind-blowing point you're making about the spectrum of usage of ChatGPT and Codex. I didn't think about it that way. Is there a product that has such a wide spectrum, from just 'what's this rash on my finger' to building Salesforce?

是的。这确实很难，因为我们一直在思考的一个大挑战就是“空白框问题”，对吧？人们一直在谈论这个。聊天真的是最终前沿吗？它是一个终端，一个被美化的终端，这是这些聊天机器人常受到的批评。那么你如何设计一个能变形为任何东西的东西？也许有人来这里是为了好玩生成图像，或者他们想生成一个 PowerPoint。拥有这种适应性界面是一个真正有趣的设计挑战，而且这是未知领域，因为它可以变形为许多不同的工具。它在很多事情上都很出色，我们正试图弄清楚如何呈现这一点。我们经常思考新手用户，那些刚接触这种体验的人，我们希望帮助他们理解这如何能为他们的生活或专业工作增加价值。我们也想为那些每天使用它作为真正主力工具的人让路。为这个频谱设计是我们必须经常思考的事情。但是的，我想这全是频谱的世界。

Yeah. And it makes it really hard, because one of the big challenges we're always thinking about is this blank box problem, right? People talk about this all the time. Is chat really the final frontier? It's a terminal, a glorified terminal, is a critique these chatbots get. So how do you design something that can shapeshift into anything? Maybe someone comes here for image generation for fun, or they're trying to generate a PowerPoint. Having this adaptable interface is a really interesting design challenge, and it's uncharted territory because it can shapeshift into many different tools. It's incredible at so many things, and we're trying to figure out how to present that. We think a lot about a novice user, someone brand new to this experience, and we want to help them understand how this can add value to their lives or their professional work. And we also want to get out of the way of people who use this every day as a real workhorse tool. Designing for that spectrum is something we have to think about a lot. But yeah, it's all a world of spectrums, I guess.

凯文·威尔，你的前首席产品官，在播客上说过一句话让我印象深刻。正如你所说，人们总是批评“它只是一个聊天框。为什么它从未改变？”尽管它已经改变了，但它仍然是一个聊天机器人。他提出了一个很好的观点：什么界面能很好地跨越广泛的智能频谱？实际上就是对话。想想人类，我们与低智商到高智商的人交谈。我们都可以互相交谈，这实际上是包装越来越智能的东西的一个非常好的界面。

There's a comment that Kevin Weil, your former chief product officer, made on the podcast that has really stuck with me. To your point, people always diss this idea of 'it's just a chat box. Why hasn't it ever changed from that?' Even though it has, but still it's kind of this chatbot. And he made this really good point that what is an interface that is very good at spanning a wide spectrum of intelligence? It's actually just talking. If you think about humans, we talk to people of low IQ to very high IQ. We can all just talk to each other, and it's actually a really good interface for packaging something that is increasingly smarter and smarter.

是的。我认为我们正在看到对我们来说一个非常有趣的设计空间。我们考虑两件事。一是如何帮助你更好地表达你的意图，对吧？我们不希望你必须考虑成为一个完美的提示工程师，但我们如何教你“哦，这是模型可以帮助我的事情”，然后我们如何确保我们最好地理解你想要什么？所以我们最近推出了一些功能，如果你问一个开放式问题，它可以提出一些后续问题，你可以点击回答，而不必全部输入。另一个好例子是，一旦你实际要求它做某事，聊天记录不必纯粹是文本。我们已经看到这些从 ChatGPT 刚推出时演变了很多。它不再只是一个纯粹的聊天机器人；它内部有许多功能。一个很好的例子是我们所谓的“写作块”。你让它给你写一封信或一封电子邮件，它现在把邮件放在一个你可以直接操作的块中。你可以与它一起输入、头脑风暴、编辑小部分、只复制那部分，这使交互变得更好。我们在图像生成和为那种模式创建特殊工具方面也看到了同样的情况。我认为这就是 UI 将继续演变的地方：我们如何做到，如果你是一名设计师，也许 ChatGPT 应该看起来不同或具有不同的功能？或者如果你是一名数据科学家，或者你用它来管理你的家庭或个人生活，也许它应该以不同的方式工作或看起来不同。所以理解上下文并根据上下文给你不同的功能是我们正在思考很多的事情。

Yeah. And I think we're seeing what's been a really fun design space for us. There are two things we think about. One is how we can help you express your intent better, right? We don't want you to have to think about being a perfect prompt engineer, but how do we teach you that 'oh, this is something the model can help me with,' and then how do we make sure we best understand what you want? So we recently shipped some features where if you ask an open-ended question, it can follow up with some follow-up questions that you can tap through and answer, versus having to type everything out. Another good example is, once you actually ask it to do something, the chat transcript doesn't need to be purely text. We've seen these evolve so far from what it was when ChatGPT just launched. It's no longer just a pure chatbot; it has many features within that. A good example is what we call writing blocks. You ask it to write you a letter or an email, and it now contains that email in a block that you can directly manipulate. You can type with it, brainstorm, edit little bits and parts, copy just that, and that has made the interaction much better. We're seeing the same thing with image generation and creating special tools for that kind of mode. I think that's where the UI is going to continue to evolve: how do we make it so if you're a designer, maybe ChatGPT should look different or have different affordances? Or if you're a data scientist, or you're using this to run your home or your personal life, maybe it should work or look differently. So understanding the context and giving you different affordances based on that is something we're thinking a lot about.

关于这一切走向的愿景和未来，我知道这总是在演变，但有没有一种对 ChatGPT 和 Codex 未来的感觉？我知道有超级应用的想法。你谈到了语音，这个个人助理的想法。你如何看待长期的发展方向？

In terms of the vision and future of where all this goes, I know this is always evolving, but is there a sense of what the future of ChatGPT and Codex is? I know there's this idea of a super app. You talked about voice, this personal assistant idea. What's a way you think about where this goes long term?

我认为它将开始变得越来越适应你生活的所有背景。我认为主动性是体验中一个巨大的未开发部分，我们非常兴奋去思考。我们现在开始在 ChatGPT 工作中看到这一点，它实际上根据你的日历、Slack 或这些不同的输入和外部背景提供了相当好的建议。我认为这将变得越来越重要，并改变你使用它的方式。我认为语音，正如我们刚刚在模型上经历了一个阶跃变化，感觉更加自然，我只能想象在两三年后它会感觉如何，随着它变得越来越好。我确实喜欢与 ChatGPT 互动，尤其是语音，当我想快速说点什么的时候。而且我认为它的能力不仅是从提问，而是实际为你做事，这是关键。

I think it will start to become more and more adaptive to all the context of your life. I think proactivity is a big untapped part of the experience that we're really excited to think about. We're starting to see this with ChatGPT work now, where it actually has pretty good suggestions based on your calendar or your Slack or these different inputs and external context. I think that's going to become more and more important and shift the way you use it. I think voice, as we just had a step change in the model that feels much more natural, and I can only imagine how that's going to feel in two or three years as it gets better and better. I do love interacting with ChatGPT, especially voice, when I just want to quickly say something. And I think its ability to go not just from asking questions but actually doing things for you is key.

嗯，这一切都会改变，而且随着我们推进，希望一切也会变得更简单。你知道，当我们想到超级应用时，最终我们真正想的是，尤其是对于我们的广大消费者群体，应该有一个通用的输入入口，你可以向它提问，它知道什么时候需要快速回答，什么时候应该闲聊，或者是否应该去为你执行任务。所以，我们的一大兴奋点就是：如何继续简化体验，让你不必去想它是怎么运作的。你不必去想你在用什么模型，或者你用的是哪种速度。这又回到了平衡不同用户角色和需求的问题。当然，我们想为合适的人提供这些选项，但我们也想确保能提供一个对大多数人都很好用的默认体验。

Um, that's all going to change, and hopefully all of this gets simpler as we do it too. You know, when we think of the super app, I think eventually we really think of the idea, especially for our broad consumer base, that there should be this one universal input that you can ask, that knows when it needs to answer really quickly, or whether it should be chatty, or whether it should go off and do work for you. And so that's a big excitement that we can get to: how can we continue to simplify the experience such that you shouldn't have to think about how this works? You shouldn't have to think about what model you're on or what sort of speed you're using. That goes back to balancing the different personas and user needs. Of course, we want to expose that for the right people, but then we want to make sure that we can get a default experience that works great for most people.

但没错，我认为它会变得非常主动。我确实认为我们将通过语音获得更丰富的输入，以及更丰富、更具交互性的视觉输出。我认为你会开始构建更持久的工作流程，这些流程带有你可以反复使用的属性。现在，很多时候感觉你每次都要从头开始。我们真的想让它成为你可以用来处理任何任务的工具。

But yeah, I think it's going to be really proactive. I do think that we're going to get much richer input through voice and richer visual outputs that are more interactive. I think that you'll start to build more durable workflows with attributes that you can use over and over. Right now, a lot of times it feels like you're coming and starting from scratch each time. And we want to really make this the tool that you can use to help you with whatever task you have.

这一切听起来太棒了，我等不及了。

This all sounds wonderful. I can't wait.

嗯，稍微拉远一点，然后我想再和设计师们聊聊，但你现在担任这个重要的角色。我想你进入 OpenAI 并承担这个角色时，一定有很多惊喜。有什么你希望自己当时就知道的事情？有什么你希望能对第一天的 Ian 耳语，给他一些建议？

Uh, just kind of zooming out a little bit, and then I want to talk a little bit to designers again, but you're in this epic role right now. I imagine there's a lot of surprises as you entered OpenAI and took on this role. What's something you wish you'd known? What's something you wish you could whisper into Ian of day one to give you some advice?

我是说，太多了。我想第一点是认识到我们真的很早。说实话，我当初来 OpenAI 时其实挺忐忑的。我记得，好吧，面试的时候。哦不，我得，你知道，GPT-4 刚出来不久，还有 GPT，我当时想，这都是些什么？我在用，我也在用这些东西，但我并没有真正理解它。说实话，我还有很多要学的。所以，那种“你来得早，我们还在摸索”的想法，是我当时想听到的。

I mean, so many things. I think the first one is recognizing that we're really early. And instead, I was actually pretty intimidated coming to OpenAI, if I'm being honest. I remember, okay, interviewing. Oh no, I got to, you know, GPT-4 had kind of recently come out, and what GPT, like I was like, what is all this stuff? I was using it, and I was using the stuff, but I didn't feel like I had a true understanding of it. And to be honest, I still have so much to learn. So that idea of 'you are early, we're figuring this out' is what I would want to hear.

另一件我发现的事情，对我来说这更个人化，不太关乎 AI 或其他，而是我进入了一个非常不同的角色。我职业生涯大部分时间都在管理，我之前确实管理过，但从未在增长如此之快的规模上，而且是在一家如此不同的公司。这个角色每天都是新的。很长一段时间，我觉得自己有点不擅长这个，或者我不知道自己在做什么。然后我去和那些领导过大型设计团队的朋友，或者和我有类似转型经历的朋友聊了聊，他们都有完全一样的感觉，或者我的问题并不独特。

And the other thing that I found, and for me this is more of a personal thing, it's less about AI or anything, but I stepped into a really different role. Most of my career I've managed, I definitely managed before, but never at a scale that's growing so fast, and at a company that is so different. The role was just every day was something new. And for a long time I felt like I'm kind of bad at this, or I don't know what I'm doing. And then I went and talked to friends that had led really large design teams, or were in a similar transition as me, and they all felt exactly the same, or the problems that I had were not unique.

所以，这是更个人化的建议，但我认为在职业生涯的任何阶段，都会有那种冒充者综合症的感觉，比如“我在做什么？我不知道该怎么做。”找到可以交谈的、正在经历类似事情的人，你会发现通常有很多共同的挑战和挣扎。拥有那样的人，无论是导师还是只是一个中立的、置身事外的伙伴，对我帮助很大。找到那个社群很有帮助。所以，就是这样，然后理解这一切都是如此新颖，并且发展得非常快。

And so, this is more personal advice, but I think at any stage of your career there's that feeling of impostor syndrome, like 'what am I doing? I don't know how to do this.' Finding people you can talk to who are going through similar things, you'll find that there's usually a lot of shared challenges and struggles. And having that, whether it's a mentor or just a buddy that is impartial and out of it, has been really helpful to me. Finding that community has been helpful. So, that, and then understanding that this is all so new and evolving really quickly.

听到这些非常有帮助。Elena Vera 发了一篇很棒的文章。我不知道你是否认识她。她现在在 How to Grow to Lovable。她发了一篇很棒的文章，叫《停止 AI 自信剧场》，她在文中谈到，所有这些人都不断发布他们用 AI 做的事情，以及 AI 改变他们生活的各种方式，他们做得很好，什么都搞定了。但实际上，这些东西中很少有真正那么好用、真正有效的。就像，别再假装你已经搞定一切了。

That is extremely helpful to hear. Elena Vera had this really great post. I don't know if you know her. She's at How to Grow to Lovable right now. She had this great post called 'Stop the AI confidence theater' where she just kind of talks about how all these people just keep posting all these things they've done with AI and all the ways it's changed their life, and they're killing it, figured it all out. And really, it's like very few of these things are actually that great and working. And it's just like, stop pretending like you've figured it all out.

我认为最好保持谦逊，就像，哇，是的，我不知道，这变化太快了，我只是要拥抱它，看看它会走向何方。

I think it's much better to be humble about it and be like, wow, yeah, I don't know, this is changing quickly, and I'm just going to embrace it and see where it goes.

是的，这和你说的现在做得好的一个核心要素有关：那些好奇、到处摸索、尝试这些东西的人，他们会再试一次，因为也许现在没成功，以前没成功，但现在成功了。

Yeah, and that connects to what you said was a core component of people that are doing well right now: people that are curious and just kind of poking around and trying these things, and try them again because maybe it didn't work now. It didn't work before, now it works now.

百分之百。是的。就像，每个模型、每个新功能，我发现那些在这些边缘摸索的人，他们做这件事的时候真的玩得很开心，你知道吗。

100%. Yeah. It's like, every model, every new feature, it's like the people that are poking around at those edges, I've found, are just having such a blast doing it, you know.

这让我想起 OpenAI 前 CPO Kevin Weil 在播客上说过的一句话，我一直铭记在心，那就是我们今天拥有的模型是未来最差的模型。

And this connects to something else Kevin Weil, former CPO at OpenAI, said on the podcast, which has always stuck with me, which is the model we have today is the worst the model will ever be.

没错。我是说，这又回到了，你知道，我们，是的。我是说，新模型多久出一个？每周？我不知道，每天。如果你把所有实验室什么的都算上，变化太快了，而且都在变好。我不知道，就像，我总是提醒自己，这一定就像计算机早期时代的构建或设计，当时组件发展非常快，有这些剧烈的阶跃变化。你会遇到这些限制，然后突然这些限制就消失了。我想是一样的，对吧？这些东西就是会变，昨天还完全坏掉的东西，现在实际上就能用了。

Exactly. I mean, that goes back to like when, you know, we, yeah. I mean, a new model comes out what, every week? I don't know, every day. Like, if you count all the labs and everything, it's changing so quickly and everyone gets better. And I don't know, it's like, I always try to remind myself, it must be like building or designing in the early days of computers, when componentry was evolving really quickly and there were these drastic step changes. You would hit these limitations and all of a sudden those limitations were gone. I think it's the same, right? These things just change, and what was totally broken yesterday now actually just kind of works.

那么，也许在结束对话之前，假设有一位设计师正在听这个节目，他们正处于那种不知所措、焦虑、挣扎、压力重重、对未来感到不确定的状态。

So maybe to start to close out the conversation, say a designer is listening to this and they're in that bucket of overwhelmed, anxious, struggling, stressed, feeling uncertain about their future.

你对他们有什么建议，帮助他们走出这种状态，进入更好的境地？

What's one suggestion you have for them to help them move out of that state and into a better place?

只要认识到这是一种完全理性的感受，而且现在是尝试和探索的好时机——试试看如果我换个方式工作会怎样，如果我重新思考工具会怎样，或者如果我干脆接受“也许我该多做一些原型”会怎样。让我试试用这些工具。但再次强调，认识到——也许听到这个会有帮助——我觉得我们都还处于非常早期的阶段，一切仍在变化中，所以拥抱这一点，就像，玩得开心，看看它会走向何方。另外我想说的另一点是，真正专注于产出和结果，对吧？归根结底，我们不是来构建工具或流程的。我们不是来构建 token 最大化之类的东西。我们是来打造人们喜爱的优秀软件，或优秀产品，或无论你做什么。那才是真正重要的。如果你专注于这一点，我想你最终会发现这些工具能帮你做到，但作为掌舵和指引方向的人，你仍然扮演着巨大的角色。

Just recognizing that it's a totally rational feeling, and it's a great time to just try to explore and see what if I tried working, what if I tried rethinking the tooling, or what if I just embraced, like, oh, maybe I should prototype more. Let me try using these tools. But again, recognizing that—and maybe it helps to hear that—I think that we're all still so early, and it's still changing, and just kind of embracing that, like, just have fun with it and see where it goes. And I think maybe another thing I would say is really try to focus on the output, the outcome, right? At the end of the day, we're not here to build tools or processes. We're not here to build token max or something like that. We're here to make great software that people love, or great products, or whatever it is you do. But that's the thing that really matters. And if you focus on that, I think you'll hopefully find that these tools can help you do that, but you still have a huge role in that as the person that's kind of steering and directing it.

沿着这个思路，我要带我们进入播客的几个固定环节。第一个环节是 AI 角落。问题是：你发现 AI 在你的工作中有哪些真正有用的方式，也许能激励别人去使用，比如 ChatGPT 或 Codex？

So, along those lines, I'm going to take us to a couple recurring corners of the podcast. The first corner is AI corner. The question is just: what's one way that you have found AI to be really useful in your job that maybe might inspire someone to use, say, ChatGPT or Codex?

作为设计师，我的意思是，如今我在像素上花的时间少了。但我确实用它来帮助我思考更广泛的想法。或者，也许，你知道，我晚上会有一个想法，然后我就会快速输入，让它原型化一些东西，它会给我一个想法，我可以去和团队讨论，它帮助可视化某些东西。所以那是设计过程的一部分。就像早期想法，或者我们在即兴发挥某个东西，我发现 ChatGPT，无论是 ChatGPT 工作还是 Codex，都能真正帮助我将其可视化。那一直是非常有趣的事情。然后还有更多运营方面，你知道，我现在让它检查并确保我需要跟进的 Slack 重要消息被总结，并在重要会议前给我背景信息，或者用于招聘，或者用于我流程的每个部分。我用它来增强我所做的工作。

As like a designer, I mean, nowadays I spend less time in the pixels. But I really do use it to kind of help me think through broader ideas. Or maybe, you know, I'll have an idea at night or something, and then I'll just like quickly type it in and have it like prototype something, and it'll give me like an idea that I can go and talk to the team about, and it helps visualize something. And so that's like a part of the design process. It's like early ideas or we're riffing through something, and I've found that ChatGPT, whether it's ChatGPT work or Codex, can really kind of help me visualize that. That's been something that's been really fun. And then there's more of the operation side, you know, it's like I have it now checking and making sure that important Slack messages that I need to follow up on are summarized and giving me context before important meetings, or for recruiting, or for every part of my process. I use this to kind of augment the work that I do.

有道理。关于原型制作这部分，只是为了给别人一个如何做的提示。你是在手机上打开并启动一个 Codex 线程吗？这样做的机制是什么？

It makes sense. On the prototyping piece, just to give someone a tip on how to do this. Are you opening up on your phone and firing off just like a Codex thread? What's like the mechanic of doing this?

ChatGPT 工作一直令人难以置信，因为它现在完全在云端运行，对吧？所以这个想法是，你可以随时随地，和聊天对话，让它真正花时间，然后带回一个非常棒的成果。所以我发现，只要说“嘿，你知道，我们在做，我不知道，不管是什么东西，无论是它帮助我思考，还是，你知道，是的，有时我只是有一些想法，我希望在进一步推进之前快速可视化，它就会帮助我摆弄它，尝试它之类的”，这真的很有趣。而且它如此易于访问，对吧？比如我可能甚至不在电脑旁，或者我可以，你知道，拥有那种灵活性。我觉得这真的很有趣。

ChatGPT work has been incredible because it now runs fully in the cloud, right? And so the idea is you can kind of just be anywhere and sort of talk to chat and have it really spend the time and come back with like a really great artifact. So I've found that it's been really fun to just be like, "Hey, you know, we're working on, I don't know, whatever this thing is, like whether it's helped me think through it or, you know, yeah, sometimes I will just have some ideas that I would love to see quickly visualized before I even take it further, and it will just kind of help me play with it and try it and stuff." And so that's been really fun. The fact that it's so accessible, right? Like I might not even be near a computer, or I can, you know, just kind of have that flexibility. I think is really fun.

太棒了。好的，我要带我们进入另一个环节，失败角落。

Awesome. Okay, I'm going to take us to another corner, fail corner.

嗯。

Yeah.

我这样做是因为很多像你这样的优秀人士来到播客，人们听到的都是他们做过的所有了不起的事情，他们成功的所有方式，而他们听不到所有事情不顺利的时候。我觉得这对人们来说非常重要。并不总是一帆风顺和成功。你职业生涯中失败的一次经历是什么？你从中学到了什么？

So the reason I do this is a lot of awesome people like yourself come on the podcast, and all people hear is all the amazing things they've done, all the ways they've been really successful, and they don't hear all the times things didn't work out. And I feel like that's very important for people to hear. It's not always up into the right and success. What's a story of a time you failed in your career, and what did you learn from that?

我的意思是，有很多次。我想即使在 OpenAI，我也发现每一步都必须学习，对吧？当我刚加入时，我记得甚至不完全理解我想如何建立设计团队，也不理解如何招聘之类的。我有点觉得自己每天都在失败，但只是快速尝试调整和学习。我想这也许有点敷衍，但真的只是觉得每天我都在边做边学。我觉得我的整个职业生涯都是这样，我从来没有真正计划过任何一步，而是快速从错误中学习。我发布过很多没有成功的东西。我也发布过成功的东西，但很多时候我发布或尝试一些东西，结果有点失败。在 Instagram，我们有失败的产品，然后我们很快继续前进。我的意思是，我做过 IGTV，那是一个巨大的失败，然后我们发布了 Reels，Reels 就像——我的意思是，那是一个很好的例子，因为我们内置了一些错误的假设，我们坚持了一些约束，但后来我们很快从中学习，我们说，“好吧，实际上让我们改变这一点，”然后我们重新做了，然后它变成了一个非常成功的产品。我在很多案例中都看到了这一点，这帮助我对批评和反馈变得坚强，因为有时你会出错，有时你尝试一些东西，有时只是必须把它推向世界，解决它，获得反馈，然后迭代。我认为更重要的是——不是你一次发布了什么，而是你如何反应，如何向前修复，如何继续迭代并倾听用户。

I mean, there are so many times. I think that even at OpenAI, I've found that I've had to learn every step of the way, right? When I first joined, I remember not really even fully understanding how I wanted to build a design team, and not understanding how to hire or whatever. I sort of felt like I was kind of failing every day, but just kind of quickly trying to adjust and learn. I think that maybe kind of a copout answer, but really just feeling like every day I'm kind of learning on the go. I feel that my whole career has sort of been that way, and that I have never really planned any one step, and sort of quickly learning from your mistakes. I've shipped plenty of things that did not work out. And I've also shipped things that have worked out, but many times I've shipped or you try something and it's kind of a failure. At Instagram, we had flops, and then we'd quickly move on. I mean, I worked on IGTV, which was like a huge flop, and then we shipped Reels, and Reels was like—and I mean, that's a good example because we had baked in some wrong assumptions and we held on to a few constraints, but then we learned from that quickly, and we were like, "Okay, actually let's change that," and then we sort of redid it, and then it became a really successful product. And I've seen that in many cases, and that's helped harden me to the sort of critique and feedback of things, because sometimes you get it wrong, sometimes you try something, and sometimes it is just about having to put it out in the world and work through it, and get the feedback, and iterate. And I think that's more important—not sort of what you shipped one time, but how you react, and how you fix forward, and how you continue to iterate and listen to your users.

在这个环节中，一个非常常见的主题是，人们的职业生涯就像，大部分时间都是失败。

This is a very common theme in this corner is just people's careers are like it's mostly failure along the way.

是的，绝对。

Yeah, definitely.

所以我认为这对人们来说是有帮助的。

And so I think that's helpful for people to hear.

嗯。

Yeah.

好的，在我们进入非常激动人心的快速问答环节之前，你还有什么想分享但我们没有涉及的吗？

Okay, before we get to a very exciting lightning round, is there anything else you wanted to share that we haven't covered?

如果我能提炼一下，那就是我希望这是一个真正有趣的构建东西的时期。

If I could distill it, it's like I hope that this is just like a really fun time to build stuff.

而且我希望我们作为设计师能够真正适应变化，专注于做出真正有趣、真正出色的东西。我认为设计师就像希望一样，你知道，我觉得伟大的公司都在寻找设计师，寻找伟大的设计。我发现这确实如此。可能会有很多公司因为没能转型而被甩在后面，但我认为优秀设计还有很大的空间，而且这一点会比以往任何时候都更真实。

And I hope that we, as designers, can be really adaptive and focus on making really fun, making really great stuff. I think that designers are just like hope, you know, I think great companies are seeking designers and seeking great design. And I found that to be really true. There are probably going to be a bunch of companies that will be left behind because they haven't shifted, but I think that there's plenty of room for amazing, great design, and that's going to be more true than ever.

我完全同意。我对设计非常看好。

I completely agree. I'm very bullish on design.

是的。

Yes.

好了，Ian，说到这里，我们进入了非常激动人心的快问快答环节。我有五个问题要问你。准备好了吗？

Well, Ian, with that, we've reached our very exciting lightning round. I've got five questions for you. Are you ready?

好的。准备好了。

Okay. Yes.

好的。我们开始吧。你发现自己最常向别人推荐的两三本书是什么？

All right. Here we go. What are two or three books that you find yourself recommending most to other people?

我不是那种，你知道，这很有趣。我不是一个大力推荐书的人。嗯，我觉得当人们问我时，我确实会被问到关于设计的书，但我没发现有多少纯粹关于设计的书真正让我印象深刻。不过我要说，我确实喜欢《设计心理学》。我觉得那真是经典。

I'm not like, you know, it's funny. I'm not like a big book recommender. Um, I think when people ask me, I do get asked about books for design, and I haven't found that many that have really stuck with me purely design. Although I will say I do love 'The Design of Everyday Things'. I think that's such a classic.

就是那本，你知道，这不是什么独特的推荐。但它就是思考我们如何思考、我如何思考设计的经典之作。

That's the one that's the one that you know it's not like yeah it's not a unique recommendation. But it is just a kind of classic of thinking about how we think, how I think about design.

是的。

Yeah.

无论你是否在科技行业，你都应该读一读。

You have to read it if you're in tech or not in tech.

是的。

Yeah.

太棒了。呃，还有别的吗，还是我们继续？

Awesome. Uh, anything else there or should we keep moving?

我们可以继续。

We can keep moving.

那我们继续。你最近真正喜欢的电影或电视剧是什么？

Let's do it. Favorite recent movie or TV show that you have really enjoyed?

好的，我有一个，其实不是电影或电视剧，而是——我在纽约。我刚看了一部百老汇剧，叫《也许快乐结局》。

Okay, so I have one that actually is not a movie or TV show, but it's a—I'm in New York. I just saw a Broadway show called 'Maybe Happy Ending'.

是的。我看过。非常喜欢。是的。

Yes. I've seen it. Love it so much. Yes.

哦，你看过了？好的。是的。它太独特了，对吧？当然它有点触动我心，因为它是关于这些超级智能的人形机器人，你知道，但制作非常出色。布景设计，关于它的一切我都觉得非常独特。所以如果你有机会看，我觉得它真的非常非常好。我还刚看了《邀请》，我觉得——你看过了吗？

Oh, you saw it? Okay. Yeah. It was so unique, right? And of course it kind of hit home a little bit because it's about these super intelligent humanoid robots, and you know, but the production was incredible. The set design, everything about it I thought was so unique. So if you have the chance to see it, I thought it was really, really good. I also just saw 'The Invite', which I thought—and have you seen it?

是的。也很喜欢。如此简单却如此好。

Yes. Also love it. So simple but so good.

我喜欢它的地方就是它如此简单。它实际上就像一部戏剧，你知道，就是四个人在一个漂亮的公寓里，布景设计很棒。但剧本、表演，关于它的一切都令人难以置信，而且它就像一场疯狂的旅程，我进去时对它一无所知。我觉得它太棒了。

That's what I loved about it is it's like so simple. It's like it actually is like a play, you know, and it's just four people in one kind of beautiful apartment and the set design is amazing. But the writing, acting, everything about it was incredible and it's just kind of a wild ride and I went in knowing nothing about it. I thought it was incredible.

品味极佳，先生。我太喜欢这两部了。而且《邀请》刚上映。现在正在影院上映。

Excellent taste, sir. I love both those so much. And 'The Invite' just came out. It's in theaters right now.

是的。

Yeah.

下一个问题。你最近发现的真正喜欢的产品是什么？

Next question. Favorite product you've recently discovered that you really love.

我觉得自己有点像典型的硅谷人在推荐这个。但我确实最终换了一辆电动车，在很长时间拥有多辆车之后，我买了一辆 Rivian。我不知道，我真的很欣赏它的设计，就是他们如何真正让所有——我想如果你知道，可能特斯拉也类似，但很多关于操作汽车应该如何工作的假设都消失了。你只要走过去，它就解锁了，你知道？你不需要开关汽车。看到这种演变很酷。当然，我喜欢，你知道，Waymo，如果我现在能拥有一辆 Waymo，那是世界上最神奇的经历。我正屏息以待，等待它被广泛普及。

I feel kind of like a typical Silicon Valley person recommending this one or something. But I did finally switch to an EV after having many cars for a long time and I got a Rivian. I don't know, I do respect the design a lot, just how they've really made all of the—I think if you know, probably Tesla's similar, but there's a lot of assumptions about how operating a car should work have gone away. You just walk up to it, it unlocks, you know? You don't have to turn on and off the car. And it's cool to see that evolving. Of course, I love, you know, at Waymo, probably if I could own a Waymo right now, that is the most magical experience in the world. And I'm waiting with bated breath for that to be broadly accessible for everybody.

你有没有一个最喜欢的人生格言，在工作或生活中经常想起？

Do you have a favorite life motto you find yourself coming back to in work or in life?

不一定，除了我觉得它有点像试图总结我对这一切的感受，就是享受其中，然后去尝试各种东西。你知道，我觉得不要觉得——我从不觉得你必须适合某个特定的框框。要知道，对工作方式或思考方式保持非常灵活是完全没问题的。而且我不知道，要灵活和适应。但是的，这不太像人生格言。更像是一种氛围，就是试着享受其中，做出伟大的东西。

Not necessarily other than I think it kind of trying to sum up how I felt about all of this is like have fun with it and just try stuff. And you know, I think don't feel like—I've never felt like you have to fit into a specific box. And know that it's perfectly all right to be very fluid about the way you work or the way you think about things. And I don't know, be flexible and adaptable. But yeah, it's not quite a life motto. More of a vibe of just trying to have fun with it and build great stuff.

我应该把这个问题改成“氛围是什么”。对你有帮助的氛围是什么？因为我喜欢这个。这很像 Sam Altman，就是你可以直接去构建东西。

I should shift this question to what's just like the vibe. What's the vibe that's been helpful to you? Because I love that. It's very Sam Altman in terms of just you can just build stuff.

完全正确。是的。

Exactly. Yeah.

好的。最后一个问题。关于你的职业经历，我喜欢的一点是，如果你看你的 LinkedIn，你曾是 Groupon 的设计师。我喜欢你在 Groupon 工作过，而现在你基本上在负责超级智能的设计。你在 Groupon 学到的东西，哪些可能对如今构建超级智能 AI 有帮助？

Okay. Last question. Something I love about your career history. If you look at your LinkedIn, you were a designer at Groupon. I love that you are at Groupon and now you're heading design for essentially superintelligence. What's something you learned at Groupon that is being maybe helpful these days building superintelligent AI?

我喜欢这个问题。Groupon 是一家非常有趣的公司。Andrew Mason 是一位非常了不起的 CEO，他给产品带来了这样的个性，你知道，它有点像品牌化的产品。而且我们有一个喜剧团队。Groupon 有一个写作团队，但他们基本上都是喜剧演员，而且产品真的不把自己太当回事，至少在最初几年是这样。它不把自己太当回事，我觉得品牌真的很突出，对吧？你注册 Groupon 不是因为——我的意思是当然每日优惠很棒。你得到五折优惠，但人们喜欢那封邮件是因为它写得很好，很有趣，而且有个性。我觉得早期公司在品牌和拥抱这方面做得非常好。而且如果我要把这一点带向前，我发现我工作过的每家公司都有如此独特的 DNA，你必须工作的方式可能也会因此略有不同，对吧？所以 Groupon 是一种运营方式，然后我去了 Instagram，那是一个非常注重设计和创造力的地方，Kevin——Kevin Systrom——真的是一位了不起的设计师，他有点把自己看作或者和我们一起以那种方式工作，这真的很酷，它创造了一种不同的工作方式。然后你有像 Sam Altman 这样的人，他的运营方式完全不同，他就像——你知道——然后 OpenAI 是一个研究实验室。

I love that. Groupon was a really fun company. Andrew Mason was like a really incredible CEO and he brought such character to the product, you know, it was like kind of a branded product. And we had like a comedy team. There was like a writer team at Groupon, but they were all comedians basically, and the product really did not take itself seriously, at least in its early couple years. It didn't take itself seriously, and I think that the brand really stuck out, right? You weren't signing up for Groupon because—I mean of course the daily deal was great. You were getting like 50% off something, but people loved that email because it was really well written and it was funny and it had character. And I thought that early on the company did a really good job with brand and sort of embracing that side of things. And I think the other thing if I were to carry that forward is I found that every company that I've worked for has such unique DNA and the way you have to work kind of maybe changes a little bit based on that, right? So Groupon was run one way, then I went to Instagram, which was like this very design and creativity focused, and Kevin—Kevin Systrom—was really like an incredible designer and he sort of saw himself or worked in that way with us, which was really cool, and it just created a different way of working. And then you have like Sam Altman, who's like a completely different way of operating, and he's like—you know—and then OpenAI being a research lab.

所以，了解到公司有着截然不同的 DNA，并学会如何拥抱它们、利用它们来赋能或顺应这种文化，是我在辗转多家截然不同的公司过程中学到很多的东西。

And so learning that companies have these really different DNAs and understanding how to sort of embrace them and leverage that to empower that or lean into that has been something that I've learned a lot from moving around and getting the opportunity to work at very, very different companies.

另外补充一点，重要的是要意识到你无法改变它。你不可能进来就改变那种文化，因为那非常困难，尤其是当它非常以创始人为导向时。

And also just to add to that, it's also important to realize you're not going to change that. You're not gonna come in and change that culture because that's very hard, especially if it's very founder-oriented.

我认为关键在于找到平衡，比如在 OpenAI，我们花在 Instagram 上的时间更多，我们确实放慢了速度，而且我可以说我们改变产品的频率更低，这在 Instagram 的大部分阶段都非常有效。但我不认为那种工作方式适用于 OpenAI 目前的阶段。当然，我带来了很多经验，比如在 Instagram 我们有这样的座右铭：‘先做简单的事’，我们一直使用并真正拥抱它。我试图将这种理念贯彻到我在 OpenAI 的产品构建思路中。但这并不是我唯一的工作方式。有时候，这未必是正确的思考方式。有时我们确实会放弃一些仍在实验中的东西。所以我发现，必须保持灵活，不是试图改变它，而是试图让它更加完善。也许吧。

I think it's about finding, like, oh wow, like at OpenAI, you know, sure, like we spent more time at Instagram, we definitely moved slower, and I would say that we changed the product less, and that actually worked really well for most stages of Instagram. But I don't think that that would work in the current stage of where we're at with OpenAI, and that way of working. Of course, I bring a lot to that, and I think, you know, at Instagram we have this motto like 'do the simple thing first' and we always use that and we really embrace that. I've tried to carry that through to the way I think about building product at OpenAI. But that's not the only way I think of working. You know, sometimes it's actually not necessarily the right way to think about. Sometimes we actually do throw some things out that we're still experimenting with. And so just being really, I found that having to be flexible and not necessarily trying to change it, but trying to kind of help round it out. Maybe.

Ian，你现在在世界上的位置真是令人难以置信。身处如此酷炫、前沿的技术之中。我非常幸运你能抽出时间与我们聊天，分享你的见解和未来方向。最后两个问题：你想把人们引向哪里？如果你想推广什么，以及听众如何能对你有所帮助？

Ian, what an incredible place you have in the world right now. Just being on the inside of such cool technology, such cutting-edge stuff that's happening. And I feel very fortunate that you found time to chat with us and share what you're seeing, where things are heading. Two final questions. Where do you want to point people? If you want to plug anything, and how can listeners be useful to you?

我想把人们引向哪里？我的意思是，请大家尽情享受我们用 GPT 和 Codex 打造的东西，并随时提出反馈和想法。我在 Twitter 上，我喜欢与各个阶段的设计师交流。不仅仅是设计师，还有工程师、产品经理等等。那可能是我最容易被找到和接触的地方。至于如何能有用？我再次强调，我喜欢人们展示他们的工作方式以及这种方式的转变，这是我们学习如何构建更好产品的绝佳途径，不仅在 OpenAI 内部，而且作为设计社区，也许可以更多地展示我们的流程，因为它正变得有点不透明，比如它是如何运作的？分享这些对社区来说是一份礼物，所以多做这样的事吧。

Where do I want to point people? I mean, I think that, please, you know, have fun with the stuff we're making with GPT and Codex, and fire away feedback and thoughts. I'm on Twitter. I love to talk with designers at all sorts of stages. Or not just designers, engineers, PMs, whatever. That's probably where I'm most reachable and accessible. And you know, how can you be useful? Again, it's like I love when people show off the way they are working and how that's shifting, and that's a great way for us to learn how we can build better products, both internally at OpenAI but just as a design community, like maybe showcasing a little bit more of our process because it is becoming a little bit more opaque, like how is it working? Just sharing that is such a gift to the community, so doing more of that.

还要把人们引向你的网站，我现在就在这里。我想我的脸可能正在变色，因为网站有各种疯狂的颜色。

Also point people to your website, which I have here now. And I think my face is probably changing colors because the site has all these crazy colors.

所以如果你访问 iansber.com，你会看到这个疯狂的网站。那是你的个人网站，里面有一个……

So if you go to iansber.com, you can see this insane website. That's your personal website and there's a...

是的，那是对我过去所有工作的深入展示。你可以在那里看到。

Yeah, that's a deep dive into all of my past work. You can see there. Yeah.

而且关键在于你……是的。你得发现那个彩蛋，里面有个游戏。

And the trick is you... Yeah. You'll have to discover the Easter egg where there's a game involved.

没错。

That's right.

看看你能不能创造最高分。

See if you can set the high score.

是啊。最高分已经失控了。我不知道发生了什么。有人找到了作弊代码。

Yeah. The high scores are out of control. I don't know what's happening. Someone's found a cheat code.

Ian，非常感谢你来到这里。非常感谢你做这次访谈。

Ian, thank you so much for being here. Thank you so much for doing this.

兄弟，这太棒了。非常有趣。

Buddy, this was awesome. Super fun.

我也是。大家再见。非常感谢收听。如果你觉得这有价值，可以在 Apple Podcasts、Spotify 或你最喜欢的播客应用上订阅本节目。另外，请考虑给我们评分或留下评论，这真的能帮助其他听众找到这个播客。你可以在 lennispodcast.com 找到所有过去的剧集或了解更多关于节目的信息。下集见。

Same. Bye everyone. Thank you so much for listening. If you found this valuable, you can subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. Also, please consider giving us a rating or leaving a review as that really helps other listeners find the podcast. You can find all past episodes or learn more about the show at lennispodcast.com. See you in the next episode.