设计愉悦：Julian Martin 谈真正的差异化

随着软件越来越容易创造，真正靠设计做出差异化需要什么？

As software becomes easier to create, what does it take to truly differentiate with design?

如果你使用这个应用时会心一笑，即使过了 45 天，你也会知道你为用户创造了真正特别的东西。关键在于那些小细节。比如在 Ammo 上，在 Bump 上，当你浏览好友时。你不必把一切都做成功能性，它也可以很好用。

If you're smiling when you use this app, even after the 45 days, you know you created something really special with users. It's all the little things. For example, on Ammo, on Bump, when you browse through your friends. You don't have to build everything to be functional. It can be great to use it.

作为设计师，你如何营造创意文化，并持续跳出固有框架思考？

How do you form a culture of creativity and consistently think outside the box as a designer?

不需要有五彩纸屑，也不需要到处是蓝色或饱和的色彩。但如果你总在想：嘿，我点这个按钮会发生什么？反应是什么？反馈是什么？也许只是一个微小的动画，也许是手机上精心设计的触感反馈，也许是屏幕上发生的其他事情。正是这类交互和愉悦感，才会创造独特的体验。

It doesn't have to have confetti. It doesn't have to have blue colors or saturated colors everywhere. But if you always think about, hey, what happens when I tap this button? What's the reaction? What's the feedback? Perhaps it's just a tiny animation. Perhaps it's haptic feedback that is really carefully done on your phone. Perhaps it's something else happening on the screen. But it's this type of interactions and delight that will create a unique experience.

欢迎收听 Dive Club，我是 Rid，这里是设计师永不停歇学习的地方。今天的嘉宾是 Julien Martin，他曾是 Zenly 的设计负责人，Zenly 卖给了 Snapchat，他后来又在那里担任设计负责人。后来 Snap 关闭了 Zenly，这导致许多核心成员离开，并创建了一款名为 Ammo 的新产品。这是我见过的最令人印象深刻的消费级设计之一。但在我们聊到 Ammo 的特别之处之前，这一集的故事要从 20 年前纽约市的一家比利时餐厅说起。

Welcome to Dive Club. My name is Rid, and this is where designers never stop learning. Today's episode is with Julien Martin, who was the head of design at Zenly, which sold to Snapchat, where he again became the head of design. Eventually, Snap shut down Zenly, which led much of the core team to leave and create a new product called Ammo. This is some of the most impressive consumer design I've ever seen. But before we get into what makes Ammo so special, this episode actually starts 20 years ago in a Belgian restaurant in New York City.

当我讲起这个故事，尤其是最近在 Zenly 和 Ammo 的时候，大家就是不相信我。我们几乎把它当成一个内部笑话来调侃——人们会讨论我当时是不是真在撒谎。那是很久以前了，2006 年。我来自法国东部一个叫斯特拉斯堡的城市。那是一座美丽的城市，充满历史和漂亮的建筑，融合了德国和法国的文化。那里没有任何工作机会，尤其是设计领域。我只有一点点平面设计方面的糟糕经验，甚至算不上网页设计。后来我一个朋友在纽约开了家餐厅，他邀请我过去，就当度一个三个月的长假。我当时年轻又有点傻——其实那时我 22 岁，不，24 岁，抱歉——我去了之后就在他的餐厅帮忙。我后来还成了一家餐厅的经理。事情是这样的：我决定留下来，以游客身份留在美国。现在我可以讲这些了，因为我不觉得丢人，但它确实与今天的世界政治、美国政治产生某种共鸣：我当时逾期滞留了。我不想回法国。有趣的是，我是非法滞留，但我纳税了。在这家餐厅，我下班后总是看到一位顾客下午来，安静地坐在角落里，在他的笔记本——Moleskine 本子上画东西。他每天下午同一时间来，待同样长的时间，点同样的东西：一份华夫饼和一杯双份浓缩咖啡。你能看出来——人们通常只点一杯单份浓缩或双份浓缩，这确实是法国人或欧洲人的习惯。就是简单、浓烈的咖啡，仅此而已。所以我猜这个人不是本地人。结果，他来自西班牙巴塞罗那，他正在同一条街上创办一家新公司，而那家餐厅就在这条街上。这家公司叫 Behance。

When I tell the story, especially recently, you know, at Zenly and Ammo, people just don't believe me. We kind of made fun of this as almost an inside joke that people were discussing whether or not I was actually lying about this back then. It's a long time ago. It was 2006. I'm from a city in eastern France called Strasbourg. It's a beautiful city, packed with history and beautiful architecture. There's a lot of culture there, both German and French. There were no jobs, especially not in design. I had a very small, kind of shitty experience in graphic design—not even web so much. So a friend of mine had this restaurant in New York, and he invited me over just for three months as an extended holiday. I was young, a little bit foolish—I was actually 22, I mean 24, sorry—and I went there and helped him in his restaurant. I actually became a manager of one of the restaurants. What happened is I decided to stay. I decided to stay as a tourist in the US. I can talk about it now because I'm not really ashamed of it, but it's definitely something that resonates today in world politics and US politics: I overstayed my visa. I didn't want to go back to France. What's funny is that I was illegal, but I paid my taxes. In this restaurant, after my shift, there was always one customer visiting in the afternoon, quietly in the corner, drawing stuff in his notebook, his Moleskine book. He came every afternoon at the same hour, for the same amount of time, ordering the same thing: a waffle and a double espresso. You could tell people usually just order a single espresso or a double espresso—it's really a French or European thing. Very simple, strong coffee, and that's it. So I figured this guy was not from here. As it turns out, he was from Barcelona, Spain, and he was co-founding a new company in the same street where the restaurant was. The company was called Behance.

他是 Matias Corea，Behance 的联合创始人之一。他对我非常好，邀请我去参观他们的办公室。我下班后就去了，带了一些糕点之类的东西表示感谢。那间办公室其实是一间公寓——Scott Belsky 的公寓。很有意思——你从视觉、气味、一切都能感觉到那里有事情在发生。那是一个很美的空间，非常纽约式的公寓。墙上、甚至窗户上都贴满巨大的纸张，所以光线有点被挡住。很多屏幕。那里大约有四个人：Scott、Matias，还有两个工程师 Dave 和 Henry。他们带我快速参观了一下，说：‘嘿，这就是我们做的事。这是我们建出来的东西。如果你愿意，你每天下班后都可以过来，可以帮我们，可以问问题，也可以只当个观察者。’我当时想，我太愿意了。谢谢你们邀请我。我不知道自己能不能帮上忙，但我非常愿意。我几乎想都没想，就做了一件奇怪的事——我想要全部。我想 24/7 都待在这里。他们也没想到我会这样。他们告诉我他们付不起我的薪水，现在没钱。他们说：‘嘿，我们没法付你钱，但如果你想每天来，我们不会拦你。我们可以包你午饭，仅此而已。’于是我说：‘好，就这么办。’我记得一件既吓人又好笑的事。那大概是周三晚上，11 点，我当时在抽烟。Scott 的公寓在六楼，每次我都得坐电梯下楼到街上去抽烟，再上来。我注意到这让他们很烦，因为我没有钥匙，也没有密码什么的。每次我都得按门铃，他们得来给我开门。所以他们说：‘嘿，就在窗边抽吧。别下楼了。’于是我就站在六楼窗边抽烟，像个年轻的法国小伙。晚上 10 点，我说：‘好了，各位，我干完了。我累了，我要回家了。’Matias 说：‘你在干嘛？才 10 点，还有很多工作要做呢。’好吧，那我该做什么？我记得回家时已经凌晨 1 点或 2 点，累得不行，第二天早上 9 点再回办公室。真正的拼命干——我几乎一年半的时间里每周工作七天，就这样度过。

He's Matias Corea, one of Behance's co-founders. He was very nice to me, and he invited me over to visit the office space. After my shift, I visited them. I brought some pastries and stuff to say thank you. The office was just an apartment—Scott Belsky's apartment. It's really funny—you can tell by the look, the smell, by everything that something was going on in there. It was a beautiful space, a very New York apartment. There were many huge paper sheets plastered on the walls and even the windows, so it was blocking the light a little bit. Many screens. There were about four people there: Scott, Matias, and two engineers, Dave and Henry. They gave me a quick tour and said, 'Hey, this is what we do. This is what we built. If you want, you can come every day after your shifts, and you can help us. You can ask questions. You can just be an observer if you want.' And I'm like, I would love that. Thank you for inviting me. I don't know if I can help, but I would love to. And almost without thinking about it, I did this weird thing—I want the full package. I want to be here 24/7. They didn't expect that either. They told me they couldn't afford me. They didn't have any money for now. They said, 'Hey, we cannot pay you, but if you want to come every day, we won't stop you. We can pay you lunch, but that's it.' So I said, 'Okay, let's do that.' I remember something that was really scary and funny at the same time. It was a Wednesday night or something, 11 p.m. I was smoking. Scott's apartment was on the sixth floor, and every time I had to come down by the elevator, go out to the street to smoke cigarettes, and go back up. I could tell this was bothering them because I didn't have a key—there was no code or whatever. Every time I had to ring, and they had to come get me. So they were like, 'Hey, just smoke by the window. Just stop going downstairs.' So there I was on the sixth floor smoking a cigarette like this young French guy. At 10 p.m., I'm like, 'Okay guys, I'm done. I'm tired. I'm going home.' And Matias is like, 'What are you doing? It's 10 p.m. There's still much work to do.' Okay, what should I do? I remember coming back home at 1 a.m. or 2 a.m., super tired, then going back to the office at 9 a.m. the next day. The real hustle—I was working seven days a week for almost a year and a half doing just that.

很快插播一条消息，然后我们继续。Jitter 刚刚发布了图像转视频功能，这相当厉害。你只需要上传素材，Jitter 就会借助 AI 立即生成一段短视频。这是让静态背景增加动感与深度的简单方法。可以用来为品牌视觉制作小短片，或者只是用微妙的运动让任何场景更有生气。玩起来超级有趣，今天就可以用了。前往 dive.com/jitter 试试吧。

Real quick message and then we can jump back into it. Jitter just released image to video, and it's a pretty big deal. All you have to do is upload an asset, and Jitter will instantly generate a short video clip from it with the help of AI. It's an easy way to add motion and depth to static backgrounds. Maybe create little clips for brand visuals, or just in general make any scene feel more alive with subtle movement. It's super fun to play with and available today. Just head to dive.com/jitter to try it out.

别让自己的作品集连个自定义域名都没有。Framer 最新推出的功能让你再也没有借口了——他们与 Hover 合作，提供一套流畅的流程：你可以选择免费或打折的域名，购买后会自动连接到你的 Framer 网站。你没听错。Framer 在将网站升级为年度套餐时，第一年会免费提供自定义域名。所以千万别错过这个优惠。今天就可以前往 dive.com/club/framer 领取你的域名。好了，我们继续进入正题。

Don't be the person with the portfolio that doesn't have a custom domain. With Framer's latest release, you don't have that excuse anymore, because they partnered with Hover to provide a seamless flow where you can select free or discounted domains that will automatically be connected to your Framer site after purchase. You heard me right. Framer is offering free custom domains for the first year when you upgrade your site to a yearly plan. So definitely don't miss out on this offer. You can head to dive.com/club/framer to claim your domain today. Okay, now on to the episode.

这简直像电影一样。你说的这些，我理解人们为什么会取笑它或质疑这段传奇——因为它听起来就是一部创业少年电影。甚至，你懂的，那个在深夜奋斗时探出窗外的年轻法国小伙子。太有意思了。

It's like a movie. Everything that you're saying — I understand why people potentially make fun of it or question the lore — because it literally sounds like a startup kid movie. Even the, you know, the young French guy hanging out the window during the late night grind. It's too funny.

对，没错。但你知道，Matias 绝对是我的导师，没有别的词可以形容。他告诉我一些事情，比如：‘嘿，你知道吗，当时的 Behance 只是个博客——一个卖纸制品的博客，比如带行动项的本子。他们把这叫做 Action Method，所以上面有行动项，你可以列一个纸质待办清单——纸质很好，但说到底就是纸。你知道吗，这很疯狂。Behance 博客上还有一些效率技巧，而他们当时才刚刚起步，后来才发展成今天这样庞大的创意专业人士社交网络。’我当时对网络一无所知。所以这个 Matias 跟我说：‘嘿，你能帮我画个线框图吗？你能帮我设计这个视图、这个界面什么的吗？’我说：‘等等，我不知道该怎么做。’他说：‘你就直接做，放手去干。好不好我会告诉你。’他让我设计 Behance 编辑器里的那些图标。那个编辑器里有设计作品集和项目的功能，还有一个插件式文本编辑器，里面有各种图标——链接、加粗、斜体、缩进等等。它用的是某个开源组件，和第一版 Behance 网络设计的整体风格不太搭。所以我要重新设计所有图标来匹配整体风格，但我不知道怎么做。于是我打开 Photoshop，一格一格、一像素一像素地设计图标，希望它们看起来会很好。但结果并不好。我当时甚至不知道矢量形状是什么。所以图标看起来非常像素风、8 位风格，根本不行。Matias 就说：‘重做一遍吧。’我记得自己花了一周时间，在不知道怎么设计的情况下硬磕这些图标。也是在那时候，我发现了 Illustrator。其实 Photoshop 当时也有矢量形状，但我没用过。慢慢地，我进入了状态，学习的过程非常令人兴奋。图标设计和网页设计是我的初恋，后来也演变成了许多其它东西。

Yeah, exactly. But you know, Matias was definitely my mentor. There is no other word. He told me things like, 'Hey, you know, Behance back then was just a blog — just a blog selling some paper stuff, like notebooks with action items. They called this the Action Method, so we had action items and you could just have a paper to-do list — high-quality paper, but you know, it's just paper. I mean, it's crazy. And there were these productivity tips on the Behance blog, and they were just getting started on the journey to what Behance is today, this huge creative professional social network.' I didn't know anything about web. So this Matias guy is like, 'Hey, can you wireframe this for me? Can you design this view for me, this screen or whatever?' I'm like, 'Wait, I don't know how to do that.' And he's like, 'You just do it. Go ahead, just do it. I will let you know if it's bad or not.' He asked me to design these icons in the Behance editor. There's an editor where you design your own portfolio and projects, and there's kind of this plug-in text editor with the icons — link icons, bold, italic, indent, all these typical things. It was using an open-source thing, and it didn't play very well with the overall design of the first Behance network design. So I had to redesign all the icons to match the design, but I didn't know how to do it. So I went on Photoshop and I designed square by square, pixel by pixel, icons, hoping this would look great. But it didn't look great. I didn't even know what vector shapes were. So it looked very pixely and 8-bit, and it didn't work. So Matias was like, 'Go ahead and do it all over again.' I remember spending a week designing icons without knowing how to do it. This is where I discovered Illustrator. Photoshop also had vector shapes back then, but I didn't use them. Slowly but surely, I was getting into this, and learning everything was really exciting. Icon design and web design was my first love, and it kind of evolved into many new things afterwards.

我敢肯定，你当时肯定没有意识到自己正在成为一名设计师。但你大概也没意识到，你身边围绕着一群未来的行业巨头。我想知道，早期和这群人相处的经历，是否以某种你能辨认出来的方式塑造了你？比如，你是否从那里汲取了不同的经验，甚至只是你在像 Scott 这样的人身上观察到的某些东西，你认为它们对你后来的旅程产生了影响？

You definitely didn't realize that you were becoming a designer at that point, I'm sure. But you also probably didn't realize that you were surrounded by future industry titans. I'm wondering if the early experience with that group of people shaped you in any way that you're able to identify. Like, did you pull from different lessons there, or even just things that you would observe in somebody like Scott that you think had an impact on the rest of your journey?

当然。我觉得自己一直是个很凌乱的人。小时候，我的房间总是乱七八糟的。我总是四处分散，同时想很多事情，同时做很多事情。其实正因为同时做太多事，一切都很乱。当 Matias 出现，开始教我设计的方方面面时，他关注的重点是……里面有很多情感、很多直觉，还有我过去不习惯的工艺感和精确感。‘没对齐有什么关系？’他对这件事非常执着。他会说：‘你是认真的吗？你不能这么说。它必须完美，必须完全对齐。如果这里没对齐，那边也不对齐，然后所有东西看起来都会很难看。’这些非常基本的设计原则对我来说都是全新的。我不明白为什么同一个网页横幅要反复迭代 200 遍。比如我要设计一个竖版横幅，大概是给当时的 Digg 做的，类似这样。那是一个竖版横幅，其实很简单，就放几个元素——可能是 Behance 的标志，还有我们那个本子的照片。很简单，但我花了大概三天时间，因为他对我的对齐方式不满意，看起来不够平衡。我觉得他来自一种非常有条理的、几乎包豪斯式的方法。而且他的父亲其实是一位非常杰出、非常成功的建筑师。所以某种程度上我把一切都吸收了。视觉设计和工艺感真的是我进入产品设计领域的第一道门。我认为这塑造了我是谁，塑造了我后来的样子，也塑造了今天的我，并成为我的优势之一。当我需要创造新产品、新体验、新世界时，我会认真考虑一切，比如从用户的角度来看最终呈现是什么样子。我不会走太多流程，而是靠感觉。今天这么说可能有点奇怪，但我一直是这样工作的。未来也会一直这样。这正是他教给我的。这也是为什么在 Zenly 和 Ammo，节奏和速度如此重要——快速推进，在一个很混乱的空间里，然后收敛到某个很酷的东西，不断迭代。

For sure. I always considered myself a very messy person. When I was a kid, my room was always messy. I was always all over the place, thinking about many things at once, doing many things at once. Actually, because I was doing many things at once, everything was messy. And when Matias came up and kind of taught me about everything in design, his focus was really on... there was a lot of emotion, a lot of intuition, and a lot of craft and preciseness that I wasn't used to. 'Why does it matter that this is not aligned?' He was crazy about it. It's like, 'Are you serious? You cannot say that. It has to be perfect. It has to be perfectly aligned. If this is not aligned, then this is not going to be aligned, and then this is going to look like... everything is going to look bad.' And all these very basic principles of design were all new to me. I didn't understand why I had to iterate 200 times on the same web banner. Like, I had to design a vertical banner for, I don't know, I think it was for Digg back then, something like this. And there was a vertical banner, and you know, it was just a simple thing with a couple of... I think the Behance logo and a photo of this book notebook we had. It was very simple, but it took me, I don't know, three days to do it, because he wasn't happy with how I aligned things. It didn't look really balanced. I think he came from a very structured kind of almost Bauhaus method. And his father is actually a very prominent, very successful architect. So I kind of took everything in. And in a way, visual design and craft was really my first entry, my first door into the product design space. I think it shaped who I am. It shaped what I became. It shaped what I am today, and it became one of my strengths. When I have to create new products and new experiences, new worlds, and so on, I really think about everything, like what does it look like at the end from a user standpoint. I don't go through too much process. It's really just about feeling it. And it can be weird to say that today, but this is always how I work. This is always how it will work in the future. And he kind of taught me this. This is why it was really closely related to pace and speed at Zenly and Ammo — to just go fast and in a very messy space, and then narrow it down to something that is just cool, always iterating.

这绝对是我听过的故事里最具人生转折意义的节点之一。所以我想继续聊下去，说说之后的发展。你提到了 Zenly 和 Ammo。给我们一些背景：你是怎么进入 Zenly 的，你们当时在做什么？我知道很多人把它归类为设计非常精致的应用，但他们并不真正理解它，尤其是美国听众。所以，你能再多讲讲那段故事吗？

Well, this is definitely one of the more life-changing inflection points of anyone's story that I've ever heard. So I kind of want to keep playing it out and talk a little bit about where this went from here. You mentioned Zenly and Ammo. Give us a little bit of context for how you ended up at Zenly, what you all were working on. And I know a lot of people put it in this bucket of really well-designed apps, but they don't really understand it, especially people listening in the US. So can you share a little bit more about that story?

是的，当然。Zenly 是一个基于地图的社交类消费应用——一开始就是一张简单的地图，你可以看到周围的朋友。今天听上去可能没什么意思，但当时有意思的是，除了一个我记不太清的早期玩家，以及那时已经存在的 Life360，消费者领域里并没有特别亮眼的同类产品。当时 Find My 甚至还不是 iOS 上的独立应用。

Yeah, of course. Zenly was a social consumer app based on a map — at first, a simple map where you could see friends around. It might not sound interesting today, but what was interesting back then is that besides one early player that I don't remember, and Life360, which already existed back then, there wasn't really anything special in the consumer space. Find My wasn't even a standalone app in iOS back then.

我们做了一款真正实用的应用，而且电量消耗一点都不夸张。它非常省电，在十到十二年前的手机上，这真的是一件很酷的事。我们当时想，为什么不用这款应用打造一个不错的体验呢？加入年轻人会喜欢的搞笑元素，再加上疯狂的投入和一个色彩斑斓、毫无逻辑但依然很俏皮的 Logo——就像那个彩色的冰淇淋。于是我们全力以赴。说“全力以赴”的意思是：界面是蓝色的，聊天是蓝色的，设置、个人资料页也是蓝色的，没有任何理由，就因为“为什么不呢”。我们做了很多疯狂的事，感觉就像是我们用来玩的沙盒。我们并没有认真去考虑无障碍——当然我们有一点在意，但事后回想，其实没那么多。有些疯狂的做法放到今天的标准下肯定过不了关。它给人的感觉就像一款游戏，非常有趣。每次你打开应用，它都会用一条心情消息欢迎你，有时那消息还有点大胆，有点俗气。我们会说：“嘿，你看起来不错。你昨天看起来更好，但很高兴又见到你。今天下雨了，或者随便什么。”——尽管其实并没下雨，那是七月中旬。所以它总是有点天马行空。有些人可能会说它有点过度设计。是的，在某些地方它确实过度设计了，但这确实让我们在一些战略国家火了起来，比如日本、韩国、印尼。甚至在欧洲——东欧、乌克兰、俄罗斯——Zenly 当时也非常受欢迎。我们打造了一种真正的 DNA，几乎是游戏式的 DNA，一个世界。这个世界贯穿了一切——每一个像素、每一处工艺。我们设计的每一个转场都经过深思熟虑。没有什么是随机的。我觉得这成了我们的理念，而我们的用户真的很喜欢。

We came up with this really functional app that didn't drain your battery like crazy. It was very energy efficient, and on phones from 10 or 12 years ago, that was something really cool to have. We thought, why not create a nice experience using this app, with funny things younger audiences would love, and with crazy dedication and a logo that was colorful and didn't make any sense, but was still very playful—like this colorful ice cream. So we went all in. When I say all in—the screens were blue, the chat was blue, the settings, your profile view was blue, for no reason, just because why not? We did crazy things, and it almost felt like a sandbox for us to have fun. Instead of just thinking about accessibility—of course, we cared a little bit, but looking back, not so much. There were crazy things that definitely wouldn't pass the bar by today's standards. It felt like a game and it was really entertaining. Every time you opened the app, it would welcome you with a nice mood message that was sometimes a bit ballsy, a bit tacky. We would say things like, 'Hey, you look great. You looked better yesterday, but it's funny to see you again. Today is rainy or whatever'—even though it wasn't raining, it was the middle of July. It was always a bit all over the place. Some might say it was a bit overdesigned, and yes, in some ways it definitely was. But it definitely contributed to how popular we became in certain strategic countries like Japan, South Korea, and Indonesia. Even in Europe—Eastern Europe, Ukraine, Russia—Zenly was really popular back then. We crafted a proper DNA, almost a game DNA, a world. That world applied to everything—all the pixels, all the craft. Every transition we designed was carefully thought out. There was no randomness. I think this kind of became our idea, and our users really loved it.

即使我这样一个和 Zenly 毫无关系的人，这种 DNA 也让我印象深刻。就算我只是在刷 Twitter，看到有人简介里写着“Zenly”，它也会让我多看一眼。你会觉得，这些人有能力做出一种相当罕见的设计。

Even as somebody with no real relationship to Zenly, the DNA really stands out to me. Even if I'm scrolling through Twitter and I come across somebody with 'Zenly' in their bio, it stands out. You can tell they're capable of a certain type of design that's actually quite rare.

Zenly 关闭已经四年了，但它的影响依然在。我现在在这里和你聊 Zenly，所以我真的为此骄傲。我知道之前的整个团队仍然为此骄傲。我们当时学到的经验，在后来创建 Amo 时也在一定程度上得到了应用。而所有那些 Zenly 帮的成员、Zenly 校友，今天在他们各自的公司里，依然在应用我们学到的一切。无论是 PhotoRoom 还是 Prelude——现在有很多公司里都有大量 Zenly 和 Amo 的人。所以我觉得，它确实在设计、在沉浸式设计上树立了一些很高的标准。但不止于此，我们还有一支非常有天赋的工程团队。招 Zenly 的工程师绝对很有挑战性，可能比招产品设计师还难，因为我们对他们要求实在太高了。我们必须确保他们真正站在产品这边，理解我们为什么那么在意，为什么你会和我们一起在桌边连续坐上五个小时，去微调一些看起来可能并不重要、但最终被证明非常重要的事情。

It's been four years since it got closed down, and it still sticks. I'm here talking with you about Zenly, so I'm really proud of it. I know the whole previous team is still very proud of this. The lessons we learned back then were applied, to some extent, at Amo as well when we created Amo moving forward. And all those Zenly mafia members, Zenly alumni, in their actual companies today, they still apply everything we learned. Whether it's PhotoRoom, Prelude—there are many companies now with lots of Zenly and Amo people. So I think it definitely created some great standards when it comes to design and immersive design. But not just that—there was also a very talented engineering team. Hiring engineers at Zenly was definitely challenging, probably more than product designers, because of how much we asked of them. We had to make sure they were really on the product side, understanding why we cared so much, why you would sit with us at the desk for five hours straight fine-tuning things that might not seem important but turned out to be very important.

好，所以你创造了 Zenly，它获得了很大的成功。你刚提到说 4000 万用户。你把它卖给了 Snapchat。Snapchat 最终又把它关停了。你想买回来，但没买成。听起来，很多核心成员后来做了第二幕，也就是 Amo。我想深入聊聊这一章。从表面看，在高层面上有很多相似之处——你能看出核心 DNA 在其中起了作用——但你也像得到了一张白纸，可以把事情再往前推一点、尝试一些略有不同的做法，或者去创新那个你知道的、一直以来的遗留决策。所以当你最初创建 Amo 时，那个项目的初步目标有哪些？

Okay, so you create Zenly, there's a lot of success. You mentioned like 40 million users. You sell to Snapchat. Snapchat eventually shuts it down. You try to buy it back, you can't. So it sounds like a lot of the core group of people were responsible for act two, which is Amo. I'd like to go deep into that chapter. On the surface there are a lot of similarities at a high level—you can tell that core DNA is responsible for it—but you also kind of get this blank slate to push things a little bit further, try something slightly different, or maybe innovate on that one thing that has been a legacy decision. So when you were first starting off with Amo, what were some of the initial ambitions with that project?

Amo 的创建，是对 Snap 宣布关闭 Zenly 的直接反应。我们知道，我们想再打造一家欧洲社交消费领域的标杆公司。但很早我们就明白，我们想要设计一组应用，而不是只是一个独立应用。在 Zenly 时代，有一件事挺让人沮丧的，就是某个时候出现了很多功能膨胀。我们在内部经常把应用比作圣诞树——四周挂满了闪亮的东西，各种行动号召互相竞争。地图是动态的，上面已经有那么多颜色，不同的颜色，真让人眼花缭乱。我们每次想要做减法、重新整理，都非常吃力，这也是为什么会有这么多次改版。所以到了 Amo，我们说，让我们用新的应用重新开始，去解决不同的问题，但你能够分辨出你是在第一个、第二个还是第三个应用里——你会说，“哦，这是 Amo 的应用。”第一款是类似 Canva 的创意工具，感觉像是 MySpace、Pinterest，再加上一点点早期 YouTube 的实验品，你可以自定义自己的主视觉图。第二款是一款相机应用——设计得非常简单，但用起来真的让人愉悦。从很多方面看，它有点像 Andy Allen 最近做的那款新相机应用，品牌感很强，用起来有点像玩具——只是它不是 3D 的。第三款应用则是蛋糕上的樱桃：是对所有 Zenly 早期相信者的感谢，对他们说，“嘿，我们一定要把这款定位应用做出来。”它非常简单，没有聊天功能，除了能找到朋友之外没有任何其他功能。我们一款接一款地发布了这三款应用。从开始到全部上线的那段时间，我们疯狂迭代，从零开始创建这个宇宙，打磨所有这些应用的观感。让 Amo 这个品牌在每个产品的细节里渗透出来，确实很有挑战性，其中有一些失败了，还有一些中途改了方向。

Amo was created as a reaction to Snap's announcement that it was closing down Zenly. We knew we wanted to create another major European company in the social consumer space. But very early on, we knew we wanted to design a suite of apps instead of just one standalone app. One thing that was a bit frustrating at Zenly back then was there was a lot of feature creep at some point. We internally compared the app to a Christmas tree—all these shiny things around, all the calls to action competing with each other. The map was dynamic, there were already so many colors, different colors, and it was overwhelming. We struggled every time to tone things down and rework, which is why there were so many redesigns. So with Amo, we said, let's start over with new apps tackling different problems, but you'd be able to tell whether you were in the first, second, or third app—you'd say, 'Oh, this is an Amo app.' One was a creative Canva-like product that felt like an experimentation between MySpace, Pinterest, and a little bit of early YouTube, where you could customize your own hero image. The second app was a camera app—meant to be very simple but really delightful to use. In many ways it felt like what Andy Allen did recently with his new camera app, very branded, feels a bit like a toy—except it wasn't in 3D. The third app was the cherry on the cake: a thank-you to our early believers at Zenly, saying, 'Hey, we have to release this location app.' It's very simple, doesn't have any chat, doesn't have any functionality besides just being able to find friends. We released these three apps one after another. From the start to the period we shipped them, we went crazy on iterations, creating this universe from scratch, the look and feel of all these apps. Making sure the Amo brand would sweat through the details on each product was definitely challenging, and some failed or pivoted along the way.

还有第三个应用，它本来应该是一个附带项目，但后来成了现在 AMO 的主打应用，这很棒。我们在某种程度上已经掌握了 Zenly 的成功配方。所以，它就是 Bump，而且发展得很好。它和 Zenly 在很多方面都不一样，但你仍然能看出里面有 Zenly 的 DNA。

There is the third app which was supposed to be kind of a side project but came out to be the main app now at AMO, which is great. But we knew the recipe in a way of Zenly. So, it's Bump and it's going very well, and it's different. It's different than Zenly in many ways, but you can still tell there is a DNA of Zenly in there.

不过我想快点聊一下 DNA 这件事。能谈谈你当初为这个宇宙构建的创意方向吗？因为我觉得现在大多数产品在考虑套件时，都是「我们共用一套图标风格」或「我们共用这个渐变」之类的。你知道，这些其实没什么意义。但你创造出了一套我以前从未见过的视觉语言。比如我第一次下载的时候，我想应该是 ID，我之前从没见过那样的东西。那么，你是如何为这个宇宙找到那套语言的呢？

I want to go into the DNA piece really quickly though. Can we talk about the initial creative direction for the universe that you were building? Because I think most products right now when they think about a suite, it's like, well, we'll share an icon style or we'll share this gradient. You know, it doesn't really mean that much. But you were able to create a visual language that I've never seen anything like it before. Like when I first downloaded, I guess it would have been ID. I mean, I had never seen anything like that. So, how did you arrive at that language for the universe?

我们塑造 AMO 设计团队的方式是非常 360 度的。有两位设计联合创始人，也就是产品设计联合创始人。一个是 Nicola、Nicolò Faru，另一个是我，我们两个人是核心团队的产品设计师。AMO 最早期的员工之一，实际上是 Van Fujer，我想他是联合创始人之后 AMO 招的第一个真正的员工。Van 和我当然主要负责设计产品和功能等等，但大多数时候首先是在创造这个新宇宙。所以可以说，它是视觉和品牌作为我们产品的延伸。Van 品味也非常好，所以我的角色是提出愿景和方向，然后和他们一起迭代。但我最初的方向和愿景并不是正确的那个。我完全投入在打造一种奢侈品。它感觉非常精致，几乎像是点击按钮就像触摸宝石。点击某种黑玛瑙，因为它是黑色、有点闪亮等等。周围还有某种油性的反射。根据你倾斜手机的角度——我们没有把这个做出来。它非常酷，感觉很好，但不好玩。它不。它很冷。它不温暖。它不令人愉悦。它离我们在 Zenly 的乐趣还有十万八千里。所以，我想在大约 4 个月后，我们心想：『这不是正确的方向。』我不得不回去说：『好吧，我现在要做的是——好吧，这很酷。』但人们不会期待我们做那个。它不在我们现在的质量水平上。它不在我们现在的水准上。所以我们必须把标准提得更高更高。而且我们总是喜欢谈光环效应。在很多方面，Zenly 的设计只是基于一个 Logo 和第一套 UI 图标。它们非常有弹性。Logo 非常多彩、令人愉悦，它把这个光环效应带进了 UI、产品、氛围和一切。所以我们必须找到那个核心元件，那个在 AMO 会创造光环效应的原子。我们通过设计头像和个人形象找到了它。你在 AMO 的应用里如何代表自己？你的朋友在 AMO 的应用里如何被代表？所以我们坐下来，我们坐下来迭代它长什么样，然后我们得出结论：这在所有 AMO 应用里将是至关重要的——那就是真实的你。它不是 emoji，不是头像，不是 Bitmoji。它实际上是你，但是一个动态的你。它必须是你，非常有表现力。于是我们想出了这些微型头像，几乎就像 GIF 或实况照片。这早于苹果的动态贴纸。所以我们对此非常自豪。从那时起，感觉每当你创建——我们有过这种很酷的体验，有点奇怪的体验——创建你的动态。当它被录制时，你会看到自己在一个地图上的图钉里，或者在这个 ID 空间里，像一个螺旋，然后人们会说：『嘿，这看起来像一张你自己的拼贴画，就像这样被甩上去、像冰箱贴那样动起来。』所以我们想出了这个冰箱贴的点子，说它几乎就像磁铁。它会粘在冰箱上，但方式是乱糟糟的。不是，如果你看冰箱，冰箱从来不好看。看起来并不好。但人们会把纸、便利贴、磁铁等贴上去。所以我们有了一个想法：基于这种乱糟糟但又不刻意追求设计的拼贴品牌。所以有时它是被剪碎的文本、照片片段、艺术片段等等。所有这一切以一种非常混乱的方式混在一起，但总是经过 Van 的深思熟虑摆放。感觉就像：好吧，我想我们有了一个真正酷且独特的东西，我们基于它创造了所有应用。即使是今天，比如你在 Bump 里选择朋友、和他们互动、给他们发物品、表情符号或其他什么，感觉总是一张贴纸、一张纸或什么，以你的方式扔向他们。所以，这就是我们想出来的过程。

How we shaped the design team at AMO was very 360. There were two design co-founders, product design co-founders. There was Nicola, Nicolò Faru and myself as the two product designers from the core team. And one of the first hires at AMO, actually Van Fujer, I think was the first actual hire employee of AMO after the co-founders. And Van and I were really responsible, of course, for designing products and features and so on, but mostly as well at first on creating this new universe. So you could say it's both visual and brand as an extension of our products. But Van has this really great taste as well, so my role was to give a vision and direction and iterate together with them to something. But the first direction and vision I had was not the right one. I went all in on crafting kind of luxury products. It felt very polished. It felt almost like tapping buttons would almost feel like you would tap a gem. Tapping some kind of onyx stone because it was black and a little bit shiny and so on. There were like some kind of oily reflections around it. Depending on how you would tip the phone, we did not ship this one. It was very cool. It felt nice, but it wasn't funny. It wasn't. It was cold. It was not warm. It wasn't delightful. It was miles away from the fun we had at Zenly. So, after I think 4 months, we're like, 'This is not the right one.' And I had to go back and say, 'Okay, my role right now is to say, okay, this is cool.' But people will not expect us to do that. It's not on the quality level. It's not on the taste level we are right now. So we have to raise the bar even above and above. And we always like to talk about halo effect. In many ways, the Zenly designs were created based on just a logo and a first set of UI icons. They were very bouncy. The logo was very colorful and delightful, and it created this halo effect into the UI, into the product, the vibe and everything. So we had to find what is the core piece, the atom that will create this halo effect at AMO. We found it through designing the avatars, the profiles. How do you represent yourself in AMO apps? How are your friends being represented in AMO apps? So we kind of sat down, we sat down on iterating on how does it look like, and we came up of saying this is going to be very essential across all AMO apps: it's the real you. It's not an emoji, it's not an avatar, it's not a Bitmoji. It's actually you, but it's you being animated. It has to be you, very expressive. And so we came up with these tiny avatars almost like GIFs or live photos in a way. It was before animated stickers from Apple. So, we were very proud of this one. And from this point, it felt like every time you would create, we had this cool experience, kind of weird experience, of create your motion. While it was being recorded, and then you would see yourself within this pin on a map or you know in this ID space around as a spiral, and people saying, 'Hey, it looks like a collage of yourself just being slapped like this and animated almost like on the fridge.' So we came up with this fridge idea of saying it's almost like magnets. It would stick on the fridge but in a messy way. It doesn't, if you look at fridges, fridges never look good. It doesn't look great. But people put paper on it, post-its, magnets and so on. So we had this idea of creating a collage brand based on that without being very careful about the design. So sometimes it was cut pieces of text, pieces of photos, pieces of art and so on. All of this mixed together in a very messy way, but always thoughtful position by Van and so on. It feels like okay, I think we have something really cool and unique, and we created all the apps based on that. Even today, like when you select friends in Bump, when you interact with them, when you send items to them, emojis or whatever, it feels like it's always a piece of stickers, a piece of paper or something that you throw at them in your way. So, this is how we came up with it.

我很喜欢这种有一个小小的想法内核的情况。你知道，你有一个小小的突破，它解锁了一个小小的主题，然后一切都从这个原点扩散开去。作为一个采访过很多我最爱的产品、并了解它们背后故事的人，这是一个非常一致的主题：你往往只有这一个突破时刻，它却为几乎所有东西创造了线索。

I love when there's just a little kernel of an idea. You know, you have one little breakthrough, it unlocks one little motif, and then everything spirals out of that place. And being someone who's interviewed a lot of my favorite products and learned the stories behind them, that is a very consistent theme where you just have this one moment of breakthrough that creates the strand for basically everything.

我就是喜欢这一点。它非常有机，非常混乱。它总是得在四周彻底疯起来，而最终你只需要提炼出其中非常重要的东西，也就是那个真正特别、真正让人愉悦的核心，然后你就去尽情发挥它。你就跟它一起疯。

I just love this. It's very organic. It's very chaotic. It always has to go crazy all around, and ultimately you would just extract what's very essential about it, like the core thing that is really special and delightful about it, and you just exploit it. You just go crazy with it.

我觉得这期节目对我的一个目标是，试着提炼一些进入 Zenly 和 AMO 的核心原则，让其他听众——主要是我自己——能够逆向工程它，对吧？而且我觉得很多时候人们谈到愉悦感时，会想到在流程末尾撒一把彩带纸屑。当人们想到游戏化时，会想到徽章和排行榜系统。而很明显你已经能超越这些，把愉悦感和游戏手感当作产品策略和用户体验的核心部分。请跟我们聊聊，要达到那一步需要什么。

I think a goal for me from this episode is to try to extract some of the core principles that went into Zenly and AMO so that other people listening, myself mainly, can reverse engineer it, right? And I think a lot of times when people talk about delight, we think of confetti that is slapped on at the end of a flow. And when people think about gamification, we think about a badge and leaderboard system. And it's very clear that you have been able to push past that and think about delight and game feel as like a core part of the product strategy and UX. Talk to us a little bit about what it takes to get to that point.

你不需要把每样东西都做得纯功能性。它可以很好用，也很令人愉悦。它不一定非要有彩带纸屑，不一定非要有蓝色或到处都是高饱和色彩。但如果你总是去想：嘿，我点这个按钮会发生什么？反应是什么？反馈是什么？也许那只是一个微小的动画。也许那是一个在你的手机上被非常精心调校的触觉反馈。也许是屏幕上有别的什么在发生。

You don't have to build everything to be functional. It can be great to use and delightful. It doesn't have to have confetti. It doesn't have to be to have blue colors or saturated colors everywhere. But if you always think about, hey, what happens when I tap this button? What's the reaction? What's the feedback? Perhaps it's just a tiny animation. Perhaps it's a haptic feedback that is really carefully done on your phone. Perhaps it's something else happening on the screen.

但正是这类互动和愉悦感，才会创造独一无二的体验。即使人们可能说不出为什么喜欢这款应用、为什么感觉这么好，但这种感受，我认为会在潜意识里影响你对一款每天使用的产品品质的感知。关键在于所有的小细节。比如在 Ammo 上，在 Bump 上，当你浏览好友时。传统的方式，或者说你设计它的第一种机械式思路，就是我不知道，面板或轮播图。也许是一种视图、一个会折叠起来的面板，然后里面有类似联系人列表的单元格。你知道的，标准做法就是这样。Find My 是这么做的。Life360 是这么做的。我们决定直接采用现有的范式、现有的界面习惯，但让它们更触感化、更实体化，就像老式电话和老式名片一样。大概 50 年前，桌子上会放一个巨大的 Rolodex 旋转名片架，里面有名片、商务名片，你可以快速翻看，还有那种带转盘的老式电话。于是我们萌生了这样的想法：用类似 iPod 的浏览方式，把好友做成一个转轮。你只是在转轮上滑动，而且特别有趣，因为当你浏览屏幕底部、拇指下方的好友时，会看到所有这些面孔在进入屏幕中心时动起来。它们起初是静止的，当到达屏幕中心时，就会看到好友的动画头像做着各种疯狂的事、录着东西。这营造了一种非常棒的期待感。每次使用这样的应用，都会带来笑容。如果用了四五天后，你用这款应用时依然会微笑，那就说明你为用户创造了非常特别的东西。这就是我们整体的思考方式。整体体验是一回事，但里面所有的小细节又是另一回事，而且这需要时间。没错，今天人们说你可以两天内做出一个东西、赶紧上线。但我认为，如果你不是花两天，而是多花两天——比如花四天而不是两天——品质会更上一层楼，标准会提高，你也更有机会创造出非常令人愉悦的产品。也许它只会比竞争对手好 2% 或 3%。我觉得这没关系。没关系，因为你多走了这一步，去创造出色的体验。又或者，你真的很想让那个渐变效果做到位，但有人跟你说：“嘿，谁在乎你的渐变效果？赶紧上线吧。”我觉得这招在 10 年前行得通，但现在不行了。

But it's this type of interactions and delight that will create a unique experience. And people, even though they can perhaps not point out why they love using this app and why it feels great, it participates subconsciously, I think, in how you perceive the quality of a product you use every day. It's all the little things. For example, on Ammo, on Bump, when you would browse through your friends. The traditional way, or perhaps the first mechanical way you would design it, is just, I don't know, panels or carousels. Perhaps it's a view, a panel that just folds up, and then you have cells just like a contact list. You know, the standard way of doing so. And this is how Find My works. This is how Life360 works. We decided to just go and use existing paradigms and existing communities that are more tactile and more physical to use, like these old phones and old business cards. 50 years ago or so, they had this huge Rolodex thing on the desk, which has cards, business cards, you could quickly go through, or these old phones with wheels. We kind of came up with this idea of having, just like the iPod way of browsing, your friends as a wheel. You just go through a wheel, and it's just fun because, when you browse your friends at the bottom of the screen under your thumb, you would see all these faces getting animated when they enter the center of the screen. They weren't animated yet, and then when they reached the center of the screen, you would see your friends being animated and doing crazy things, recording things. It creates really nice anticipation. It creates smiles every time you use such an app. If you're smiling when you use this app even after four or five days, you know you created something really special with users. This is how we would think about it as a whole. The whole experience is one thing, but all the tiny things inside are another. But it takes time. Definitely today, people say you can build things in two days, go crazy and ship it. But I think if you spend just two more days instead of two — like spend four days instead of two days — the quality will be on top, the bar will be raised, and you will have greater chances to create a very delightful product. Or perhaps it will be just 2% or 3% better than the competitor. I think it's fine. It's fine, because you went the extra mile of creating great experiences. Or because you really wanted this gradient to work, but someone told you, “Hey, who cares about your gradient? Just ship it.” I think this worked 10 years ago, but it doesn't today.

谁知道呢，也许模型真的会变得非常厉害，厉害到你说的一些品质标准，大众也能达到。但你能用 Ammo 做到的事情——那才是设计上的差异化，对吧？那不一样，不是靠把一堆小细节做出来，而是通过非常有创造力的想法来实现差异化，这些想法由设计驱动，而且相比其他人都在玩的那个沙盒，真的是天马行空。我很好奇，回顾你在 Ammo 的经历，你有什么想法？你是怎么做到那一步的？比如，要培养一种氛围，让这类想法能够生长和繁荣，那是什么样的？需要做些什么？

And who knows, maybe the models do get incredible to the point where some of the quality bars that you're talking about are able to be hit by the masses. But what you were able to do with Ammo — that is design differentiation, right? Like, that's different, not necessarily through executing the aggregate of small details. It's differentiation through very creative ideas that are design-driven and truly exist out in left field compared to the sandbox that everybody else is playing in. I'm curious if you have any thoughts reflecting on your journey with Ammo. How did you get there? Like, what does it look like, or what does it take, to cultivate this atmosphere where those types of ideas can grow and thrive?

这是个非常有趣的问题。我觉得这其实是双向的。有时候你会创造出某种非常特别、非常独特的东西，作为一种用法。你有时会创造出一些新的交互范式，你知道它们非常有效，人们会因此记住你。如果你还记得 15 年前的 Loren Brichter，他创造了下拉刷新这类范式。我们其实也做过类似的范式，比如 Zenly 上的边缘缩放，还有 Bump 里你必须沿着屏幕拉动拇指的那个操作。它有点隐蔽，但一旦你习惯了，就再也无法用旧方式使用其他地图了。每次我打开 Apple Maps 或手机上的任何新地图，我都会下意识地尝试从边缘拉动。你知道的，就像那个边缘缩放其实存在于侧边，基本上就像一个网页视图，没有侧边栏。这很疯狂。它太简单了，但正是这类体验会真正留在人们心里。我们总是在想，我们会怎么用它？是借鉴现有范式，还是创造新的？就像游戏，世界上有无穷无尽的游戏，但 UI、使用方式、与地图的交互方式、与角色、物品、枪械等等的交互方式，总是不同的。现有范式是存在的，但 UI 和 UX 是无穷的。我们就是用这种方式思考如何设计 Zenly、如何设计 Bump、ID 和 Tilt 等等。有时候事情会出错。有时候你发布的东西——Ammo 或 Zenly 上有很多东西是用户完全看不懂的。他们下载后会是这种感觉：“这怎么回事？我不知道发生了什么。”所以我认为创造新体验、新设计和令人愉悦的东西是很棒的。但有时候你会迷失在里面。你走得太远了，用户也迷失了，你就失去了重点。用户不会理解发生了什么。所以有时你必须退后一步，调整一下。而有时候你会硬着头皮坚持己见，说：“没错，我们就是这样做事。这就是我们的 DNA。我们直接上线，就这么干。”但不行——如果用户不打算用它、不参与、也不付费，那你就知道自己做错了。所以它总是……比如说，用 Ammo 的产品可能会让你觉得很疯狂，但它始终是一场平衡的游戏。我觉得归根结底，关键在于你如何权衡，始终在“这足够令人愉悦吗？等等，我们是不是牺牲了可用性？我们是不是应该达成共识，往回退一点？”之间做裁决。我们也非常在意口碑。比如，它是否有一个明显的方式去被动吸引新用户？因为这个人会截图、录屏，或者在学校里、在外面给朋友看，然后说：“哇，这太棒了。你做了什么？我能试一下吗？这个应用叫什么名字？”而我们从来不会低估这一点，这一点是肯定的。

It's a really interesting question. And I think it goes both ways. I think sometimes you create something so special and so unique as a usage. You create new patterns sometimes that you know are very effective, and people will remember you for this. If you remember Loren Brichter from 15 years ago, who created the pull-to-refresh, all these kinds of patterns. And we kind of came up with something similar with the patterns actually, like the edge zoom on Zenly, and Bump when you have to pull your thumb along the screen. It's kind of hidden, but once you get used to it, you cannot use another map the old way. Every time I open Apple Maps or any new map on my phone, I keep trying to pull from the edge, you know. Like, there is no sidebar on the side, just like a web view basically. It's crazy. It's so simple. But it's this type of experience that really sticks. And we always think about how would we use it. Like, do we borrow existing patterns or do we create new ones? Just like a game: there are infinite games out there, but the UIs, the way you use them, the way you interact with the map, the way you interact with characters, items, guns or whatever, is always different. There are existing patterns, but there are infinite UIs and UXs. And this is how we think about how we design Zenly, how we design Bump, ID, and Tilt, and so on. Sometimes it can go wrong. Sometimes you can ship something — there are many things on Ammo or Zenly that people just don't get. They download it and they're like, “What's happening? I don't understand what's happening.” So I think it's great to create new experiences, new designs, and delightful stuff. But sometimes you get lost into it. You go too far, people get lost, and you're losing the point. Your users won't understand what's happening. So sometimes you have to step back a little bit and adjust. And sometimes you will brute-force your way into it, saying, “Yeah, this is how we do things. This is our DNA. We just ship it and let's roll with it.” But no — if users won't use it, won't engage with it, or won't pay for it, then you know you're doing something wrong. So it's always... it might feel crazy to use Ammo products, for example, but it's always a game of balance. I think ultimately it's always how you balance things out, and always arbitrate between “Is this delightful enough? But wait, did we lose in usability? Do we just — you know — have a consensus to go back a little bit?” We also think about word of mouth a lot. Like, does it have an obvious way to passively attract new users? Because this person will screenshot it, screen-record it, or show it at school, you know, outside, and say, “Wow, this is amazing. What did you do? Can I try? What's the app? What's the name?” And we never underestimated this for sure.

过去 15 年，我每天都在设计产品。但在过去 6 个月里，一切都变了。有了 AI 加入，我的创意产出比以往任何时候都快。但如果我得不到让团队对齐所需的反馈，这一切都不重要。而现在，获取异步反馈仍然挺糟糕的。所以我在打造一款我一直想要的产品，它叫 Inflight。我每天用它来分享想法、获取团队反馈，它完全改变了我工作方式。所以我很兴奋想展示给你。目前，我只对 Dive Club 的听众开放。请访问 dive.club/inflight 领取你的名额。

I've been designing products every day for the last 15 years. But in the last 6 months, everything has changed. With AI in the mix, I'm cranking out ideas faster than ever. But none of that matters if I can't get the feedback I need to get the team aligned. And right now, getting async feedback still kind of sucks. So I'm building the product I've always wanted, and it's called Inflight. I use it every day to share ideas and get feedback from the team, and it's totally changing the way that I work. So I'm excited to show you. Right now, I'm only giving access to Dive Club listeners. So head to dive.club/inflight to claim your spot.

我想给你抛一个假设。比如说，一家 A 轮公司把你招了进去。

I want to toss a hypothetical your way. Let's say that a Series A company brings you on.

也许他们做的是高端产品，不是企业级 SaaS 之类的。然后他们说：“Julien，我们想重新思考协作的方式。一切都可以摊开来讲。我们想激发这种创造力，想开始用设计取胜，把它视为一种竞争优势。你会从在 Ammo 的经历里汲取什么？你们当初是怎么协作的，怎么互相推动的，有哪些仪式或流程？作为顾问加入这家新公司时，你会从这些经验中借鉴什么，来影响你寻找的机会？”

Maybe they're like a premium product, not enterprise SaaS or anything like that. And they say: "Julien, we want to rethink the way that we collaborate. Everything's on the table. We want to tap into this creativity. We want to start winning with design, viewing it as a competitive advantage. What would you be drawing from at Ammo and your experience around the way that you all collaborated, the way that you pushed each other, the rituals or processes, anything that you had in place? What would you be drawing from that would influence the opportunities that you would look for as a consultant in this new company?"

你这么说很有意思，因为我离开 Ammo 之后就到了这种处境。我被带进一些更成熟的公司，有法国的也有国际的。它们——出于充分理由——如此沉浸在自己的文化里，沉浸在自己设计产品、思考产品外观和运作方式的方法里，以至于从一个外部视角来看，当你带着新鲜感加入这个团队时，第一反应就是摧毁眼前的一切。嘿，我能不能把一切都破坏、拆掉？因为现在我真的没法融进……你懂的，他们就说：‘嘿，这是设计系统。’我不需要什么设计系统。抱歉，如果你真想回到原点去创造新的体验的话。说到底，我觉得他们请我来就是为了这个：‘你能不能用全新的视角挑战我们，做点疯狂的事？我们有个品牌、有个产品，那么严肃、那么无聊——15 年前就有了——你能改变它吗？’然后我试着去做。有时保守的人会说：‘这太过头了，行不通。’但有时也会有人说：‘这就是我们要走的方向。太感谢了，我们动手吧。顺着这个思路，创造点新东西。同样的产品，但感觉完全不同，它会吸引更广的受众，而不只是你 45、50 岁的父母。’这正是我喜欢和这些公司做的工作，因为加入时你必须拿出全新的视角。我觉得这既是产品设计角色，也有点像销售角色。人们会说：‘对，但数据……你知道的，我们得用数据。’我会说：‘但现在这件事根本没有数据。除非你先试……’试一下，然后看看结果。然后你只能祈祷，双手合十，说：‘好吧，希望这会奏效。我的名声可押在上面了。’这里面有太多关于直觉和感受的东西。直觉非常重要，而这也是我们创建 Ammo 时大量使用的一个词，因为从一天到另一天，我们并不是靠六七年数据来支撑的。就像 Zenly 一样，我们埋头苦干了将近一年，发布了三款应用。当然，我们在内部做了用户测试等等，但那还不够。你把产品发布出去，然后看着数据慢慢出来，看着各项指标，然后你会想：‘好吧，这个很棒。这个彻底失败了。这个不会太顺利。’你总得从一个起点开始。这个起点混合了专业能力、基于过往经历积累的知识和数据，再加上直觉。你必须跟着直觉走。如果今天让我从零开始做一个产品，那会是 100% 靠直觉，因为这就是我的风格。我很相信这个，但我也知道现在这不是一款产品正确的发布方式。

It's funny you say that, because I was in this position since I left Ammo. I was brought into more advanced companies, French and international ones, and they are – obviously for good reasons – so into their own culture, their own ways of designing things, of thinking about what the product looks like and how this works, and so on, that from an external point of view, when you join this team with a fresh eye and so on, your first reflex is to destroy everything there is. Hey, can I just destroy and detach everything? Because right now I just cannot evolve into... you know, they're like, "Hey, here is the design system." I don't need any design system. I'm sorry, if you want to go back to from scratch and create new experiences. Ultimately I think they brought me for this reason: "Can you bring a fresh eye and challenge us and do something crazy about it? Like we have a brand, we have a product that is so serious, so boring – saw 15 years ago – can you do something about it?" And I try to do things, and sometimes you will have conservative people on the other side saying, "Yeah, this is going too far. This doesn't work." But sometimes you will also have someone that says, "This is where we need to go. Thank you so much. Let's roll. Let's piggyback on this and let's create something new. It's the same product, but it feels different, and it will be appealing for a wider audience than just your mom and dad from 45 and 50 years old." This is exactly the type of work that I love to do with these companies, because when you join them, you have to come up with a fresh eye, and I think it's both a product design role as well as a sales role a little bit. People are like, "Yeah, but data, you know, we have to use data." I'm like, "But there is no data right now with this. So unless you try it..." Try this, and let's say, let's see. And then you just have to pray, cross your fingers, and say, "Okay, I hope this is going to work. My reputation is at stake." There's so much about intuition and feelings. Gut feelings are very important, and it was a word that we used extensively when we created Ammo, because from one day to another we didn't rely on six or seven years of data. Like Zenly, we worked our heads down for almost a year and released three apps. Of course, we ran user tests internally and so on, but it's not enough. And you release this, and then you watch the data coming up, all the metrics and so on, and you're like, "Okay, this one is great. This is such a failure. This one is not going to work out very well." And you always have to start somewhere. And the somewhere is a mix of expertise and knowledge based on your previous experiences and data you learned along the way, and gut feeling. You have to go with gut feeling. If I were to start a product from scratch today, it would be 100% gut feeling, because this is who I am. I'm really into this, but I know this is not the right way to ship a product nowadays.

我特别想多了解一点你们在 Ammo 是怎么工作的，协作是什么样子。因为产出太独特了。我想知道，你们一起探索和发布产品的方式，是不是也有什么独特之处？

I do want to learn a little bit more about how you all worked and what collaboration looked like at Ammo. Because the output is so unique. I'm wondering, was there anything about the way that you all explored and shipped together that was also unique?

是的，这肯定是某种本质性东西的一部分。直到今天，我都很怀念这种感觉——不是只和设计团队协作，而是和整个公司协作。所有团队之间都有一种很深的连接，每个人都以产品为驱动，包括 HR 团队，也包括工程师，当然不仅是软件工程师——连后端工程师也是。你可能会说，你可能觉得后端工程师不真正参与塑造产品体验。但事实证明，很多绝妙的想法恰恰来自后端工程团队。我们非常注意去确保这是一种对所有人开放、倡导协作的文化。在设计团队里，当我们招新人时，总会有一点保护心态：‘嘿，这是我的地盘，这是我的领域，这是我的事。’而我们总是鼓励大家说：‘嘿，去和那个团队的这位工程师坐在一起，花一天时间，一起吃午饭，午饭后喝着咖啡坐下来，带上你们的笔记本电脑，去那个房间，坐在沙发上，直接把它做出来。’对有些人来说，这很不自然。有时候你就是想一个人独处，在一个隧道里埋头干活，然后说：‘我搞定了。’然后会有人走到你桌前问：‘这是什么？’然后你心里想：‘我真希望在你收尾之前，我们是一起讨论的。’对我来说，这就是问题所在。也许可以做得更好，也许我们可以有不同看法。慢慢地，这就变成了一种反射和习惯，最终只是为了做出更好的产品。这是我很愿意再做一次的事情。当然你可以远程协作，但当你并排坐在一起、一起创造体验的时候，感觉是不一样的。我们有那么大一个沙盒，里面有各种状态、地图上的交互、和朋友的互动等等。你会深入到细节里说：‘嘿，你能调一下这个动画的速度吗？感觉不对。’你不必等别人发一个新构建才能尝试这个新功能。就并排把它做出来，比如：给我一个预览，我们一起即兴创作。

Yes, it's definitely part of something that is essential, and even to this day this is something I miss deeply, like collaborating not just with the design team but as a whole. There is such a deep connection between all the teams. Everyone was just very product-driven, from HR team, from engineers obviously, but not just the software engineers – even the backend engineers. You might say, you might think they are not really involved in shaping the experience of the product. It turns out that many great ideas came from the backend engineering team. And we were very careful to make sure that this is a culture that is open to everyone and collaborative. And on the design team, when we hired new talents, there was always a bit of a protective sense of saying, "Hey, this is my scope, this is my jam, this is my thing." And we always encouraged people to say, "Hey, sit down with this engineer from this team, spend a day together, have lunch together, sit down after lunch with the coffee and take your laptops, go in this room, go on the couches or whatever, and just make it happen." And for some, it's just unnatural. Sometimes you just want to sit by yourself all alone and do your stuff in a tunnel and say, "Hey, I'm done." And then someone will come up to your desk and say, "What is this?" Like, "I wish we had the discussion together before you wrapped this up." To me, that is problematic. It could be perhaps much better, or perhaps we could have a different view about it. It starts to become a reflex and a habit to just do it, to just create better products ultimately. This is one thing I always love to do again. You can do it remotely of course, but it's not the same when you sit down next to each other and you create experiences together. We had this huge sandbox of the states of map interactions with friends and so on, and you would go into the details and say, "Hey, can you actually adjust the speed of this animation? It doesn't feel right." You don't have to wait for someone to ship a new build to come up to try this new feature. Just do it side by side, like, give me a preview. Let's jam together.

你其实不会真的让我合上笔记本电脑、关掉我的 Figma 文件或别的什么。要么你演示给我看怎么用 Cursor 这类工具来做，要么我们一起做。来吧，你知道的。

You don't actually let me close down my laptop and my Figma file, or my whatever. Either you show me how I can do it with Cursor or whatever, or we can do it together. Let's do it, you know.

我们能不能聊聊招聘这块？考虑到你们的文化、产品性质、设计差异化的程度，在早期与候选人交谈时，你主要是在寻找哪些信号？

Can we talk a little bit about the hiring piece? Given the culture, the nature of the products, the level of design differentiation, what were the main signals that you were hunting for when you were having those early conversations with a candidate?

这确实非常重要。我们当然不会只盯着履历——过往经历确实很重要——但最主要的还是野心。我觉得每个人都在找有野心的人；大家都想招一个真正有干劲的人。所以这一点没什么特别的。不过我们会非常关注副项目。我觉得副项目越来越关键——它们在过去被严重低估了，但今天我认为这是你招人时能得到的最强信号，不管是在设计圈还是其他领域。它关乎你空闲时间做什么、下班后做什么、工作中做什么。你是不是真的有副项目，比如在黑客马拉松里冒出来的想法？这能印证所有要点。它基本能说明你很好奇，你在做功课，因为你了解所有可以用来提升手艺、打造产品和想法的新工具。所以这很棒。你对自己所在领域当下的一切了如指掌。它能释放你的创造力。而且它带来一种创业者心态，这在初创公司，尤其是早期阶段，非常重要。所以当我们看到一个申请者，心想：哇，你在 6 个月内就把这个和那个做出来了——好吧，纯属爱好。哦，你没有用户？没关系，没关系。你不一定擅长营销或推广。也许你恰恰相反——没错。你不用跟我们讲这些。我们不在乎你的过往经历。你在 Meta 待过、在 Apple 待过，我们都不在乎。跟我们聊聊你这个具体的副项目吧。

It's definitely something that is very important. We didn't look, of course, at track record—previous experience is really important—but the main thing would be ambition. I think everyone is looking for ambition; everyone wants to hire someone who is ambitious. So there's nothing special to say about that. But then we will be very careful about side projects. I think side projects are more and more—they were very underestimated back then, but today I think it's the strongest signal you can get when you hire someone, whether it's in the design space or anywhere else. It's what do you do in your free time? What do you do after work? What do you do at work? Do you have a side project at work, actually, like something that you came up with during a hackathon? It just ticks all the boxes. It basically shows that you're very curious, that you're doing your homework, because you know all the new tools you can use and leverage for your own craft, for your own products and ideas. So it's great. You know exactly what's happening in the world today in your space. It can leverage your own creativity. And it brings this entrepreneurship mindset that is very important in the startup, especially early stage. So when we look at someone applying and we see, wow, you shipped this and this within 6 months—okay, just for fun. Oh, you don't have any users? It's okay. It's okay. You don't have to be great at marketing or distribution. Perhaps you have—exactly. You don't tell us about it. We don't care about your previous experience. You were at Meta, you were at Apple, we don't care. Talk to us about this very specific side project.

有意思的是，15 年前我从纽约回来——顺带一提，当时我人在纽约——之后有 10 年没法回美国。2010 和 2011 年，我先后被 Google、Facebook 和 Dropbox 挖去面试，那个年代作为设计师能收到这些邀约真的很酷。我的很多设计偶像都在那里，比如 Tim Van Damme、Sebastian de With 等等。我去面试了，但每次到第四或第五轮，我都会告诉他们：“嘿，我其实被美国禁止入境了，你们能想想办法吗？”从没成功过，但至少我试了。这真的很让人沮丧。但每次这些人找到我，并不是因为我有那些大公司经历，而是因为那时候我有很酷的副项目。我做了一些应用，非常有品牌感——比如一个铃声应用，看起来就像一盒真实的磁带，可以来回翻看，外面有木质纹理，顶部还有一块 LCD 屏幕。他们就会说：“嘿，能跟我们讲讲这个应用吗？”我说：“等等，我可以跟你们讲讲 Behance。”然后他们说：“我们不在乎那些大牌。跟我们聊聊这个应用吧。”这就像一把特洛伊木马，把我带进了所有那些新酷公司。所以每一次都是一样的说法：人们看重你的副项目，尤其是今天，它太重要了。

It's funny because 15 years ago, when I got back from New York—after being in New York, incidentally—I couldn't go back to the US for 10 years. I got scouted and interviewed for Google, Facebook, and Dropbox in 2010 and 2011, which was really cool back then as a designer to join. Many of my design heroes were working there, like Tim Van Damme, Sebastian de With, and so on. I interviewed there, and always at the fourth or fifth step, I would tell them, "Hey, I'm actually banned from the US. Can you guys do anything about it?" And it never worked, but at least I tried. It was really frustrating. But every time these guys would reach out, they found me not because I had this big-name experience, but because I had cool side projects back then. I had apps that I worked on, very branded apps—like this ringtone app that feels like a real tape that you can browse back and forth, with a wooden texture around it and an LCD screen on top. And they would be like, "Hey, can you tell us about this app?" I'm like, "Wait, I can tell you about Behance." Like, "We don't care about the big brands. Talk to us about this app." And it was always kind of a Trojan horse into all these new cool companies. So every time, it's always the same speech: people work on your side project, especially today, it's so important.

你知道吗，10 年前这确实更像是一种小众观点。人们确实在意简历和之前的公司。而我觉得，至少以我的经验来看，如今公司比以往任何时候都更想看到副项目。因为你在自由时间、不受任何限制的情况下能做到什么程度——我是说，你可以做得远得多。对很多在传统 B2B 产品上工作的人来说，你懂，用这些新工具、发挥创意、不断尝试和实验，你能在副项目上走得更远。我确实觉得现在这个时刻，副项目里有大量的 alpha——非常多，因为招聘经理们就想看到它们。

You know, 10 years ago that did feel like a slightly more minority perspective. People did care about the resumes and previous companies. And I feel like, at least in my experience, more than ever before, companies want to see side projects. Because what you're able to do on your free time with no constraints—I mean, you can go a lot further. For a lot of people that are working on more legacy B2B products, you know, you can go so much further on your side projects with these new tools, being creative and trying things and experimenting. I do feel like there's this moment in time right now where there's a lot of alpha in side projects, like a lot, because the hiring managers want to see them.

确实有上升的趋势。越来越多人在尝试和捣鼓，但你还是可以——天哪——用非常简单的方式脱颖而出，比如在作品集里加一个“实验”标签页。你知道吗，这对那些在寻找下一个机会的人来说简直是稳操胜券。

There's an uptick for sure. More people are experimenting and tinkering, but there's still—my gosh—you can stand out in a very real way with something as simple as just having a little experiments tab on your portfolio. You know, that's a slam dunk for people who are looking for the next thing.

完全同意，我 100% 认同这一点。我最近遇到一位来自湾区、才华横溢的哥们，他刚结束在 Microsoft 的 10 年职业生涯。你知道吗，当我问他感觉如何，为什么想回到一线去早期公司和初创公司时，他——我其实担心的是，你懂，简历上的那种美式大公司职场文化。他跟我说：“我 9 月离职，从那以后我一直在发布这个、这个、还有这个。而且用 AI 做设计，这个和这个。”我当时就想：好，完美。这——你会没事的。你会没事的。这正是我想听到的，也正是正确的心态。这家伙非常饥渴，在 Microsoft 待了 10 年，有点像是憋着一股劲出来，然后说：“好，现在我要全力以赴。”

Absolutely, I 100% align with this. I met this great, talented guy from the Bay Area recently who just ended his 10 years at Microsoft. You know, when I asked him how it feels and why he wants to go back to the trenches into early-stage companies and startups, he—I was worried about, you know, this corporate America on the resume. And he mentioned to me, "I left in September, and since then I've been shipping this, this, this, and this. And with AI design, this and this." I'm like, okay, perfect. This is—you'll be fine. You'll be fine. This is exactly what I wanted to hear, and this is exactly the right mindset. The guy is so hungry, and after 10 years of Microsoft, he kind of went out frustrated and said, "Okay, now I'm going to go all in into this."

我们再来深入聊一下这个话题，因为这是你最近在大量尝试的东西。你做了 Offmarket。你在某种意义上帮助整个招聘流程，与候选人和公司合作。基于你这种宏观视角，你注意到了什么？我们能怎么帮助听众理解你今天在就业市场上看到的情况，以及这会如何影响他们战略性地定位自己或推进招聘流程——或者你觉得听众能从中学习的任何东西？

Let's go deeper on this topic for a second, because this is something that you've been playing with a lot recently. You have Offmarket. You're kind of helping this hiring process, working with candidates and companies. Given your macro perspective, what are some of the things that you're noticing? How can we help people listening understand what you're seeing in today's job market and how that might impact the way they would strategically position or approach the hiring process—or anything like that that you think people listening could learn from?

我觉得我见证到的主要事情——虽然现在还非常早期，但用 Offmarket 做这种匹配已经四个月了——是团队的类型、组建方式，以及他们在初创期如何成形、随后又如何扩展，与 10 年前完全不同。我现在合作的很多团队会公开、正式地说：“嘿，我们会很快成为一家市值 10 亿的公司，但我们只会是 7 个人。我们不会变成 100 人，我们就 7 个人，而且至少 3 年内都是 7 个人。”他们有一个非常清晰的路线图，说明为什么 3 年内是 7 人，为什么第 4 年可能变成 15 人，但不会更多。这就是为什么我一直对我遇到的设计师说：“嘿，如果你想有机会加入这些公司，你必须成为 360 度全才。”在我看来，创始设计师这个角色，纸上谈兵的话，是如果你想做任何事情的完美角色。

I think the main thing I've been witnessing—and this is very early still, but four months later with Offmarket, this matching thing—is how the typology, the setup, and how teams are getting formed up at the beginning and how they scale is completely different from 10 years ago. There are many teams I'm working with right now that publicly and officially say, "Hey, we will be a billion company very fast, but we'll only be seven of us. We won't be a hundred; we'll be just seven, and we'll be seven for at least three years." And they have a very clear roadmap of why there will be seven in three years and why there will be perhaps 15 in the fourth year, but not more. This is why I keep saying to the designers I meet, "Hey, if you want to have a chance to join these companies, you have to be 360." The founding designer role, in my opinion, on paper, is the perfect role if you want to do anything.

你想参与战略和愿景，也希望非常实际、亲力亲为，去打磨产品、快速迭代、上线酷的东西，但你还得设计，或者利用 AI 来设计你的 LinkedIn 横幅之类的。而且你很可能在接下来几个月甚至几年里都是唯一的设计师。不会有别人。你得自己干，或者最多有一个很小的设计团队，不会有更多。有时候这真的挺残酷的。有些设计师习惯了庞大的团队，突然很想去某家公司，我会告诉他们：他们想见你，但你得先知道，这会非常挑战。无论是职责、节奏还是范围都会很有挑战性。一切都太不一样了，而且变化非常快。你必须非常熟悉 AI，必须非常有迭代精神。实际上你不会在 Figma 上花那么多时间，你会花更多时间在所有可用的工具上，而且你很可能直接把自己的代码和改动提交到代码库里，没有人会替你干。这恰恰是当下人才市场上非常稀缺的能力。我有一个很熟的朋友，刚签了柏林一家非常厉害的公司。我问他在入职两三个月后过得怎么样，他们告诉我：这家伙太猛了，速度超快，入职两天就拿到了一个能用的原型，远超我们的预期，真的太棒了，他就是完美匹配。这让我非常欣慰，因为我觉得这正是这个人适合那家公司的原因。所以，我想我这次做得不错，但我也想现在做同样的事。我想打造自己的东西，也要非常快，同时不牺牲品味和愉悦感。

You want to participate in the strategy and the vision. You want to be very operational and hands-on, crafting the product, iterating, shipping cool things, but you also have to design or leverage AI to design your new LinkedIn banner or whatever. And chances are you will be the only designer for months or years to come. There will be no one else. You have to work on your own, or perhaps there will be a very small design team, but not much more. And sometimes it comes up as very brutal in a way. There are some designers who were used to huge teams, huge squads. All of a sudden they are very attracted to one of these companies, and I tell them, well, they want to meet you, but you have to know first that it's going to be very challenging. It's going to be challenging in terms of responsibilities, pace, and scope. Everything is so different and changes very fast. You have to be very fluent in AI. You have to be very iterative. You won't spend that much time in Figma actually. You will spend much more time on all the available tools you have, and chances are you will actually commit your own code and changes directly in the codebase, and no one else will do it for you. This is something that is widely sought after in terms of talent right now. I have a close friend of mine who just signed with a very incredible company in Berlin, Germany. When I asked about how he was doing two or three months after he joined the company, they told me, this guy is insane, he's going super fast, within two days he already had a working prototype in hand. This is far more than we expected. This is really great. This is the perfect match. And this really warms my heart, because this is exactly why I thought this guy was great for this company. So, I think I did a great job on this, but I also want to do the same now. I want to build my own stuff and be very fast as well, without sacrificing taste and delight.

一直以来，创始设计师的经历和在大公司设计团队工作的人之间都存在一条鸿沟。但天啊，这条鸿沟感觉比两年前还要大一个数量级。

There's always been this gap between the founding designer experience and somebody that's working at a very large design org or in this established company. But man, that gap does feel like it is an order of magnitude larger than it was even two years ago.

是的。

Yeah.

我不知道。我在想这一切会如何发展。因为当越来越多的团队变得精简，越来越多的公司被创立，设计岗位的市场份额有多少是流向更小的设计团队？而以前是那些庞大设计团队占据了大量人才。现在正在发生这种碎片化。我常常在想，这对每一个正在听这期的普通候选人来说，二阶效应会是什么。你知道，10 年前，如果你来自 Meta、Apple、Snap 这些很酷的消费类公司，在纸面上看起来就像‘哇，你是这个世界的人’。但现在，如果你离开这些公司去找创业公司的工作，会很难，真的很难。

I don't know. I guess I kind of just wonder how it all shakes out. Because as more and more teams get lean, and as more and more companies are created, what percentage of the job market for design is allocated towards smaller design orgs, where previously you had these massive design orgs that were commanding so much of the talent? There is this fragmentation that is happening, and I think a lot about what the second-order effects are for your everyday candidate who's listening to this. You know, 10 years ago, when you came out of, say, Meta, Apple, Snap, all these cool consumer companies, on paper it's like, wow, you're from this world. But now, if you're out of these companies and looking for startup jobs, it's hard, like really hard.

对我来说，我会推销这些候选人，而且我会非常坦诚、直白。当我介绍在这些大公司里有很好履历的人时，我会尽可能把一切优势都讲给创业公司听。我会说，嘿，你看，钱已经不再是这个人最核心的驱动力了。首先，他加入是因为他非常在乎使命、产品和团队，我觉得你们应该跟他或她聊聊。你们可以去面谈。然后他们就会说：不不不，我就是不想要这些大公司出来的人。我想要的人要么有自由职业背景、要么有代理公司背景、要么有创业公司背景，而且还要有业余项目之类的。现在 90% 的需求都是这种候选人，至少在我认识的这些公司里是这样，他们要的正是这种类型。

It's like, for me, I try to sell these profiles, and I try to be very transparent and bold about this. When I present profiles with great track records in these companies, I try to leverage everything I can for the startup. I say, hey, look, money isn't the primary driver for this profile anymore. First, he will join because he deeply cares about the mission, the product, and the team, and I think you should talk to him or her. Go ahead, you know. And they're like, no, no, no, I just don't want anyone from these companies. I want someone that has either a freelance background, an agency background, or a startup background, but with side projects and so on. That's 90% of the profiles that are needed right now, at least in my very modest portfolio of companies. That's exactly the type of profile that is needed.

其实我也看到同样的情况。我手头有一批非常多元的公司，有一些是更大的公司，很多是创业公司，但即使是更大的公司也会来找我说：我们想更像创业公司那样运作。另一方面，你知道，每个人都在试图至少骗自己相信他们比实际更灵活，而这显然需要大得多的组织变革。作为大公司，这不是一夜之间就能做到的，但这就是愿望——愿望就是表现得像创业公司。如果你来自一家非常大的公司，你完全可以成功，但……

I'm seeing the same thing actually too. I have a decently wide spectrum of companies that are hiring—some bigger companies and a lot of startups—but even the bigger companies come to me and say, 'We want to operate more like startups.' On the other side too, you know, everybody's trying to at least trick themselves into believing that they are more nimble than they actually are, and that obviously requires much larger organizational changes. You don't just get that overnight as a big company, but that is the desire—the desire is to behave more like a startup. And if you come from a very big company, you can totally succeed, but...

是的。

Yes.

在招聘经理的脑子里有这样一种想法：你必须向我证明你不会把那种工作方式带进来。你从一开始就要越过这个坎。我已经见过太多次了，我会想，好吧，这是一个相当明显的趋势。说出来甚至感觉很奇怪，因为很多人正处在这种情境里，但这就是当下市场的现实。

There's something in a hiring manager's brain that's like, you have to show me that you're not going to bring that way of working with you. You have this hurdle that you have to overcome out of the box, and I've seen it now enough times that it's like, okay, this is a pretty clear trend. Then it feels weird to even say it, because a lot of people are in that situation, but that is the reality of the market right now.

没错。你知道所有这些旧的扩张人头的做法——追求人头数曾经是衡量成功的标准。就像‘嘿，我的团队现在有 50 人了’。但你把一个产品设计岗算成双倍甚至三倍的人头，这就是旧的团队搭建方式。然后三年后，你有 1500 人被裁，因为那一套已经行不通了。我能预见这会是怎样。它正在转变，确实在转变。

Definitely. You know all these old ways of building huge headcounts—chasing headcount was actually a metric of success. It's like, hey, my team is 50 people now. But you have one product design role that is double or triple counted. It's the old way of building teams, and then three years later you have 1,500 people getting laid off because it doesn't work anymore. I can see how this is all going to be. It's shifting. It's definitely shifting.

我还注意到，有些团队甚至没有语言来描述他们要招的岗位。比如我昨天跟一个人聊，那是一家创业公司，我相信大部分听众都听说过它，非常酷的一家创业公司。他们说：‘我们想招——他是设计师，也是产品经理，但我们还希望他能写代码，而且希望他能自如地探索动效和一些动画相关的东西。’他们描述的这个人基本上横跨了我们对工程、产品、设计三位一体的传统划分。他们什么都想要一点，而且这种角色连个词都没有，他们连要招的岗位都没有一个头衔。

Another thing I'm noticing is that some teams don't even have the language to describe the roles that they're hiring for. I was talking to somebody yesterday, and it's a startup that I bet most people listening to this have heard of. It's a very cool startup, and they're like, 'Yeah, we want—it's a designer, it's a product person, but we definitely want them to be living in the code too, and we hope that they could be kind of comfortable exploring motion and some animation stuff.' And the person they're describing is straddling basically every discipline of how we've traditionally thought of the engineering-product-design triad. They want a little bit of everything, and there's not even a word for it. They don't even have a title for the role that they're hiring.

完全同意。

Exactly.

我当时只是坐在那儿自己偷笑，因为这非常有趣地反映了市场现状。人们甚至不知道自己想要什么，他们只是希望有人能进来、能产生影响。

And I was just sitting there smirking to myself, because it's such an interesting reflection of the state of the market. It's like people don't even know what they want. They just want somebody to be able to come in and make an impact.

对，对。我什么都想要。他们给我带来一个全能的人。我要的是——你懂吧，我要的是金子，我要动效设计、3D 设计、产品设计。

Yes. Yeah. I want everything. They bring me someone who can do everything. I want—I want the gold. I want motion design, 3D design, product design.

我什么都想要。而且我希望这个人也能写代码。我越来越能看到这一点。而且我觉得这也是我们工作的一部分，我也知道这对你来说同样如此——在筛选新候选人和新人才时，要说：‘嘿，这是你非常擅长的地方，而我这正好有完美匹配你的机会，完美的公司，你需要跟他们聊聊。’

I want everything. And I want this person to be able to code as well. It's definitely something I can see more and more. And I think it's part of our job too, and I know it's your job too, when you're screening new candidates and new talents, to say, 'Hey, this is where you're getting very strong, and here I have the perfect match for you, the perfect company, you need to talk to them.'

好了，我们聊了很多。在放你走之前，我有个随性问题。我很好奇，作为一个对消费产品有很好品味，并且在不同有趣方向上推动边界的人，在过去一两年里，你有没有遇到过某个 app 或某类产品，让你觉得：‘哦，这个有意思，它对我有某种触动。’甚至可能触及到你在 Zenly 和 Ammo 时代成长过程中熟悉的那种 DNA。

All right, we covered a lot of ground. I have a random question before I let you go. I'm curious, as somebody who has good taste in terms of consumer products and who's pushing the envelope in different interesting ways: Is there an app or some kind of product that you've come across in the last year or two where you were like, 'Oh, that is interesting. That did something for me.' Maybe that even tapped into something that feels familiar to the DNA that you kind of grew up with in this Zenly and Ammo era.

Retro 这款 app 在精致度和工艺方面确实很棒。它并不疯狂，但所有这些微小的细节都让人觉得这是一个出色的 app，比如能发送很酷的明信片。Ammo 的设计团队几乎每天都在用这个 app，我稍微有点跟不上。我很喜欢 Duolingo 做的事情。那种工艺，水准真的很高。那里的设计团队真的非常非常出色，所有东西都紧密地连接在一起。品牌设计、动态设计、触感反馈，一切都那么那么好。所以对我来说，它就是那种在体验、视觉设计、以及我使用时的感受上都堪称完美的产品。此外还有很多我现在还不能说的，正在陆续推出。

The Retro app is really great in terms of polish, in terms of craft. It's not crazy, but there are all these tiny touches that feel like a great app, you know, the ability to send cool postcards. Almost the entire design team from Ammo uses this app on a daily basis, and I'm dragging behind a little bit. I love Duolingo for what they do. The craft, the bar is really high. The design team there is really, really good, and everything is so tightly connected together. The brand design, the motion design, the haptics, everything is so, so good. So for me, it's the type of product that is perfect in terms of experience, in terms of visual design, of how I feel when I use it. And I have many more that I cannot talk about right now, that are coming up.

我很喜欢这个回答。Julien，这次对话我确实很开心，感谢你来分享你的故事。真的非常有趣，而且我也一直是你多年来参与制作的一切的忠实粉丝。所以我很期待你接下来会做什么，也感谢你今天的时间。

I love it. Well, I've definitely had fun with this conversation, Julien, and I appreciate you coming and sharing the story. It's so, so interesting, and also just a big fan of everything that you've had a hand in making over the years. So I'm excited to see what's next, and I appreciate your time today.

谢谢你，Reed。非常感谢你邀请我。

Thank you, Reed. Thank you so much for having me.

在放你走之前，我想花一分钟跟你介绍一下我最喜欢的产品，因为我经常被问到我的技术栈是什么。Framer 是我用来建网站的工具。Genway 是我做研究的方式。Granola 是我在设计评审时做笔记的工具。Jitter 是我给设计做动效的工具。Lovable 是我用代码实现想法的方式。Mobbin 是我寻找设计灵感的地方。Paper 是我像创意人一样设计的工具。Raycast 是我每一步都在用的快捷方式。我亲自挑选了这些公司，这样我才能全职做这些节目。所以，到目前为止，支持这个节目最好的方式就是去看看它们。你可以在 dive.com/partners 找到完整列表。

Before I let you go, I want to take just one minute to run you through my favorite products because I'm constantly asked what's in my stack. Framer is how I build websites. Genway is how I do research. Granola is how I take notes during crit. Jitter is how I animate my designs. Lovable is how I build my ideas in code. Mobbin is how I find design inspiration. Paper is how I design like a creative. And Raycast is my shortcut every step of the way. Now, I've hand-selected these companies so that I can do these episodes full-time. So, by far the number one way to support the show is to check them out. You can find the full list at dive.com/partners.