The Design Process
Is Dead.

This design process that designers have been taught, we sort of treat it as gospel. That's basically dead.

设计师被教的那一整套设计流程,我们多多少少把它当圣经一样看待——它现在基本死了。

You as a designer actually like do not have the time to make these beautiful mocks anymore.

作为设计师,你已经没时间再做那些精美的 mock 了。

A big part of the design role now is helping engineers and teams execute, not just telling them here's the design.

设计师角色里现在很大一块,是帮工程师和团队把事情执行出来——不只是告诉他们"喏,这是设计稿"。

Few years ago, 60 to 70% of it was mocking and prototyping.

几年前,(设计师工作的)60-70% 是在做 mock 和 prototype。

But now I feel the mocking up part of it is 30 to 40%.

但现在我感觉做 mock 这一块只占 30-40%。

You're better off not blocking that, letting them cook.

你最好别 block 他们——let them cook(让他们自己做)。

It's not just designers who are feeling like "oh yeah we have to keep up with engineers."

不只是设计师在感觉"哎我们得跟上工程师"。

I think even engineers are like "how do we keep up with ourselves?"

我觉得连工程师自己都在想"我们怎么跟上我们自己?"

How do you keep up with all our agents?

你怎么跟上我们所有的 agent?

There are seven agents who are constantly running.

有七个 agent 在持续地跑。

The result of engineering changing a bunch is that design is sort of forced to change.

工程在大幅变化,这一变化的结果是设计也被逼着跟着变。

We used to go off and make this 2 year, 5 year, 10 year vision even.

我们以前会跑去做 2 年、5 年、甚至 10 年的 vision。

Now it becomes a vision that's 3 to 6 months out and isn't necessarily creating this beautiful deck.

现在 vision 变成 3 到 6 个月之内的事,而且不一定要做成一份精美 deck。

Sometimes just creating a prototype that points people in the right direction.

有时候只是做个 prototype,把人指向对的方向就行。

Boris on the podcast recently was saying Claude Code is now helping him come up with ideas.

Boris(Anthropic 的 Boris Cherny)最近在播客里说,Claude Code 现在在帮他想点子。

We'll get better at taste and judgement and design.

我们(AI)在 taste、judgement 和 design 上也会越来越好。

We might be holding on to that a little bit too much.

我们(设计师)可能把"这些是我们才有的东西"这件事抱得太紧了一点。

Where will human brains continue to be valuable?

那未来人脑还会在哪些地方继续有价值?

At the end of the day, someone has to decide what is actually going to get built and what actually matters.

归根到底,总得有人来决定到底什么东西要被造出来、什么真正重要。

Someone still needs to be accountable for the decision.

总得有人为这个决定负责。

What do you now look for when you're hiring designers?

那你现在招设计师的时候,看的是什么?

There's probably three archetypes of folks that are really interesting to me right now.

现在我觉得有大概三种 archetype(原型/类型)的人特别有意思。

Today's guest is Jenny Wen.

今天的嘉宾是 Jenny Wen(温洁妮)。

Jenny was head of design for Claude, is now leading design for Claude Co-work.

Jenny 此前是 Claude 的设计负责人,现在在带 Claude Co-work 的设计。

Prior to that, she was director of design at Figma, where she led the design teams behind FigJam and Slides.

在那之前,她是 Figma 的设计总监,带过 FigJam 和 Slides 背后的设计团队。

She was also designer at Dropbox and Square and Shopify.

再之前,她还在 Dropbox、Square 和 Shopify 做过设计师。

And what I love about this conversation is that Jenny is living in the future of where design as a profession is heading.

这次对话我最喜欢的一点是 — Jenny 正生活在"设计这个职业未来要去到的地方"里。

And she is here to give us a glimpse into what that looks like and how much things are going to be changing for designers.

她来这儿给我们瞥一眼那个未来长什么样,以及设计师面前会发生多大的变化。

It is pretty wild and extremely interesting.

挺颠覆的,也极其有意思。

A huge thank you to no 111 and Emily Lin Hasham for suggesting topics and questions for this conversation.

非常感谢 no_111 和 Emily Lin Hasham 为这次对话提供的话题和问题建议。

Don't forget to check out lennysproass.com for an incredible set of deals available exclusively to Lenny's newsletter subscribers.

别忘了去看一下 lennysproass.com,上面有专门给 Lenny's Newsletter 订阅者的一堆超棒折扣。

Let's get into it after a short word from our wonderful sponsors.

广告之后我们就开始。

This episode is brought to you by Mercury, radically different banking loved by over 300,000 entrepreneurs, including me.

本期由 Mercury 赞助 — 一家完全不同的银行,被超过 30 万创业者爱用,包括我自己。

I switched to Mercury from Chase over a year ago, and it is such a profoundly better experience.

我一年多前从 Chase 切到 Mercury,体验真的好得多。

It's like an actual product person built a bank versus a banking person building a product.

这就像是"一个真正的产品人造了一家银行" vs. "一个银行人造了个产品"。

It is fast. It's elegant.

快、优雅。

It is super easy to set wires, to track my spending, to set up triggers to move money around when accounts get low.

设电汇、追支出、在某个账户余额低时自动调钱过去 — 都非常容易。

We moved all of our invoicing to Mercury.

我们把所有 invoice 都搬到了 Mercury。

And it is such a smoother experience than anything else we've tried.

体验比我们试过的任何东西都更顺滑。

It's also really easy to grant people on your team just the right amount of access to help take work off your plate.

还可以非常方便地给团队成员"刚刚好"的权限,帮你卸掉一些活儿。

It's free to get started.

免费开通。

No in-person visits, no minimum balances.

不需要线下面签,没有最低余额要求。

The product also flexes to all sizes of company from startups to large enterprises.

产品规模上从创业公司到大企业都能撑。

Just visit mercury.com to learn more and apply online in minutes.

去 mercury.com 看详情,几分钟在线申请。

Mercury is a fintech company, not an FDIC insured bank, banking services provided through Choice Financial Group and Column NA members FDIC.

Mercury 是 fintech 公司,不是 FDIC 保险的银行,银行服务由 Choice Financial Group 和 Column NA(FDIC 成员)提供。

This episode is brought to you by Orcus, the company behind Open-source Conductor, the orchestration platform powering modern enterprise applications.

本期还由 Orcus 赞助 — 它是开源 Conductor(为现代企业应用提供编排平台)背后的公司。

Modern systems are built on microservices, APIs, and event-driven architectures.

现代系统建立在微服务、API 和事件驱动架构之上。

But legacy automation tools can't keep up.

但老的自动化工具跟不上。

Siloed low code platforms, outdated process management, and disconnected API tooling break down under real-world scale and constant change.

孤岛式 low-code 平台、过时的流程管理、彼此脱节的 API 工具 — 在真实世界的规模和持续变化下都会崩。

Orcus Conductor provides a production grade orchestration layer for coordinating microservices, APIs, data pipelines, human tasks, and agentic workflows with deterministic control flow, retries, observability, and governance.

Orcus Conductor 提供一个生产级编排层,统一协调微服务、API、数据管道、人工任务和 agentic 工作流,带确定性的控制流、重试、可观测性和治理。

Built for enterprise scale, Orcus supports visual and code first development with built-in compliance and reliability through a built-in MCP gateway.

为企业规模而生,Orcus 同时支持可视化开发和 code-first,合规和可靠性由内置 MCP gateway 兜底。

AI agents handle reasoning and decision-making while safely accessing existing APIs and internal systems as MCP tools.

AI agent 处理推理和决策,同时通过 MCP tools 安全地访问现有 API 和内部系统。

This enables agents to operate across enterprise environments and scale from demos to production, orchestrating systems, agents, and humans together to deliver smarter outcomes faster. Learn more at orcus.io/lenny. That's o-r-k-e-s.io/lenny.

这让 agent 能跨企业环境运行、从 demo 扩到生产,把系统、agent 和人协同起来更快交付更聪明的结果。详情见 orcus.io/lenny(拼写是 o-r-k-e-s.io/lenny)。

Jenny, thank you so much for being here and welcome to the podcast.

Jenny,非常感谢你来,欢迎来到播客。

Yeah, excited to be here.

是的,很高兴来到这里。

I've been looking forward to this conversation because I spent a lot of time on this podcast talking about the future of software engineering, how much that role is changing, uh the role of product management, how much that role is changing.

我特别期待这次对话,因为之前我在播客里花了大量时间讨论软件工程师的未来、那个角色正在发生多大的变化,以及 PM 角色的变化。

I haven't spent a lot of time on how design is changing.

但我还没花太多时间讨论设计在怎么变。

Clearly it is also changing in a really big way and you have such a front row seat to where things are heading.

很明显,设计也在以非常大的方式变化 — 而你正坐在第一排看趋势走向。

Uh I also know you have a lot of very strong opinions about where things are heading.

而且我知道你对未来走向有不少非常 strong 的观点。

So uh there's a lot of stuff I want to talk about.

所以有很多事情想聊。

I want to just start with this just this broad question.

我先从一个 broad question 开始。

How is the design process changing with the rise of AI?

随着 AI 的兴起,设计流程正在怎么变化?

It's changing a lot.

变化非常大。

Um I I think it's still also got a long way to go in terms of the way it's changing.

嗯,但我觉得变化的方式上,它其实还有很长的路要走。

Like I think we've actually seen, you know, engineering change a lot more in the past little while than design actually has.

就是,我觉得过去这一段时间里,我们看到工程的变化其实比设计大得多。

But I think the result of engineering changing a bunch is that design is sort of forced to change.

但工程变得这么多的结果是,设计也被逼着跟着变。

Um, and so I think some context around this is — I did a talk at a conference in Berlin a few months ago in September and I called it "don't trust the design process".

嗯,先给点背景 — 几个月前(9 月)我在柏林一个会议上做了个 talk,题目就叫 "don't trust the design process"(别再相信设计流程)。

Where I basically just said like, hey you know, this design process that designers have been taught — where you go off and you do a bunch of research and discovery and then you like diverge, you converge, diverge, converge — and it's like this process that we sort of treated as gospel and tried so hard to preserve and we were like "trust the process".

我基本上就是在说 — 设计师被教的那一整套设计流程:先做大量调研和探索,然后发散、收敛,发散、收敛 — 这个我们一直把它当圣经、拼命维护、还互相说"trust the process"。

That is basically dead.

这个流程基本死了。

Uh I think it was sort of dying before the age of AI, but given now that engineers can go off and spin off their like seven clouds, I think as designers, we really have to let go of that process.

我觉得在 AI 时代之前它就已经在死了,但现在工程师可以一下子起 7 个 Claude(agent),设计师真的得放下这套流程了。

And I think that's the big thing that's changing.

这是当下最大的变化。

But I think even in the past three to four months since I did that talk, that talk actually starts to feel pretty — kind of feels outdated to me, which is a little embarrassing.

但有意思的是,过去这 3-4 个月里,我自己回头看那场 talk 都觉得它已经有点过时了 — 有点尴尬。

But especially with the big shift of like Opus 4.6 and a bunch of folks just really discovering and using Claude Code over the holiday break, I think we're seeing this force to change our process happen even more.

尤其是 Opus 4.6 出来 + 一大群人在假期里发现并真正开始用 Claude Code 之后,这股逼着流程变化的力又加强了。

The way I sort of see it now is — there are basically two types of design work, and design work is becoming really stratified in this new world.

我现在看法是 — 在这个新世界里,设计工作基本分成了两类,而且这两类在变得越来越分层化。

So there's the first one, which is really just supporting the implementation and execution.

第一类:就是支持实施和执行。

So this is the one where engineers are using their seven Claudes to create all these features, and anybody can put an idea out there — you can just talk about an idea and somebody (usually actually an engineer, because they're still better at implementing this stuff than we are) will just make a scrappy version of it and you can try it out.

这一类里,工程师用他们的 7 个 Claude 在造各种功能,任何人都可以提想法 — 你随口说一个 idea,通常实际上会是一个工程师(因为他们目前在实现这些东西上还是比我们设计师强)把它做成一个粗糙版本,然后你就能试。

And you as a designer actually like do not have the time to make these beautiful mocks anymore, or to lead in this way.

作为设计师,你已经没时间再去做精美 mock,也没时间用老的方式来"带"事情了。

And then I think there's the second kind of work that feels also really important — which is creating the sort of vision or direction for things.

第二类工作也很重要 — 那就是给事情做 vision,定方向。

This one feels like the hardest to make time for, and it's one that we still did before — but I think the shape of it is very much changing.

这一类最难挤出时间来做,虽然以前我们就在做 — 但它现在的"形态"变了很多。

Because we used to go off and say "we're going to do this design vision".

因为我们以前会说"我们要做这个设计 vision"。

We're going to go off and make this 2-year, 5-year, whatever 10-year vision even, and we're going to point us towards something.

我们会跑出去做一份 2 年、5 年甚至 10 年的 vision,把大家指向某个方向。

But the way the technology is changing now, we actually don't know what's going to happen in 2 years.

但以技术现在的变化速度,我们根本不知道 2 年后会发生什么。

There's too much changing, and it usually becomes a vision that's 3 to 6 months out — something that's not necessarily creating this beautifully storytold deck.

变化太多了,所以 vision 一般变成 3 到 6 个月内的 — 不一定要做成那种"故事讲得超棒"的精美 deck。

It's sometimes just creating a prototype.

有时候只是做一个 prototype 就够了。

And I think this kind of work is still really important in this world — because in a world where people can spin off their seven Claudes, make whatever features they want in any direction or implementation, you need to point them towards something.

我觉得这一类工作在这个世界里仍然非常重要 — 因为在一个"人人都能一下起 7 个 Claude、做任意方向 / 实现的功能"的世界里,你必须给他们指个方向。

And in order to make sure that we're all making something that makes sense together — and is also done efficiently — like if we're all working towards something that has one greater cause, it's much more efficient to do that than just random things.

而且这样大家才能凑在一起做出一个有共同逻辑的东西,而且效率也更高 — 大家朝着同一个更大的方向努力,比各做各的零碎东西要高效得多。

And so that's the big shift that I'm seeing — and I think I have opinions about it now, but ask me in 3 months and it might actually change even more.

这是我现在看到的最大变化 — 我现在有这些观点,但 3 个月后再问我,可能又变了。

So what you're saying here is — it's not like you or the design field is "we need to change".

所以你的意思是 — 不是设计圈或者你自己跳出来说"我们必须变"。

It's engineering and the fact that you can build so quickly just forces the role of a designer to change.

是工程和"现在可以这么快做东西"这件事,逼着设计师的角色变。

Because, as you said, engineers can just ship-ship-ship-ship-ship, and what you're finding here is you're better off not blocking that — "letting them cook" as they say.

因为像你说的,工程师一直在 ship-ship-ship,你最好别 block 他们 — 就是俗话说的 "let them cook"(让他们自己做)。

And then there's this mode of helping them along as they ship — bringing it together, making sure it all kind of connects, guiding them a little bit.

然后你转换到一种新模式:在他们 ship 的过程中帮他们,把东西串起来、确保整体是连贯的,稍微 guide 一下方向。

Yeah, I think so.

是的,我觉得是这样。

Yeah, I don't think there is like one unifying voice that's like "designers, we need to change right now".

对,我也不觉得设计圈里存在一个统一的声音在说"设计师们,我们现在必须变"。

But there is sort of the follow-on effects of engineering tooling really changing.

但确实存在"工程工具大变之后的连锁反应"。

I think we'll probably see design tooling change in this next year or so as well.

我觉得未来一年左右,设计工具自己也会变。

But a lot of it right now is trailing that.

但目前设计工具的变化还是跟在工程后面跑。

And I think it's also really empowering for us too — because as designers we now have access to a lot of these coding tools, and we can be a part of the process in a way where we're implementing stuff.

这对我们来说其实也很 empower — 设计师现在能用到这些 coding 工具,我们可以以"亲自做"的方式参与到流程里。

Like I'm doing a lot of last-mile stuff where I'm implementing all the polish, and working with engineers really closely to get the feature across the line.

比如我现在做了大量的"最后一公里"工作 — 自己实现所有的 polish,跟工程师紧密配合把一个 feature 推过线。

And also prototype stuff in actual code as opposed to relying on engineers to do that again.

而且用真实代码做 prototype,而不是再依赖工程师去做。

How true do you think this is at all companies — at AI companies, non-AI companies?

这种变化在所有公司里都成立吗?AI 公司、非 AI 公司?

Someone may be hearing this — "okay, Anthropic, Claude, like, okay, they're at the bleeding edge, they're developer-y a little bit" — but I think people might be feeling like "okay, this is not going to happen at Salesforce, this is not going to happen at I don't know ServiceNow, wherever".

听众可能在想:"好吧,Anthropic、Claude — 他们在 bleeding edge,而且偏开发者向" — 但人们可能会感觉"这事不会发生在 Salesforce、不会发生在 ServiceNow,等等"。

So I guess — do you feel like this is where all teams are heading? Is it mostly AI bleeding-edge companies? How widespread do you think the design process shift is going to be?

所以 — 你觉得所有团队都在朝这儿走吗?还是主要是 AI 前沿公司?设计流程的这种变化到底会有多普遍?

So the talk that I did last year has weirdly been the most resonant talk that I've done.

所以我去年做的那个 talk,不知道为什么,反响特别强烈 — 是我做过的所有 talk 里共鸣最大的。

So I think it's something that people are starting to feel across the industry, where they're like "oh yeah, we can't do the old design process anymore".

所以我觉得这是整个行业都开始在感受到的事 — 大家都说"哎对,我们没法再走那套老的设计流程了"。

You know, we are using tools like Claude Code and v0 and whatnot to start to spin up prototypes — and PMs are starting to spin up prototypes and stuff like that as well.

大家在用 Claude Code、v0 之类的工具起 prototype — PM 也在起 prototype。

So I think there's something emerging there.

所以确实有什么东西在涌现。

But the other interesting observation with that talk was — there was actually also a decent amount of backlash.

但那场 talk 另一个有意思的观察是 — 也有不少反对的声音。

Like people clearly have invested their entire careers in learning, teaching, using this really stable design process.

很多人显然把整个职业生涯都投在了"学这套、教这套、用这套稳定的设计流程"上。

And there was a lot of discrediting — like "oh yeah like we can't do without discovery, we can't do without these pieces of process".

于是有很多否定的声音 — "我们不能没有 discovery 阶段啊,不能没有这些流程环节"。

So I think there is still a piece of the industry that is not quite there yet in terms of this way of working, if that makes sense.

所以行业里还有一部分人没走到这个新工作方式上来。

Yeah.

是的。

And a big part of this is — you could argue the question is "what leads to the best, most successful products and companies?"

这背后的核心问题是 — "什么能带来最好的产品、最成功的公司?"

And you could argue it's spending time doing discovery, user research, mocks, iterating, beta testing — or it could be just "engineers ship stuff that's okay, not amazing, good enough, we learn, iterate, build, iterate".

你可以说是"花时间做 discovery、用户调研、mock、迭代、beta 测试" — 或者也可以说是"工程师直接 ship 一些还行、不惊艳、够用的东西,然后我们学习、迭代、继续 build、再迭代"。

Is your sense that that second path is not only just what everyone's doing, but that actually leads to the better product at this point?

你的感觉是 — 第二条路不只是大家都在走,而且现在它实际上能产生更好的产品?

I think you sort of have to choose and use your discretion as to when to actually ship something.

我觉得你得用判断力选 — 什么时候才真的把东西 ship 出去。

But I think the ability to execute, try something out, and try it with real data and a real-user mindset in the product — I think that does lead to a better product.

但我觉得"能直接执行、试一下、用真实数据 + 真实用户心态来检验"的能力 — 这确实会带来更好的产品。

Especially as we're all working with these new developing AI models that are non-deterministic.

特别是当我们都在用这些还在发展、不确定性强(non-deterministic)的 AI 模型时。

You just can't mock up all the states, and you can't theorize, and you can't even make a clickable prototype with it.

你没法把所有 state 都 mock 出来,没法纯靠理论推,你甚至没法做一个可点击 prototype。

You sort of have to use the actual models underneath, and you have to see people try it out with their use cases — because with these models, you can design them for different use cases but you have to discover use cases as you see people using them.

你只能用底层真实的模型,而且必须看真实用户用他们自己的 use case 来跑 — 因为这些模型你可以为某些 use case 做设计,但 use case 本身要靠"看大家怎么用"才能发现。

So yes.

所以是的(我认为第二条路确实更好)。

The other thing I always hear, building on what you just said, is — you don't know what people will do with AI.

紧接你刚说的,我常听到的另一件事是 — 你根本不知道大家会拿 AI 做什么。

You don't know how good it'll be at certain things, the non-deterministic piece of it.

你也不知道它在某些事情上会有多好,那种 non-deterministic 的特性。

So you can create these amazing mocks of what it might be, and then people use it in a completely different way — which is where Co-work came from, and probably even Claude Code at the beginning.

所以你可以做出超漂亮的 mock 来描绘它"可能"长什么样,然后用户实际用它的方式完全不同 — Co-work 就是这么诞生的,Claude Code 早期可能也是。

So what's it just like to be a designer at Anthropic? Just give us a day in the life of working at Anthropic, in the center of the storm.

那在 Anthropic 当设计师到底是什么体验?给我们讲一下"风暴中心的 Anthropic 设计师的一天"是什么样的。

A good amount of time at Anthropic is actually just like catching up on what people, what's happening at the company.

在 Anthropic 我相当一部分时间其实就是在跟进公司里在发生什么。

I think this is the company — I've worked at a few other companies around this size where I think there's just a lot of information and a lot of things going on — but I feel really compelled to keep up with it.

我之前在差不多规模的几家公司也工作过,那些公司也有很多信息和事在发生 — 但在 Anthropic 我觉得自己特别想跟上。

There's stuff that is like model developments on the research side, and then at any given time there are just so many different teams prototyping and trying different ideas out and there's a bunch of different code names and stuff like that.

研究侧的模型进展是一块,然后任何时刻都有一堆不同的团队在 prototype、在试不同 idea,还有一大堆代号之类的东西。

A lot of time I'm just trying to navigate and figure out what those projects are because I'm just trying to spot and see "hey what's coming up ahead for me" — because there's stuff from both the research team but also some of our labs teams that are closer to research and trying out and prototyping stuff.

很多时候我就在尝试搞清楚这些项目分别是什么 — 因为我想提前看到"接下来会冲到我面前的是什么",研究团队那边有东西,labs 团队那边(更靠近研究、在试 + 在 prototype)也有。

And then there's stuff I want to try out — we have a bunch of prototypes and products internally that we can use and I am just curious and I want to try those things out.

还有就是我自己想试的东西 — 公司内部有一堆 prototype 和产品我们可以用,我就是好奇,想自己上手试。

And then there's a lot of folks who internally have a lot of insights and opinions on where the industry is going, and some of those are just really interesting to read because a lot of these are philosophical debates or directions of the company.

还有不少内部同事对行业走向有非常多的洞察和观点,读起来很有意思 — 很多是哲学层面的辩论,或者关于公司方向的讨论。

I feel like I just want to keep up with these things — whereas at a normal company I'd be like "it's fine, this is stuff that's happening outside of my reach, I don't really care as much".

我感觉自己就是想跟上这些 — 换在一家普通公司,我大概会想"算了吧,这事跟我没关系,没那么在意"。

Here I think it's both the volume and the kinds of things that are happening that I'm really interested in keeping up with.

在 Anthropic,信息的"量"和"种类"我都很想跟上。

And then aside from that "keep up" — it's not a huge part of my job, but I do think it's a really interesting part of it.

除了这个"跟进"以外 — 它不算我工作中的一大块,但我觉得是非常有意思的一块。

Well, it connects to the point you made earlier.

嗯,这跟你之前说的那点是关联的。

A big part of the design role now is helping engineers and teams execute.

设计师角色里现在很大一部分,是帮工程师和团队执行。

Not just telling them "here's the mock, here's the design".

而不只是甩给他们"这是 mock、这是设计稿"。

It's helping them stay on track, helping them connect ideas, create a cohesive experience as it's happening.

是帮他们 stay on track、把想法连起来、在事情发生的当下打造一个连贯的体验。

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

对对对。

And I think part of it is just curiosity — it feels like I have this front-row seat to so much happening in the industry.

部分原因就是好奇 — 我感觉自己有个第一排座位,能看着行业里这么多事在发生。

So a lot of it is like — yeah, our Slack is a gold mine — I'm just excited to read through the things that people are working on and they're saying.

所以很多时候就是 — 是的,我们的 Slack 就是一座金矿 — 我兴奋地读大家在做什么、在说什么。

I never thought about how there's already so much AI news to keep track of as a regular person, and then actually seeing what's actually happening inside a lab is a whole new set of feeds to watch.

我从没想过这一点 — 作为普通人都已经有这么多 AI 新闻要追了,然后在一家 AI 实验室内部能看到的"真实在发生什么",又是另一整套要刷的 feed。

Yeah. Yeah.

对对。

It's like — the best AI news is probably internally if you're ever at one of these companies, in the Slack.

就是 — 真正最棒的 AI news,可能是你身处这些公司其中之一时,在他们 Slack 里看到的那些。

Damn. Yeah.

啧。是啊。

The problem just keeps getting harder of keeping track what's going on.

"跟上正在发生什么"这件事会越来越难。

Okay. So that's part of the job. What else?

好,那是工作的一部分。还有别的吗?

There is still some of the traditional "let me think about what's happening in the future and let me make some designs for that".

仍然还有一些传统意义上的"我来想想未来会发生什么,然后我做一些为未来准备的设计"。

That's something that, for example, this week I've allotted some time to — where I'm like "okay cool, we have been in a lot of execution mode for Co-work and now I want to set aside some time to think about 'hey what do the next 3 months look like and where could that go given where the market's at and where the models are at'".

比如说这周我就特意留了点时间 — "OK,Co-work 我们一直在 execution mode,现在我想留点时间想想 — 嘿,接下来 3 个月会是什么样?从市场目前的位置、模型目前的位置出发,它可能会走向哪儿?"

Because I think it still really helps to visualize that and show that to the team and point everyone in the same direction.

因为我觉得"把它可视化、给团队看、把大家指向同一个方向" — 这件事仍然很有价值。

And then I also spend a bunch of my day just jamming on stuff with engineers — like a lot of it is just a conversation or whiteboarding, or going through something that they built and giving them feedback on it, being a designer in that kind of way where we're consulting.

然后我每天还有不少时间是跟工程师 jam — 大部分是对话、白板、或者过他们做出来的东西给反馈,以一种"顾问式"的方式扮演设计师角色。

And then I spend a part of my day in code — like polishing, implementing stuff.

然后我每天还会花一部分时间在代码里 — polish、实现东西。

Sometimes what happens is — an engineer and I have worked through something and they've implemented a first version of it, and I just go in and polish it with them.

有时候情况是 — 我跟一个工程师把某件事过了一遍,他做了第一版,然后我就进去跟他一起 polish。

That's a really fun part of my job that I think didn't exist as much a few months ago.

这是我工作里特别有意思的一块,而且我觉得几个月前还没这么多。

Are you still doing elements of the traditional design process?

那你还在做传统设计流程里的一些环节吗?

Prototyping, user research, uh, panels — I don't know, just like going out and the whole thing you described.

Prototype、用户调研、panel — 总之你描述过的那一整套?

Yeah, we're still — I think we're still doing all of that to some extent.

是的,我觉得这些我们多多少少都还在做。

We have a user researcher on the team who is putting together both traditional studies as well as surveys, and the whole team is reading those studies and that feedback.

团队有一位用户研究员,在做传统研究 + survey,整个团队都在读那些研究报告和反馈。

We are still prototyping stuff.

我们仍然在做 prototype。

I'm still mocking stuff up.

我仍然在 mock 东西。

I think it's just — I have a wider set of tools now, and the proportion of time I spend doing each thing just has changed.

只是 — 我现在的工具更广了,每件事我花的时间占比变了。

Got it. Okay.

明白。OK。

So that's a really interesting takeaway.

这真是个特别有意思的 takeaway。

It used to be that was a huge — like I guess what would be the pie chart of what your life was before, where it's like traditional thinking, planning, prototyping, mocking, research, and then just like feedback and execution — and now today?

以前那一块占的比例巨大 — 我意思是,你之前生活的饼图大概是什么样?传统的思考、规划、prototype、mocking、research,然后给反馈 + 执行 — 而今天呢?

Yeah.

嗯。

I think as a designer a few years ago I would say like maybe 60 to 70% of it was like mocking and prototyping stuff up, and then spending the last 20 or so doing the sort of like jamming with engineers, consulting with them, and the last like 10% maybe doing coordination meetings etc.

作为设计师,几年前我大概会说 — 60-70% 在做 mocking 和 prototype,然后剩下 20% 左右是跟工程师 jam、做顾问,最后 10% 大概是开协调会之类的。

Uh, but now I feel like the mocking up part of it is like 30 to 40%, and then there's that other 30 to 40% that is now jamming and pairing directly with engineers, and then there's like a slice — I don't know how much I have left but like there's a slice of it that is now like implementation as well.

但现在我感觉 mocking 这一块只剩 30-40%,另外 30-40% 是直接跟工程师 jam + pair,然后还有一片 — 我不知道还剩多少,但有一片现在变成"实现"了。

Like actually building and shipping.

真正在 build 和 ship 的部分。

Amazing.

太赞了。

So kind of following that thread, what's in your AI stack?

顺着这条线 — 你的 AI stack 都有什么?

What do you as a designer — I know you're a manager — I want to talk about how you actually use it.

作为设计师 — 我知道你也是管理者 — 我想聊你具体怎么用。

I see also what's in your AI stack.

想看看你的 AI stack 里都装了什么。

What tools are you using in your role?

你在角色里用什么工具?

What is in my AI stack?

我的 AI stack 有什么?

Um, well, we're working on top of Claude.

嗯,我们是基于 Claude 来工作的。

So, it's — we're going deep on the Claude stack. Yeah.

所以是 — 我们在 Claude 这套 stack 上深耕。对。

Um, I am — I'm using obviously like Claude chat, and then but increasingly more and more Claude Co-work.

嗯,我在用 — 显然在用 Claude chat,然后越来越多在用 Claude Co-work。

I've basically shifted all of my chat use cases over to Co-work, because I've been finding that yeah, it sort of is better at these longer running tasks, and most of the things I was asking Claude for are these longer running tasks.

我基本上把所有 chat use case 都迁到 Co-work 了 — 因为我发现它在长任务上更好,而我问 Claude 的大多数事情都是长任务。

And then there's Claude Code of course, I use it mostly in VS Code in the IDE, because I'm usually tweaking frontend stuff and it helps to just like be able to see the code and then talk to Claude as well.

然后当然还有 Claude Code,我主要在 VS Code IDE 里用 — 因为我通常在调前端,能边看代码边跟 Claude 对话很有帮助。

I've been trying to actually use Claude Code more remotely — like through both mobile and through Slack as well.

我也在尝试更多远程用 Claude Code — 手机和 Slack 都用。

Um, it's really fun for somebody to say like "oh yeah this icon's off" or something, and you just at-mention Claude and Claude does it, and then you pick up the PR and it's done.

嗯,这个特别有意思 — 有人说"这个 icon 不太对",你 @ 一下 Claude,Claude 就处理了,你过去看 PR — 完事儿。

That's been really really fun too.

这种体验也特别有意思。

And yeah, I think — we're a fully Claude house here. So yes, that's basically my stack.

然后是的,我觉得 — 我们这儿是个纯 Claude house。所以这就是我的 stack。

Are you still using Figma as a designer?

作为设计师,你还在用 Figma 吗?

I am still using Figma. Yes. Yes.

我还在用 Figma。是的是的。

Okay. I was waiting to hear. Okay.

OK,我一直等着听这个答案呢。OK。

So, Figma is still part of your life.

所以 Figma 仍然是你生活的一部分。

Uh, being a former Figmate — is that what you were called?

作为一个前 Figmate — 你们以前是这么自称的吗?

Yeah. Yeah. Figmates. Yeah.

是的是的,Figmates,对。

Yeah. Okay.

嗯,OK。

So, I know there's this big debate on Twitter — just like, is code the future of design?

所以我知道 Twitter 上有这场大辩论 — code 是不是设计的未来?

Do we need to like Figma anymore?

我们还需要 Figma 吗?

Do we need to design?

我们还需要"做设计"这件事吗?

What's your sense?

你的感觉是?

Figma is still important.

Figma 仍然重要。

I mean, as a former Figmate, I'm maybe even biased in that way, but I think there is still — when I use Figma, I'm like "yes, this is what I should be using" — and it still fills a very good gap for me.

我意思是,作为前 Figmate,我或许有这方面的偏见,但我觉得 — 我用 Figma 的时候会觉得"对,这就是我该用的工具" — 它仍然填了我一个非常好的 gap。

Um, I think a lot of that is actually just — one is exploring a lot of different options.

嗯,我觉得很大一部分是 — 一是用来探索一大堆不同的方案。

I think that's a really important part of the design process — to be able to just think about like 8 to 10 different ways to do something.

我觉得这是设计流程里非常重要的一环 — 能去想"做一件事的 8-10 种不同方式"。

Um, I think the best design happens when you're able to just like throw a bunch of ideas at the wall and curate — and just push yourself to come up with a bunch of these different directions.

最好的设计往往发生在你能"把一堆 idea 扔到墙上、然后挑选" — 推自己出一堆不同的方向。

Right now, working with some of these coding tools doesn't lend itself super well to that because it's super linear.

而现在跟这些 coding 工具一起工作,它不太适合干这件事 — 因为它是高度线性的。

You super invest in one direction and you just iterate with Claude on them, for example.

比如说,你在一个方向上重度投入,然后就跟 Claude 在这个方向上反复迭代。

Um, so I — Figma has been really great at just exploring all these different options, and I think it's still going to exist that way to some extent.

所以 — Figma 一直特别擅长"探索这一堆不同方案",我觉得这件事在某种程度上仍然会以 Figma 的形式存在。

And then I think there's like really fine sort of visual and interaction details that are also really great to be able to just try out in Figma.

然后我觉得还有一些非常精细的视觉和交互细节 — 在 Figma 里能直接试,也非常爽。

Again, it's a lot of different directions, but it's micro directions.

同样是很多不同方向,但是是 micro 方向。

It's being able to think about like different typography or styles.

是能去想"不同的字体或不同的风格"。

Having those in a canvas where you can just explore that specifically is still so so helpful, and is not something that I always want to like go directly to code in.

能把这些东西放在一个 canvas 里专门探索,真的真的太有用了 — 这件事我不总是想直接去代码里干。

It's interesting you still use an IDE — because in engineering it's clearly shifting to command lines, agents; IDEs are kind of moving to not be cool anymore.

有意思的是你还在用 IDE — 因为工程这边明显在转向命令行、agent,IDE 正在变得不那么 cool 了。

So it makes a lot of sense — you just want to edit some CSS things, some color stuff.

所以这非常合理 — 你只是想改改 CSS、改改颜色。

And so I could see why — not just telling the agent "hey come on, change this one hex value" — just changing it is so much easier.

所以我能理解为什么 — 不是去跟 agent 说"嘿,把这一个 hex 值改了" — 直接自己改一下要简单得多。

Yeah, it's really annoying to be like "can you change this to this class" when you can just go in and change it to a different class?

是啊,那种"能把这个改成这个 class 吗"的对话特别烦 — 你直接进去把它改成另一个 class 不就好了?

So that's interesting.

所以这点很有意思。

I wonder if IDEs now become useful for designers and PMs — and engineers have moved on.

我在想 — IDE 是不是反而变得对设计师和 PM 有用了 — 而工程师已经迁移到别的工具了。

Yeah, maybe. Yeah.

嗯,有可能。

Okay.

OK。

So a lot of your time you spend working with engineers, giving them feedback, kind of nudging them in the right direction.

你大量时间是在跟工程师工作 — 给反馈、把他们往正确方向推。

There's a sense I feel of just like — your advice is like, let go.

我有一种感觉,你的建议是 — let go(放手)。

Don't feel like you need to be this gatekeeper, but there's this piece of "okay, help them move in a direction that is cohesive and is creating products we're proud of."

不要觉得自己必须是那个守门人 — 但同时还有"OK,帮他们往一个连贯的、能做出我们引以为傲的产品的方向移动"。

A lot of designers, I think, are in this boat right now just like "oh my god, I can't keep up with all these engineers shipping stuff all day."

我觉得现在很多设计师都在这条船上 — "天哪,我跟不上这些工程师一天到晚 ship 东西"。

What's something you learned about — either how to help your engineers get better at design so that it just ends up being better, or just kind of keeping on top of this and not going crazy?

你学到的某个东西是 — 怎么帮工程师在设计上变得更好,让结果自然就更好;或者怎么 keep on top of 而不至于发疯?

Whenever I do work with engineers on projects and it's more on like a consulting basis, I do just try to explain why I'm thinking the way that I'm thinking, to help them extract principles — as opposed to me just being like "no, I don't think this should go here."

每当我跟工程师以"顾问式"方式合作项目时,我都尽量解释"我为什么这么想",帮他们提取原则 — 而不是只说"不,我觉得这不该放这"。

It's like "no, I think we should have a button here because not everybody realizes you can prompt this." Um, and here's an example where it comes from research and whatnot.

而是说"我觉得这儿应该有个 button,因为不是每个人都意识到这里可以 prompt"。然后给个例子 — 这来自 research 等等。

So, I also just like try to point engineers to our design system and stuff like that and code, because right now Claude is writing a lot of the code, and it's not always picking up stuff in the design system and whatnot.

我也会尽量把工程师指向我们的 design system 之类的东西和代码 — 因为现在 Claude 在写很多代码,但它不总是会用 design system 里的东西。

So, as much as I can sort of equip them with stuff that they can use in the future without me, that's helpful.

所以我尽可能给他们装备一些"将来没有我也能用的东西",这就很 helpful。

And then on your point of trying not to go crazy — I think it's hard, you know.

然后关于"不要发疯"那点 — 我觉得真的很难。

I think it's really hard right now.

我觉得现在这件事真的非常难。

And I see this a lot from actually both engineers and designers, where it's like — now that we're sort of capable of doing so much, we want to do more.

我从工程师和设计师那儿都看到很多这种情况 — 既然我们现在能做这么多,我们就想做更多。

Uh, and so I think it's not just designers who are feeling like "oh yeah, we have to keep up with engineers."

所以我觉得不只是设计师在感叹"我们要跟上工程师"。

I think even engineers are like "how do we keep up with ourselves right now?"

连工程师都在说"我们怎么跟上自己?"

So that's something I'm hearing a lot.

这是我最近经常听到的。

That's so true. Oh man, how to keep up with all our agents.

太真实了。天哪,怎么跟上我们所有 agent。

Our seven agents we're constantly running.

我们时刻在跑的 7 个 agent。

Okay.

OK。

So then as a designer — where in this profession craft and great experience and quality and trust are such a core part of the job, to help instill that in the products because that in theory leads to really successful products and companies —

那么作为设计师 — 在这个职业里,craft、好体验、品质、信任是工作的核心,把这些注入产品理论上能带来非常成功的产品和公司 —

How do you think about maintaining craft quality, trust, as your products are just shipping a thousand times a day and you're not able to stay on top of them and there's no designer involved?

当你的产品一天 ship 1000 次、你没法 stay on top of、设计师没法介入的时候,你怎么想 craft 品质 + 信任的维护?

It's not that there's no designer involved.

不是说没有设计师介入。

It's more just like — it's almost that there's too much for one designer to handle.

更像是 — 一个设计师要处理的事情几乎太多了。

But um, I think with this I think about where the features or products are — like where they are in the cycle of adoption versus kind of early preview.

不过我会想 — 这些 feature 或产品处在什么阶段?是 adoption 周期里成熟的位置,还是 early preview?

So for example, we sometimes will launch things and we will say "hey, this is a research preview. It's early."

比如有时候我们 launch 一个东西,会说"嘿,这是个 research preview,很早期。"

It's going to have a bunch of these flaws, and we caveat that a bunch.

它会有一堆缺陷,我们会反复声明。

I think Claude Co-work is actually a good example of this — where we labeled it a research preview and we put it out there knowing that, similar to our models —

我觉得 Claude Co-work 就是个好例子 — 我们给它打了"research preview"的标签,放出来时就知道 — 这跟我们的 model 类似 —

"this is the worst it's ever going to be, but we're going to put it out there because we believe — internally we've tried it a bunch — and there's something really powerful here that some people will benefit from."

"这是它最差的一个版本,但我们还是要把它放出来,因为我们相信 — 我们内部已经试了很多次 — 这里面有特别强大的东西,有些人会从中受益。"

It might not yet be the easiest to work with.

它可能还不太好用。

It might not be the highest quality. It might have some issues with it. But we're going to put it out there because we believe the benefits outweigh the cons.

它可能品质不是最高,可能有一些问题。但我们还是要放出来 — 因为我们相信收益大于代价。

I think that is okay to do, especially when there is something really valuable with the product already and it's worth putting it out there.

我觉得这样做是 OK 的 — 尤其是产品里已经有真正有价值的东西、值得放出来时。

But I think the promise you sort of have to make your users is — "hey, we're going to put it out there, but we're going to iterate."

但你必须给用户的承诺是 — "嘿,我们会先放出来,然后我们会迭代。"

"We're going to take your feedback and we're going to iterate and we're going to make it better."

"我们会听你的反馈,会迭代,会把它做得更好。"

And you have to sort of commit that.

你必须 commit。

You have to show that to the world.

你必须给世界看到。

You have to respond to people's feedback and you have to show that you are continuously shipping and improving it — because I think the way that you really lose trust around quality and releasing something early is if you release it early and then nothing ever happens.

你必须回应用户反馈,必须让人看到你在持续 ship + 改进 — 因为关于"早期发布 + 质量"信任真正崩塌的方式,就是你早发了,然后什么都不发生。

That is what degrades a brand. But whenever you put something out early — it's possible to do that and maintain the brand of your company.

那种事才会损害品牌。但只要你早发,是可以做到"既早发、又维持公司品牌"的。

And I think that's something that we've been doing pretty well. And I think if there's anything anyone listening can take away from it, it's like — yeah, we're continuing to do that, and I think that is actually really fun for me as a designer — because you put something out there and you actually learn and you get feedback about it immediately and you know what to do next.

我觉得这件事我们做得挺好。如果听众能从中拿走一个 takeaway — 就是,我们在继续这么干。而且对我作为设计师来说,这其实非常有意思 — 你把东西放出去,你立刻就学到东西,立刻拿到反馈,立刻知道下一步该做什么。

The way I've heard you describe this is "building trust through speed".

我听你形容过这个理念是 "building trust through speed"(用速度建立信任)。

Yeah, for sure.

对,绝对是。

It's building trust through speed, but also just like making people feel like they've been heard — and that we're fixing things based on what they're trying to use it for, and their feedback is actually appreciated and used.

是用速度建立信任,但也是让人感觉"我被听见了" — 我们根据用户想用它做的事去修问题,他们的反馈真的被接收、被使用。

Yeah, it's clear when the labs launch stuff — and you all are very good at this.

是的,这一点在各家 lab launch 东西的时候特别明显 — 你们这块做得非常好。

Everyone on the team is tweeting and just like responding to tweets and comments, and then shipping "hey, we fixed this yesterday, and this is happening".

团队里每个人都在发 tweet、回 tweet、回评论,然后接着 ship — "嘿,这个我们昨天修了,这个我们正在做"。

So there's a clear sense of "this is just today, and we know this is broken and we will fix it" — and then because Claude Code can code very quickly, the fixes come very fast. Okay.

所以有一种很清晰的感觉 — "这是今天,我们知道这块坏了,我们会修" — 然后因为 Claude Code 写代码非常快,修复也来得非常快。OK。

So another big question that people are asking — that I ask a lot on this podcast — is around what skills become valuable; and another way I've been thinking about it — Lex put it this way recently — is, where will human brains continue to be valuable as AI gets smarter?

另一个大家在问的大问题 — 我在这个 podcast 里也经常问 — 是关于"哪些技能会变得有价值",我最近换了个角度在想 — Lex 最近这么说 — 就是:随着 AI 变得更聪明,人的脑子还会在哪里继续有价值?

So we've gone through this progression of tab completing segments of code, to 100% of code is written by AI now — like it's crazy — to now AI is reviewing its own code.

我们经历了这样的演进 — 从 tab 补全代码片段,到现在 100% 代码都是 AI 写的 — 太疯狂了 — 到现在 AI 在 review 自己的代码。

Boris on the podcast recently was saying Claude Code is now helping him come up with ideas and decide what to build — which is like, okay wow, look at that, look at it go. The whole product workflows, the product development process, slowly get eaten up by AI.

Boris 最近在 podcast 里说 — Claude Code 现在在帮他想 idea + 决定做什么 — 这就 — OK,哇,看看吧。整个产品流程、整个产品开发流程,被 AI 一点点吃掉。

So the question is just — where will human brains still be useful, at least until we have super intelligence?

所以问题是 — 至少在我们拥有 super intelligence 之前,人的脑子还能在哪里有用?

Do you think AI is going to get very very good at taste, judgment, design?

你觉得 AI 会变得在品味、判断、设计这些方面非常非常好吗?

I think it will get better at taste and judgment and design. Yeah.

我觉得它在品味、判断、设计上都会变得更好。是的。

Like I think we might be holding on to that a little bit too much — saying like "oh yeah, a designer or somebody will always know the best thing to ship or the best version of this". But I do think AI's sense of taste will get better at the end of the day.

我觉得我们可能在这点上抓得太紧了 — "设计师或某个人永远会知道最该 ship 的东西、最好的版本"。但说到底,我确实觉得 AI 的"品味"会越来越好。

Someone has to decide what is actually going to get built and what actually matters.

必须有人决定"到底要 build 什么"和"什么重要"。

And when I think about people saying "oh, AI is just going to build this software for us" — a lot of the hard parts of building software are actually not building it.

当我听到有人说"AI 会替我们把这软件 build 出来" — build 软件的难处其实大部分不是 build 本身。

You know, if you think about the hardest times that you've had at work — honey, it's probably things like you and some other person disagreeing about what should go into this feature or what shouldn't go into this feature.

你想想你工作中最艰难的时刻 — 大概是你跟某个人在"这个 feature 该放什么 / 不放什么"上吵起来。

And those things still feel like — yes, AI can weigh in, but it can't necessarily solve this dispute between you and somebody else.

这些事情仍然像是 — AI 可以发表意见,但它不一定能解决你和另一个人之间的分歧。

And so there is something about deciding what actually goes into the things we build — which I guess is taste in some way, but maybe not taste in the way we think about aesthetic taste or whatnot.

所以"决定我们 build 的东西里到底放什么" — 这件事是某种意义上的品味,但不是我们通常理解的"审美品味"那种品味。

There's some sort of — it's like judgment around what to do next.

是某种 — 关于"下一步做什么"的判断。

Just watching how quickly AI took over coding — which I think a year ago, definitely two years ago, most people were like "I don't think so."

看着 AI 多快接管了 coding — 一年前、绝对两年前,大多数人都会说"我不觉得"。

"I don't think AI will get this good — and that the best engineers in the world trust it so much they're not even looking at the code anymore."

"我不觉得 AI 会变得这么好 — 好到全世界最好的工程师信任它,以至于他们都不看代码了。"

Like, that's where we kind of — it just made me re-evaluate all these assumptions I've had about "okay, AI will never be as good as really good PMs / designers at judging what is great and deciding what to build."

就 — 这件事让我重新评估了我曾经的所有假设 — "OK,AI 永远不会像非常好的 PM / 设计师那样,擅长判断什么是好的、决定要做什么"。

But I'm just starting to think — I think it will get there.

但我开始觉得 — 它会做到。

Like even in the example you shared — it could give these two people trying to make a decision: "here's all of the data you need to make a decision, and here's why this is the right answer, and just press yes."

就拿你刚才举的例子 — 它可以告诉两个想做决定的人:"这是你做决定需要的所有数据,这是为什么这是正确答案 — 按 yes 就好。"

"Press one and I'll go ahead [laughter] and build it."

"按 1,我就去 build 了。"[笑]

So, I think we're just — yeah.

所以我觉得我们就是 — 是的。

To your point, I think we undervalue just how good it'll get at this stuff.

就像你说的,我觉得我们都低估了它在这些事情上会变得多好。

Okay.

OK。

So, your sense is it'll get better, but your sense is we'll still need awesome designers to be involved, awesome PMs to help make these decisions, engineers, of course.

所以你的判断是它会变好,但你的判断是我们仍然需要厉害的设计师介入、厉害的 PM 帮做这些决定,当然还有工程师。

Yeah. Yeah.

对对。

Yeah, I think someone will still have to decide — like, "oh, we want to build this kind of product", or given what the AI is presenting us, someone still needs to be accountable for the decision.

是的,我觉得仍然要有人来决定 — "我们要 build 这种产品",或者基于 AI 呈现给我们的内容,仍然要有人为决定负责。

You know, the same way that even though Claude can write all this code for you today, it is still an engineer who's accountable for "does that code actually work, does this actually make sense in the product".

就像虽然今天 Claude 可以替你写所有代码,但仍然是工程师为"这代码真的能用吗,在产品里这真的 make sense 吗"负责。

So I think there's that decision-making / judgment layer — which feels like maybe one day we won't have to do that, but it still falls on us. Yeah.

所以我觉得有这么一层"决策 / 判断" — 也许有一天我们不必再做了,但现在这层仍然落在我们身上。是的。

It doesn't make sense.

这其实说不通。

It makes me think about the radiology example — where there's always the sense that AI is going to take over that field of radiology and tell you what is going on.

这让我想起放射科那个例子 — 总有种感觉 AI 会接管放射科这个领域,告诉你出了什么状况。

But like the human is mostly useful for signing off on the decision — because someone needs to be liable if they're wrong.

但人主要是用来在决定上签字的 — 因为出错时得有人承担责任。

Um, which isn't the best job in the world.

嗯,这工作没那么好。

But uh — that's a different game, is health versus code.

不过那是不同的游戏 — 健康 vs. 代码。

Okay.

OK。

Another ongoing question in AI-ing design is just — it feels like chatbots and terminals — I don't think anyone expected this to be the lasting user interface to AI, like chatbots.

关于 AI 化设计还有一个长期问题 — 感觉 chatbot 和 terminal — 我不认为有人预想到这会是 AI 的长久用户界面,比如 chatbot。

Okay. No no no, this is just a temporary stop along the journey — but now it's gotten even further, just terminals.

OK,大家都觉得"不不不,这只是旅程上的临时一站" — 但现在更远了,直接 terminal。

Um, do you have thoughts on — I don't know — do you think there will be a next step of how we interface with AI, or do you think chatbots and terminals are mostly where we end up?

你对这事有什么想法?你觉得我们跟 AI 交互的方式会有"下一步"吗?还是 chatbot 和 terminal 基本就是终态?

There will likely be a combination of both — UIs and interfaces that you are interacting with, clicking with, and that feel more tactile.

很可能两者都会有 — 你能交互、能点击、感觉更"实体"的 UI 和 interface。

We are already seeing this and playing with this within Claude, the chatbot.

我们在 Claude 这个 chatbot 里已经看到、也在玩这个。

Um, so we recently released a bunch of these widgets that let Claude elicit and ask you questions, and also show you things like the weather and stocks and whatnot, in interactive ways.

最近我们放出了一堆 widget,让 Claude 能向你 elicit + 提问,也能用交互方式给你看天气、股价等等。

And I think those have had a really good reception, because people still like to see UIs and touch them and click them — and they are much more efficient than typing something to Claude.

这些 widget 反响很好 — 因为人仍然喜欢看到 UI、摸 UI、点 UI — 而且这比"打字告诉 Claude"高效得多。

But at the same time, when we really leaned into this chatbot paradigm — I think that just gave us this whole world of flexibility that we didn't get with these sort of baked-in UIs.

但同时,当我们真的拥抱了 chatbot 范式 — 它给了我们一整个世界的灵活性,这是那种"做死的 UI"给不了的。

Um, so my read here is — I don't think chat is ever going away, because this opened up this new way of like infinite ways to work with the model and to talk to the computer that we just didn't have before.

所以我的判断是 — 我不觉得 chat 会消失,因为它打开了一种新的、"无数种跟模型工作 + 跟电脑对话"的方式 — 这是我们以前从未有过的。

But I think that it will still be most direct for very specific things to exist in this UI.

但我觉得对一些非常具体的事情来说,UI 仍然是最直接的方式。

And I think what will probably happen here is that a lot of those UIs will be generated more and more often by the models — as opposed to something that we're hand coding each instance.

我觉得很可能发生的是 — 这些 UI 越来越多地由模型生成,而不是我们一个个手写。

But yeah, we're in this space where I don't think chat — and maybe even talking to the terminal — is going to go away.

总之我们处在这样一种状态 — 我不觉得 chat、甚至是跟 terminal 对话 — 会消失。

It's interesting that with OpenAI, Claude, MBot — all the names — the innovation, one of the big innovations, is like another way to chat with it through WhatsApp and Telegram and SMS.

挺有意思的是 OpenAI、Claude、MBot — 所有这些名字 — 创新点之一是"通过 WhatsApp、Telegram、短信跟它聊"。

Just another form of chatbot — but that was a big unlock: "oh, I could just chat with it through WhatsApp."

不过是 chatbot 的另一种形态 — 但这是个大解锁:"哦,我可以直接通过 WhatsApp 跟它聊。"

Yeah.

是的。

And it's like — chatting and talking to someone is still — you know, we as humans are doing it.

而且 — 跟人 chat 和说话仍然是 — 我们作为人类一直在做的事。

And so it's a way for us to interact in a really rich way, and now we just have this other medium to interact with a computer, basically.

这是我们以一种非常丰富的方式互动的方法,而现在我们多了这另一种 medium 用来跟电脑互动 — 基本就是这样。

Yeah.

是的。

Um, so Kevin Weil, who works at another AI lab I won't mention — he had this great point on the podcast — that talking is such a beautiful way to handle every level of intelligence.

嗯,Kevin Weil — 他在另一家我就不点名的 AI 实验室 — 他在 podcast 里有个很棒的观点:"talking"(说话)是处理每个智力水平的优美方式。

We can talk to people that are very very smart and not so smart — and it's talking — and it scales so well across the spectrum.

我们可以跟非常非常聪明的人说话、也可以跟不那么聪明的人说话 — 都是说话 — 它在整个谱系上扩展得非常好。

We can talk to people at 200 IQ, 300, like — talking still works.

我们可以跟 200 智商、300 智商的人说话 — 说话仍然 work。

So that's why it's been this beautiful way to deal with the growing intelligence of models — and it continues to work.

所以这就是为什么"说话"是处理"模型智力增长"的一种优美方式 — 而且它持续 work。

Yeah, that totally makes sense. Yeah.

嗯,这完全 make sense。

This episode is brought to you by Omni.

本期节目由 Omni 赞助。

Many product teams today are in the process of debating how to ship AI analytics.

很多产品团队正在纠结怎么 ship AI analytics。

The hard part is obvious.

难点很明显。

Having an LLM guess at SQL in production is a huge mess and just a bad idea.

让 LLM 在生产环境瞎猜 SQL 是个大坑,根本就是坏主意。

Omni takes a different approach.

Omni 走了不一样的路子。

They have a semantic layer built in, so that when you embed their analytics, the AI actually knows your business definitions, not just your raw tables.

他们内置了一个语义层 — 当你嵌入他们的 analytics,AI 真正知道你的业务定义,而不只是裸表。

You can test queries, validate the reasoning, and lock down permissions before anything hits production.

你可以测试 query、验证推理、锁定权限,然后才进生产。

If you want AI analytics in your product without building the whole stack from scratch, check out omni.co/lenny for a free 3-week trial.

如果你想在产品里加 AI analytics 又不想从零搭整栈,去 omni.co/lenny 拿 3 周免费试用。

Companies like Perplexity, dbt, and BuzzFeed use Omni to ship analytics their customers can trust. That's omni.co/lenny.

Perplexity、dbt、BuzzFeed 都在用 Omni 给客户提供可信的 analytics。地址是 omni.co/lenny。

Okay.

OK。

I want to come back to this whole idea of management and IC.

我想回到 management 和 IC 这个话题。

So you've kind of put yourself back into the IC role in a lot of ways.

你在很多方面把自己重新放回了 IC 的角色。

Talk about that, and if you think that's just a thing design managers need to be doing.

聊聊这个,以及你觉得这是不是设计 manager 普遍都该做的事。

Yeah, I have takes on this. Um, yeah.

嗯,我对这个有想法。

So, this past year at Anthropic, I joined as an IC at first.

过去这一年在 Anthropic,我一开始是以 IC 身份加入的。

Um, and then I managed a team for a few months in an org structure that sort of needed it.

然后中间有几个月,在一个需要的组织结构里管了一个团队。

And now I'm actually back to doing full-time IC work.

现在我又回到全职 IC 工作了。

And I joined Anthropic as an IC because I was just really excited about the kind of work that there was to be done as an IC here — but also because I was feeling like, I sort of want to be close to the work, and this feels like a really important time to do it before I ascend the corporate ranks, you know.

我以 IC 身份加入 Anthropic,是因为我对这里能做的 IC 工作非常兴奋 — 但也因为我觉得"我想离工作近一点",这是个非常重要的时机,要在我"沿企业阶梯爬上去"之前去做。

And I was having these questions and doubts about — like, is middle management safe in the future?

而且我那时心里有这些问题 / 怀疑 — 中间管理在未来还安全吗?

Like, is the way that we're working actually — is this going to be a job that persists into the future, or should I try something else and get my hands dirty kind of thing?

我们现在的工作方式 — 这份工作能持续到未来吗?还是我应该试点别的,亲自下场?

Um, and to be totally fair — I actually love both sides of the coin. Like I loved managing people.

说实话 — 硬币两面我都喜欢。我喜欢带人。

I love setting up teams and being at that level — but I also just really loved IC work.

我喜欢搭团队、在那个层级工作 — 但我也真的很喜欢 IC 工作。

Like I was sort of a reluctant manager when I did it, and I was like "okay, I'll do it".

当时做 manager 时我其实有点"被迫" — 想"OK 那我做吧"。

Um, so I love both sides of the coin pretty equally.

所以两面我喜欢的程度差不多。

But I think actually what being an IC across this past year has taught me is — it gave me a lot of skills that I don't think I would have gained if I was just managing throughout this year.

但过去这一年做 IC 让我学到的是 — 它给了我一堆技能,如果整年都在做 manager 我不会拿到。

Um, like the design — the design process has changed so so much in this past year — and I feel like I've just picked up so many hard skills that I wouldn't have necessarily had the time to do if I was just managing a team.

比如设计 — 这一年设计流程变化太大了 — 我感觉自己学到了一堆硬技能,这些如果整年管团队我未必有时间学。

Um, so that's actually the best thing it's afforded me.

这是 IC 这一年给我最好的东西。

And I think at any point if I'm managing a team again, I think it will give me the empathy and understanding of how the design process has changed.

而且未来某天如果我再去管团队,这段经历会让我对"设计流程是怎么变的"有 empathy 和理解。

And I think that's actually a really important thing right now — because yeah, the teams are working so differently.

我觉得这事现在特别重要 — 因为团队的工作方式真的太不一样了。

I think it's actually pretty hard to empathize if you are not working in that way, or you're not always testing all the tools and trying stuff.

如果你不以这种方式工作、不老去试这些工具,你很难真正 empathize。

But yeah, it's an interesting time to be a designer, and if I had not worked in this environment, I don't know if I would have totally understood it or known what to do or how to guide my teams.

是的,这是个挺有意思的"做设计师"的时代。如果我没在这种环境里干过,我不确定我能不能真正理解这件事、知道该做什么、知道怎么带团队。

So that's sort of what this year really gave me.

这是这一年真正给我的东西。

And so you were previously a director of design at Figma, right?

你之前在 Figma 是 design director,对吧?

How big was your team?

团队有多大?

Like how large was your — just to give people reference?

大概多大 — 给听众一个参考?

At the max I probably had — I think 12, 15 designers or so — and I had a few managers as well.

最多的时候我大概带过 — 12、15 个设计师左右 — 下面还有几个 manager。

Cool. And then —

很赞。然后 —

Yeah, okay. So you had this sense that middle management might not last — what's your current feeling? Do you think design management is a thing that persists long term, or do you think everyone turns into IC?

嗯,OK。所以你当时有种感觉"中间管理可能撑不下去" — 现在你的感觉呢?你觉得设计管理是长期持续的事情,还是大家都会变成 IC?

I think as long as there is a team of people, it helps to have somebody who is managing a team.

我觉得只要还有一群人组成的团队,有个 manager 就会有帮助。

Like I think there's real value in managers — it depends what the shape of the manager is and what they actually do — but the way I think about what a helpful manager is these days is somebody who is not just pure people management, like "oh, somebody to set you up, help you in your career, have one-on-ones, make sure you're feeling good at work" — I think that's kind of not a thing as much anymore.

我觉得 manager 是有真实价值的 — 取决于这个 manager 是什么形态、实际做什么 — 但现在我心目中"有帮助的 manager"不是那种纯 people management — "帮你建立、帮你 career、做 1-on-1、确保你工作开心" — 这种我觉得没那么是个东西了。

But I think somebody who can really function as giving the team direction, as well as doing some of the people management stuff tied together — I think that is the future of what managing looks like, at least for now.

能真正给团队方向 + 同时把一部分 people management 整合起来的人 — 我觉得这是 manager 的未来形态,至少眼下是这样。

Um, like somebody who can really engage with the team in terms of the work and giving direction there, as well as creating the environment for them to do their best work.

那种能真正在工作层面跟团队互动 + 给方向 + 同时为他们创造一个能做出最好工作的环境的人。

And do you see yourself going back into management long term?

那你长期来看,会回到 management 吗?

I probably will. I probably will.

大概率会。大概率会。

Like I think I really just love helping a team build the best product possible.

我真的就是喜欢"帮一个团队 build 出最好的产品"。

And my motto there is like — whatever it takes.

我那儿的座右铭是 — whatever it takes(不计形式)。

If the team needs somebody to give the team direction and set up the team, that could be me.

如果团队需要有人给方向、搭团队,那可以是我。

If the team just needs somebody to execute on it, that could be me as well.

如果团队只是需要有人去执行,那也可以是我。

So the advice I'm hearing for people in design that are especially managers is — you almost need to move back into IC in order to truly understand what is happening and how much it's changing, so that you can be a better manager.

所以我听到的建议是,对设计领域、尤其是 manager 来说 — 你几乎需要回到 IC 才能真正理解现在发生什么、变化多大,然后才能成为更好的 manager。

I think so.

我觉得是的。

And I think traditionally, at least what I've seen a lot — in engineering disciplines, when they hire EM or sometimes directors there — they actually make the EM take a rotation for a few months and pick up a few tasks and really understand how the technology works before they become a full-time manager.

我觉得传统上 — 至少我看到的 — 工程领域招 EM,有时候招 director,他们会让 EM 先做几个月的 rotation,接几个任务,真正理解技术怎么运作,然后才正式做 manager。

And I think design probably needs to do something similar — because in the past, design has been much more people-management oriented.

我觉得设计大概需要做类似的事 — 因为过去设计这边更偏 people management。

What did you find yourself most rusty in when you went back to IC designer?

你回到 IC 设计师时,发现自己最生疏的是什么?

Actually like doing crits, you know — and just getting criticized.

其实是做 crits — 还有被 criticized。

Yeah. Getting criticized.

是的,被 criticized。

You're like "oh, yeah" — like it is hard to get critical feedback and to hear it on such a regular basis.

就那种"啊,对哦" — 经常拿到 critical feedback 并且要去听,真的挺难。

Because that's the thing you have to do as a designer — it's a pretty vulnerable exercise to share work and present it with your team, and then also just get a lot of critical feedback and take that all the time.

因为这是设计师必须做的 — 把工作分享给团队、展示出来,然后接收大量 critical feedback,一直反复做 — 这是个挺脆弱的练习。

So currently you're leading design — slic, designing — on Co-work, is that right?

所以你现在在 Co-work 上做设计 lead,对吧?

Awesome.

很赞。

So Boris — he was on the pod recently — talked about how there's a lot of debate about what Co-work should be, and there's all these big ideas, and he's like — in the end let's just make it like a terminal, basically in the product — and just kind of a fancy terminal.

Boris 最近上过 pod — 他聊到 Co-work 该是什么,内部争议很多,各种大 idea,但他说 — 最后就让它在产品里像个 terminal — 一个 fancy terminal。

Is there anything you could share about the process of landing on where you landed for that experience of Co-work?

关于"你们最终怎么落在 Co-work 现在的形态"这个过程,你有什么可以分享吗?

I have it here on my monitor, by the way, looking at it.

顺便说,我屏幕上就开着它呢。

With Co-work specifically, we have had a bunch of different prototypes internally of what that could look like.

具体到 Co-work,我们内部做过一堆不同的 prototype。

Um, and it's one of those things where we tried a lot of things, and then we — I think we weren't really sure when it was actually going to be ready to ship — and then it was sort of like everything all at once.

这种事我们试了很多东西 — 我们也不是真的确定它什么时候能 ship — 然后就突然一下全都来了。

Like we were like "okay, we're going to ship it soon."

我们当时就"OK,我们要快 ship 了"。

It was — it was 10 days. 10 days of building.

那是 — 10 天。10 天的 build。

Yeah, it was — it was definitely longer than that.

是的 — 实际肯定比 10 天长。

Like overall it was like 10 days to get it from what we had internally to something that we were ready to ship externally.

整体上"从内部已有的形态,到可以对外 ship 的形态" — 这一段是 10 天。

So we'd been building it for a while, but we weren't really sure about the actual form it was going to take.

我们已经 build 了一阵了,但我们并不确定它最终会是什么形态。

Um, and so the way it got there is actually there were a lot of different other explorations that we had internally on top of different agent harnesses and whatnot.

所以它最后能成形,其实是因为我们在不同 agent harness 上做过一堆别的探索。

And we just had prototyped little parts of the different interactions that ended up in Co-work.

我们把最终进到 Co-work 里的那些交互的小片段都做过 prototype。

So things like — when Claude gives you a to-do list, we tried a bunch of different form factors for that.

比如 — Claude 给你一个 to-do list,我们试过一堆不同的形态。

We tried a bunch of different form factors for the way it presents you different multiple choice questions.

它给你多选题的方式,我们也试过一堆形态。

We tried a bunch of different ways to teach people what the use cases are.

我们试过一堆不同的方式去告诉用户 use case 是什么。

And I don't know if we landed on the best form factor ever, but essentially it was stuff that was sort of already working internally that people liked, that we just thought we were going to get some more signal on by releasing it.

我不确定我们落到的是不是最棒的形态,但本质上这些都是内部已经在 work、大家都喜欢的东西 — 我们觉得放出去能拿到更多信号。

So I think forcing ourselves to release it within that 10 days — it was just like, whatever we had, let's put it out there and then go out there and iterate from there. Which is what we're doing.

所以"逼自己在那 10 天内 release" — 就是"我们手里有什么,先放出来,然后从那儿开始迭代"。这也是我们现在在做的。

And it blew up the internet when you launched it, so worked out.

而你们 launch 时整个互联网都炸了 — 看起来挺成功。

Is there a feature of Co-work today that you're either most proud of, or just like can't wait to fix and improve?

Co-work 今天有哪个 feature 你最 proud,或者最想去修和改进?

Honestly, I think — I'm just most proud of us actually shipping it, to be honest.

说实话,我最 proud 的就是我们真的把它 ship 出去了。

Um, and putting it out there.

把它放到世界上。

And uh, yeah, I don't know if there's one specific thing yet, because — when you work on something so long, especially as a designer — you're like "I don't know if I like — all I can do is see flaws in it."

具体到某个 feature 我说不上来 — 因为作为设计师,东西做太久之后,你只能看到瑕疵。

But I think there's a lot of stuff that I'm excited about.

但我对很多东西都很兴奋。

Like we have been iterating, especially on the homepage, to make that something where it feels more like "hey, these are like tasks you can give Claude, and tasks that Claude is working on".

比如我们一直在迭代,尤其是 homepage,让它感觉更像"嘿,这是你可以给 Claude 的任务,这是 Claude 在做的任务"。

Um, and that actually should be rolling out.

这个其实快要上线了。

It might already be rolled out by the time this —

等这期 pod 上线时可能已经上了 —

All right.

好的。

So I see like this little randomizer thing where you click it and it gives you all these different ideas.

我看到这儿有个小 randomizer,点一下给你各种不同的 idea。

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

对对对。

And then when you actually start to work with Claude on stuff, it feels more like a to-do list.

当你真的开始跟 Claude 一起做事时,会感觉更像 to-do list。

Like it feels more like these are things Claude's working on.

感觉更像"这些是 Claude 正在做的事"。

Um, these are things that Claude needs your attention on.

"这些是 Claude 需要你介入的事"。

And I think there's an opportunity here to make it feel much more like this shared to-do list between you and Claude.

我觉得这里有个机会 — 把它做得更像"你和 Claude 之间共享的 to-do list"。

So excited to iterate on that.

所以非常期待迭代这一块。

And then I'm also excited to think more about — what is the actual true form factor of this? Like, is it stuck in the screen always, or how does this sort of reach out to the different surfaces that it's working with?

还有我也很期待去想 — 它真正的 form factor 是什么?是永远卡在屏幕里,还是它会延伸到它在处理的各种 surface 上?

I love that you shared that it wasn't just 10 days to do this thing.

我喜欢你分享这点 — 其实不是 10 天就把这事干完了。

There's like these numbers that people throw out there.

有种"大家随口扔出来"的数字。

"We built it in 10 days."

"我们 10 天就 build 出来了。"

And your point is like — there was time spent thinking about what direction it should go, and prototyping, mocking, trying stuff.

而你说的点是 — 之前花了时间想方向、做 prototype、mock、试东西。

And then it's like — okay, now we know what we want it to be.

然后到了 — "OK,现在我们知道我们要它是什么"。

Let's build it and ship it.

我们 build + ship。

Yeah.

是的。

I think for some reason that became the viral thing taken away from all of the Co-work announcements — that it only took 10 days.

我觉得不知道为啥,在所有 Co-work 公告里被传爆的就是这条 — "只花了 10 天"。

But there have just been so many different explorations, and people that have worked on different pieces of Co-work — it was not just 10 days, and there were a lot of different people involved.

但其实有非常多不同的探索,有非常多人参与了 Co-work 的不同部分 — 不只是 10 天,涉及非常多人。

It's one of those things where the idea kept coming back, and it's never the right moment, or there are different variations of it — and then all of a sudden it's the right moment, and it feels like it was so obvious all along — but there was a long, long journey to get there.

是那种 — idea 反复回来,每次都不是对的时机,或者是不同的变体 — 然后突然之间时机到了,事后看就好像一直就该是这样 — 但走到这儿其实经历了很长很长的旅程。

And by the way, for people that don't know much about Co-work — the way I think about it, it's like Claude with hands, where you could do stuff on your computer.

顺便对不了解 Co-work 的听众说一下 — 我自己的理解是,它像 Claude with hands(长手的 Claude),它能在你电脑上干事。

Is that — how would you describe it, just in a sentence or two?

那 — 你会怎么用一两句话描述它?

That's a good description.

那是个好描述。

I actually haven't heard that, but I like that.

我之前没听过,但我喜欢。

I might use it more often as "Claude with hands".

我可能会更多地用"Claude with hands"这个说法。

I also think about it as — it's like Claude, but Claude is really good at taking all your garbage and turning it into something nice.

我也把它想成 — 它是 Claude,但 Claude 特别擅长把你所有的垃圾变成有用的东西。

Like one of my favorite use cases out of Co-work is just giving it a folder of my stuff, and it doesn't really matter what's in that folder — but I'm able to extract something good out of it.

我最喜欢的 Co-work use case 之一 — 把一整个文件夹塞给它,里面是什么不重要 — 我都能从里面提取出有价值的东西。

I've done that many times.

这我做过很多次。

Okay, coming back to managing and being a manager and the role of a designer.

好,回到管理 / 做 manager / 设计师角色这块。

I want to talk about hiring for a little bit.

想聊一下招聘。

So, seeing how much is changing in the role of a designer — what do you look for that's maybe new?

看到设计师角色变化这么大 — 你现在看哪些新东西?

Like what do you now look for when you're hiring designers that you think is really important for them to be successful in this new world?

招设计师时,你现在看什么 — 哪些对他们在新世界里成功是真的重要的?

Well, I do think working specifically in the kind of environment that I do, there's just a sense of resilience, and "roll with it" kind of thing.

嗯,在我现在所在的这种环境里,会需要一种 resilience(韧性)+ "roll with it"(随它去)。

Um, that I think is really important — because yeah, so much is changing around us, and you have to be really willing to adapt, to try out new methods, to try out new tools, and learn stuff — as opposed to just be stuck in the old processes and the old ways.

我觉得这非常重要 — 因为周围变化太大,你必须真的愿意 adapt、试新方法、试新工具、学新东西 — 而不是卡在旧流程旧方式里。

Um, but I think about — there are probably three archetypes of folks that are really interesting to me right now.

嗯,我会想 — 现在让我特别感兴趣的大概有三种 archetype。

Um, and I think these folks were already interesting to me before, but I feel like in this era it feels especially important.

这几种人以前对我也很有意思,但这个时代尤其重要。

Um, so the first one I would call is "strong generalists".

第一种我叫做 strong generalist(强多面手)。

Um, so not just regular generalists where they're kind of good at a lot of things — but people that are almost block-shaped, you know, in that T-shaped framework — where they're really good at like a few core skills, like 80th percentile good.

不是那种"啥都还行"的普通 generalist — 而是在 T-shape 框架里,几乎是 block 形(一块砖) — 在好几个核心技能上都是 80 百分位水平。

I think this is pretty rare and hard to hire for, to be honest.

说实话这种人很稀有,招起来很难。

But I like this because the design role we've already seen is kind of stretching and spanning, right?

但我喜欢这种 — 因为我们已经看到设计师角色在拉伸和跨界,对吧?

Like we're all becoming more PM-shaped. We're all becoming engineering-shaped.

我们都在变得更 PM 形、更工程师形。

Um, and so if you already have strong skills in a few different buckets, it's really easy for you to flex around and expand your role.

所以如果你在好几个 bucket 里都有强技能,你就很容易 flex + 扩展角色。

So that's really exciting to me.

所以这对我来说很 exciting。

It's just somebody who is really good at a bunch of things. Again, a huge ask.

就是"在一堆事情上都真的擅长"的人。再说一遍,要求很高。

Um, and then the other person that's really exciting to me, in that T-shaped framework, is a deep specialist — someone who's T-shaped, but the tip of the T goes down farther than most other people.

第二种,在 T-shape 框架里,是深度专家 — 也是 T 形,但 T 的"尾巴"比大多数人扎得深得多。

So folks that are maybe like the top 10% in the industry. Again, super hard to find.

就是行业 top 10% 的那种人。同样,非常难找。

And I feel very lucky that working at some of these places — folks like these — you can sort of afford to hire them and actually bring them on board.

我感觉非常幸运 — 在某些这样的公司里 — 你能负担得起招这些人,并且真的把他们招进来。

Um, and then my last one is probably the one that I think we're all overlooking — which is what I call "the craft new grad".

第三种大概是我们都在忽视的一种 — 我叫它 "the craft new grad"(craft 型应届毕业生)。

Um, it's somebody who is early career, and feels kind of wise and experienced beyond their years, but is also just very humble and very eager to learn.

嗯,就是 early career(初入行)、但感觉比年纪老成 / 经验丰富、同时又非常 humble、非常渴望学习的人。

I think this person is really interesting right now because most companies are just hiring senior talent — folks that have done things before, are super experienced — but given how much the roles are changing and what we're expected to do is changing [snorts] — I think having somebody who almost has a blank slate, and is a really quick learner, and is really eager to learn new tactics, and doesn't have all these baked-in processes and rituals in their mind — that's super valuable.

我觉得这种人现在特别有意思 — 因为大多数公司都在招 senior talent(资深人才),做过事情、经验丰富 — 但考虑到角色 / 预期变化这么大 [鼻笑] — 一个"几乎空白"的人,学得快、渴望学新打法、脑子里没有那些 baked-in 流程和仪式 — 这非常有价值。

Um, so I think those are the folks that a lot of us are overlooking — but I'm really excited about.

所以我觉得这种人我们很多人都在忽视 — 但我特别 excited。

This is awesome.

这太棒了。

Uh, on the deep T shape — what's an example of someone in design that — what's a skill that they're really good at?

关于"深 T 形" — 设计领域里举个例子,那种"真的擅长"的技能是什么样的?

Sometimes there's designers who are just really technical in a way where they could be like 50% software engineer — they're basically a software engineer.

有时候有设计师特别技术 — 50% 是软件工程师 — 基本就是个软件工程师。

That's really interesting, especially because right now — at least for us — you're working directly with the model, so it helps when you have deep engineering expertise.

这特别有意思,尤其因为现在 — 至少对我们来说 — 你直接在跟模型工作,有 deep 工程能力就特别帮。

Um, but another deep specialist T is — they're just really good at visual design, or just like designing icons, or something where — given that anybody can make anything — having that deep specialist slant feels like "oh yeah, they can really help differentiate the things that we're building."

另一种深 T 是 — 他们就是特别擅长视觉设计,或者擅长设计 icon 之类的 — 在"人人都能做任何东西"的时代,这种深度专家倾向会让你觉得"对,他们能真的让我们做的东西不一样"。

Awesome. Okay.

很赞,OK。

And then this block shape — we had Marc Andreessen on the podcast.

说到这个 block 形 — 我们 podcast 请过 Marc Andreessen。

We kind of called it the F-shape or E-shape, where there's like multiple T's.

我们当时叫它 F-shape 或 E-shape — 多个 T 拼起来。

Sideways F, sideways E, I guess.

横躺的 F,横躺的 E。

Is that what you're describing — where there's many things you're really really good at?

你说的就是这种吗 — 在很多事情上都真的真的擅长?

Yeah. Yeah.

对对。

And basically — I don't know, if you almost had their skill set, it would look like a block, you know — like —

基本上 — 如果你把这种人的技能集画出来,它几乎就是个 block(方块) —

There's so many skills that the T is spread out. Okay.

技能多到 T 都摊开了。OK。

Okay. And the craft new grad —

OK。再说这个 craft new grad —

So this is just someone that is eager, open-minded, gritty, very smart, I imagine, is a big part of it.

就是 eager(渴望)、open-minded、gritty(有韧劲)、我猜还特别聪明 — 这是大头。

Awesome.

赞。

Yeah. Yeah.

对对。

If someone's like a new designer, like a young designer trying to break in, trying to be successful — what would your advice be to them to help them have a shot at joining Anthropic, for example?

如果是个新人 / 年轻设计师在尝试入行、想做出成绩 — 你给他们的建议是什么?例如想去 Anthropic 工作的话。

I would just say — just like build a bunch of stuff, try a bunch of stuff out, build actual things.

我只会说 — 就去 build 一堆东西,试一堆东西,build 真实的东西。

I think that can feel — I don't really know what the state of design education or education is these days, but at least from back when I was in school, everything was very theoretical — "here we're going to teach you some approaches and whatnot" — but the best kind of "craft new grad" folks I know are just people who use the technology, build actual things, don't feel limited by how little experience they might have.

这件事感觉 — 我不太清楚现在设计教育 / 教育是什么状态,至少我当年读书时一切都很理论化 — "我们会教你一些方法" — 但我认识的最好的"craft new grad"都是直接用技术、build 真实的东西、不被自己经验少这件事限制住的人。

I think sometimes they're actually unburdened by that — because we have expectations of ourselves after being in industry for so long, but they actually don't, and they feel like anything is possible.

有时候他们其实是因此没有负担 — 我们这些在行业里待久了的人会对自己有期待,但他们没有,他们感觉万事皆可能。

And so just building a bunch of stuff and sharing it with people, and finding a community of folks that also do that.

所以就是 build 一堆东西,跟人分享,找到也在这么干的社区。

Um, yeah, my one call here too is — I went to a school that started something called Socratica a few years after I graduated — basically their whole thing is building stuff and showcasing it almost like a science project — and there's been a really cool movement of folks who just build things and do things.

嗯,我的一个 shout-out 是 — 我读的学校在我毕业后几年办了个叫 Socratica 的东西 — 它整个就是 build 东西并展示出来,像 science project — 那里有一波很酷的运动,一群人就在 build + 做事。

Like for example, somebody built this Claude robot project.

比如,有人 build 了一个 Claude robot project。

This was like a few years ago too, where they were assembling robots that were running on Claude — and then somebody else did something where she just wanted to put googly eyes on a bus in Boston or something — and there's a sense of both agency (we can just do stuff) but also community where people were trying and building and sharing things with each other.

那是几年前 — 他们在组装跑 Claude 的机器人 — 还有人做了件事,她就想在 Boston 给一辆公交车贴上 googly eyes(动眼贴) — 这里有一种双重的"agency"(我们就能做事) + community(社区) — 大家在尝试、在 build、在彼此分享。

So whatever that looks like — given the school someone's from or graduating from — yeah, doing that kind of stuff is what will make people stand out.

所以不管那个东西在你的学校里长什么样 — 做那种事情才是让人 stand out 的方式。

For current designers that are mid-career, awesomely senior — do you think you need to get technical and learn to code, at least build — or do you think you could be really successful and just not lean into that and get better at other stuff?

对在职、middle/senior 设计师 — 你觉得需要变技术化、学写代码,至少 build 起来吗?还是你可以不往那走、做好别的事情就 OK?

I think it definitely helps — maybe not learn how to code so much that you're building something from scratch — but it does feel like more and more of the designer vocabulary right now is implementing some stuff.

我觉得肯定有帮助 — 也许不需要学到"从零起手 build"那种程度 — 但现在设计师 vocabulary(词汇)里越来越多包含"实现一些东西"。

I wonder though, as the models and the products get better, we probably will continue to move up the abstraction layer — and you won't have to actually know how each single line of code will work.

不过我在想 — 随着模型和产品变好,我们大概会继续往上爬抽象层 — 你不必再知道每一行代码到底怎么 work。

But what I would say is — start to bring that into your toolkit, the coding tools, whether or not you're actually becoming technical.

但我会说 — 把这些"代码工具"加到你的 toolkit 里,不管你最终是不是真的变技术化。

I think any designer should just be really aware and know how to use the tools that are at — as opposed to maybe like learning and going off and learning React etc., etc.

任何设计师都应该对手边的工具有所了解、会用 — 而不是非要去学 React 之类。

How good of a designer is Claude, would you say — or Claude Code, whatever you want — would you hire Claude as a designer, or is it not there yet?

你觉得 Claude 作为设计师有多好? — 或者 Claude Code,随你怎么叫 — 你会不会招 Claude 作为设计师?还是它还没到那一步?

I don't think Claude is there yet.

我觉得 Claude 还没到。

I don't think Claude is there yet in terms of a designer you would hire.

"作为一个你愿意招的设计师",Claude 还没到。

I think it is not yet the strong generalist, or the deep specialist, or the craft new grad.

它还不是 strong generalist、不是 deep specialist、也不是 craft new grad。

I think it's pretty good at a first pass and at presenting a bunch of different ideas to you — but nothing quite feels yet "special and hirable".

它擅长做第一版、能呈现一堆不同的 idea — 但还没到那种"特别、值得招"的程度。

Which is good news for designers, for now [laughter] — that it sucks at this for now.

对设计师来说现在是好消息 [笑] — 它眼下还做得不好。

And I'm so curious to see how good it could get at this.

我特别好奇它能变多好。

That's such a big open question — can it pump out amazing novel unique creative experiences, or is this just never going to be that good as a human designer?

这是个大大的 open question — 它能不能产出惊人 / 新颖 / 独特 / 有创意的体验?还是它就不会像人类设计师那么好?

I mean, it's gotten a lot better in the last year or so even. So, yeah.

我意思是,就过去这一年来它已经好太多了。所以,是的。

There are a couple management rituals or takes you have that I've heard from folks you work with — that I want to touch on.

我从跟你共事的人那儿听说 — 你有几条管理 ritual 或 take 我想聊。

One is — you have this hot take that "low leverage time for a manager" is just not a thing — that there's a lot of benefit you can get out of things that people consider low leverage.

一是 — 你有个 hot take:"低杠杆时间对 manager 来说根本不存在" — 你能从被认为是"低杠杆"的事情里获得很多收益。

Can you talk about that?

能聊聊这个吗?

Yeah.

嗯。

Um yeah, I remember first becoming a manager — and I think one piece of advice that I either got from a course or a book or something is — "now that you're a manager, you have to really prioritize your time and categorize your work" — and there's like this 2x2 — I don't remember what was in it — but essentially you say "these are things only I can do, these are things anybody can do" — and everything else is low leverage and you shouldn't do that anymore.

嗯,我记得第一次做 manager 时,从课程或书里学到的建议是 — "你现在是 manager 了,要严格 prioritize 时间、分类你的工作" — 有个 2x2,具体内容我记不清了 — 大意是"这些是只有我能做的事,这些是任何人都能做的事" — 其余都是低杠杆,不要再做了。

And a lot of the low leverage things were like things that are really nitpicky in the weeds — or just like literally yes, somebody else could do those tasks.

那些"低杠杆"事情很多就是又细又深入 weeds 的事 — 或者真的是别人也能做的事。

But when I think about leaders and managers I have the most respect for — I actually think one of their best traits is that they choose low-lever tasks that they take on themselves — and that actually ends up being a very high-lever thing because it's them who's doing it.

但当我想到我最尊重的 leader / manager — 我觉得他们最棒的特点之一是 — 他们会主动选一些"低杠杆"任务自己来 — 而这件事最后变成"高杠杆",因为是他们在做。

Um, so one example — whenever you have senior leaders who just test the s*** out of the product and are so in tune with it.

举个例子 — 那种 senior leader 把产品测得贼细,跟产品完全同频。

Um, and they dog food it, they repro the bugs, they spend a bunch of time with engineers sharing the logs and nitpicking stuff like that.

他们 dogfood、复现 bug、花大把时间跟工程师一起看 log、抠细节。

Um, and I think that ends up being super high leverage even though it's a lot of nitty-gritty time — because it creates this familiarity with the product, which I think is really good.

这其实变成了非常高杠杆 — 即使要花很多琐碎时间 — 因为这创造了对产品的熟悉度,这非常宝贵。

Uh, it also creates this vibe where — oh yeah, this senior leader really cares deeply, and they actually know the ins and outs of the product, and they're rolling up their sleeves and they're giving this feedback and working with the team on it.

它还塑造了一种氛围 — 这位 senior leader 真的在乎,真的懂产品里里外外,在挽起袖子给反馈、跟团队一起干。

Um and similarly, what I've seen is — when a senior leader is able to fix a bug — like I've seen Mike Krieger before put in PRs himself.

类似的我也看到 — 当 senior leader 能去修一个 bug — 比如我见过 Mike Krieger 自己提 PR。

Um, and it's really nice because it's like — okay, cool, we're all on this team together, and nothing is below this person.

这感觉特别好 — "OK,我们在一个团队里,没有什么事 below 这个人"。

Um, another thing I love that's a bit more cultural — when somebody goes out of the way to make somebody's anniversary card or vibe-code them something super nice — because it shows that yes, an EA could put the card together, but this leader is somebody who cares so much about their team that they put in the effort.

另一件我喜欢的、偏文化的事 — 有人专门去做某人的"周年卡片"、或 vibe-code 给对方做一个特别走心的东西 — 这表明,虽然 EA 也能搞个卡片,但这位 leader 是真的特别在乎团队,愿意投入精力。

So that's something I try to embody — choosing the seemingly low-lever tasks that are worth my time.

所以这是我自己努力去 embody 的 — 主动挑那些表面"低杠杆"、但值得我花时间的事情。

Yeah, that is so interesting.

是的,这特别有意思。

Like what you're saying there is, in a sense, the low leverage stuff is the stuff that often has the most impact — because your reports wouldn't expect you to spend time on this thing — and the low leverage ends up being high leverage.

你这意思在某种意义上是 — 低杠杆的事情往往影响最大 — 因为你的下属根本不期待你在这事上花时间 — 低杠杆反而变成高杠杆。

Yeah.

是的。

And I think it's what makes your style of leadership stand out or feel special to a certain person.

而且我觉得这正是让你的 leadership 风格 stand out、让某些人觉得"特别"的东西。

Amazing.

太赞了。

Another I-don't-know ritual / way of running teams I heard about you — you encourage team members roasting each other.

另一个我听说的你的 ritual / 带团队方式 — 你鼓励团队成员互相 roast(吐槽 / 调侃)。

Which on the surface doesn't sound like a wonderful environment — but on the other hand, I hear constantly that the teams you've built are just the happiest, highest-performing teams.

表面上听起来这环境不咋样 — 但另一方面,我一直听说你带的团队是最快乐、最高绩效的团队。

Talk about this idea of roasting and encouraging that, and just what you've learned about building awesome teams.

说说这个 roasting + 鼓励它的 idea,以及你学到的"搭建好团队"的东西。

Yeah, I think it's not that I'm like "yo, you should roast each other" — I'm not forcing it in that way or anything.

嗯,不是说我去逼着大家"喂,你们要互相 roast" — 不是那样硬推。

Um, but when I think about psychological safety and teams, and people that just get along with each other — like when you think about your friends, you're always sort of willing to push the boundaries a little bit and roast them.

嗯,但我想到 psychological safety、想到团队、想到关系好的人 — 你想想你的朋友,你总是愿意去稍微试探一下边界、去 roast 他们。

Like you're roasting your friends a lot, but you might not be roasting your co-workers a lot — because it's all about comfort and safety, right?

你 roast 朋友很多,但你可能不太 roast 同事 — 因为这本质上是关于"舒适和安全感",对吧?

So it's not that I'm like "oh, I want my teams to roast each other" — but I think it can be a really good sign when the people on your team feel comfortable poking fun at each other a little bit.

所以不是"我希望我的团队互相 roast" — 但当团队成员能放松地互相调侃,这本身是个很好的信号。

Um, and I think that can also be a good sign when folks feel the same way about you as a leader — where there's an element that they don't fear you as much, and they feel a sense of safety where if they say something, they're not going to get fired.

同样的信号 — 当大家对你这个 leader 也是这样的感觉 — 他们不那么怕你,有种安全感,说错话不会被开。

Um, so an example — with my last team, I feel like they would make fun of things I'd say at crits sometimes, certain phrases I would say.

举个例子 — 我上个团队会调侃我在 crit 里说的话,某些固定句式。

What's an example of that?

举个例子?

I don't like — I — oh, I would always be like "okay, like what are next steps?" And like "how do we follow up on this?" And then they'd be like "okay, like what are next steps?" — and they would channel me in that way. Yeah.

我不 — 我 — 我老说"OK,next steps 是什么?"和"我们怎么 follow up?" 然后他们就模仿我"OK,next steps 是什么?" — 那种"附身"的调侃。

I just think it shows a level of — okay, these people are not necessarily afraid of me, they trust me.

这说明 — 这些人不怕我,他们信任我。

They can trust me.

他们能信任我。

Um, and they know enough about each other and about me personally to know where those boundaries are.

他们对彼此 + 对我个人都了解得够多,知道边界在哪儿。

Um, but at the same time, the territory you sort of err into is — are you as a manager friends with your reports? Which is the thing people tell you not to do.

同时,你会有点滑进的危险区域是 — 作为 manager 你是不是跟下属是朋友?这是大家会告诉你别做的。

So the way I think about balancing this out is — you have to create this baseline of psychological safety, and people feel comfortable both with each other and with you — but you also have to make sure they know you have really high standards.

所以我的平衡方法是 — 你必须先建立 psychological safety 的 baseline,人们彼此之间 + 跟你之间都舒服 — 但你也必须让他们知道你有非常高的标准。

Um, and these two things can feel like they're at tension, but I think they work really well together — because once you have that psychological safety, with people trusting each other, applying the high standards actually becomes easier — because you can do it without fear.

这两件事看起来有 tension,但其实配合得很好 — 一旦你有了 psychological safety + 互信,再去贯彻 high standards 反而更简单 — 因为你能没有恐惧地做这件事。

I think — I sort of think about this from the approach of being kind of like a tough parent a little bit, you know?

我会用一种"有点 tough 的父母"的视角来想这件事。

It's like — my team, I work with them in a way where they know I'm always going to be there.

我和团队的合作方式是 — 他们知道我会一直在。

Um, and I'm not going to fire them on a whim or something — but at the same time, they also know that I want the best for them, and that I have high standards, and that I'm working with them to make the best work possible.

我不会任性炒人 — 但同时,他们也知道我希望他们好,我有 high standards,我在跟他们一起做出最好的工作。

And so yeah, that's the balance I need to strike — can you create this environment where your team feels comfortable roasting you, but at the same time they know they have to be doing great work, and they will do great work with you.

所以那是我需要 strike 的平衡 — 能不能创造一个环境,让团队能舒服地 roast 你,同时他们知道必须做出好工作,并且他们会跟你一起做出好工作。

That is awesome advice.

那真是个很棒的建议。

It's interesting how often this management style comes back — or good management comes back — reminds me of Radical Candor, just this combination of caring deeply and challenging directly. Yeah.

有意思的是这种管理风格 — 或者说"好管理" — 反复出现 — 让我想起 Radical Candor:同时"深度在乎"和"直接挑战"的组合。

And that's kind of what I hear here — just make sure people know that you care deeply about them, but also be very direct and have high standards.

这也是我从你这儿听到的 — 让大家知道你很 deeply 在乎他们,但同时也要非常直接 + 有高标准。

So interesting. Okay. Maybe a final question.

太有意思了。OK,可能是最后一个问题。

I'm always looking for interesting frameworks and methods and processes that people have found useful in their work — and I hear you're a big fan of something called the legibility framework.

我一直在找别人在工作里觉得有用的 framework / 方法 / 流程 — 我听说你特别推崇一个叫做 legibility framework 的东西。

Talk about this.

说说这个。

Talk about how you use it, why it's so valuable.

你怎么用它?为什么这么有价值?

Yeah, this framework — I think I saw it on Twitter, maybe last year — and it was Evan Tana, who is a partner at SPC, he's a VC.

嗯,这个 framework — 我大概去年在 Twitter 上看到的 — 是 Evan Tana 提出来的,他是 SPC 的 partner,VC。

It basically is this 2 by 2 — I don't think it got so much attention, but once I started seeing it I actually couldn't stop thinking about it.

它本质上是一个 2x2 — 没收获很大关注,但我一看到就停不下来在想。

So on the 2 by 2 — founders can be either illegible or legible, and ideas can either be illegible or legible.

这个 2x2 里 — 创始人可以是 illegible(难辨识)或 legible(易辨识),idea 也可以是 illegible 或 legible。

Um, and basically he was saying — if both the founder and idea are super legible, the idea is probably not that novel, and somebody's already going to implement it or do it, and you're actually not finding something new.

他的意思基本是 — 如果创始人和 idea 都非常 legible,那 idea 大概率不新,已经有人在做了,你也没真的找到新东西。

Um, but where it gets really interesting is when the idea itself is illegible.

真正有意思的是 — 当 idea 本身是 illegible 的时候。

And by illegible he means like — oh, it's really on the frontier, people might not get it yet — or the way it's being told just isn't being told in the way that makes the most sense to people.

illegible 的意思是 — 它真的在 frontier(前沿),大家还没 get 到 — 或者它被讲出来的方式,对大多数人来说还不是最 make sense 的方式。

And I think this is obviously a good way for a VC to operate — because you're trying to look for opportunities that people don't see and put them out there in the world.

显然这是 VC 该运作的方式 — 你在找别人没看到的机会,把它们放到世界里。

But I also think part of the role of the designer — at least at a frontier lab at Anthropic — is kind of spotting the ideas that are illegible and trying to understand what's there, and how to take that and transform it — whether through storytelling, or through the actual UX and form factor — and put it out there.

但我也觉得设计师角色的一部分 — 至少在 Anthropic 这种 frontier lab — 是发现这些 illegible 的 idea,搞清楚里面有什么,然后通过 storytelling 或 UX / form factor 把它 transform 出来、放出去。

Um, when I mentioned going through Slack and looking at all the stuff that people are making — that's kind of what I'm doing.

嗯,我之前说"刷 Slack、看大家在做什么" — 我做的就是这件事。

I'm trying to see — oh yeah, what are the ideas that have some energy around them but might not make sense yet, that are worth thinking about more in my work?

我在试着看 — 哪些 idea 周围有 energy,但还没完全 make sense,值得我在工作里多想想?

There's a good example actually that ties to Co-work — there was this internal prototype we called "Claude Studio" that someone built partway through last year.

有个好例子跟 Co-work 有关 — 我们有个内部 prototype 叫 "Claude Studio",去年某个时候有人 build 的。

Um, it essentially was just this really dense, powerful interface built on top of some agentic harness.

它本质上是一个非常密集、强大的 interface,建在某个 agentic harness 之上。

It might have been Claude Code at that point in time too.

那时可能就是 Claude Code。

And it had all these displays showing you all this knowledge and skills and things Claude was doing, and previewing outputs.

它有各种 display,展示 Claude 在用的知识、skills、在做的事,还预览 output。

Um, and as a designer I looked at it and I was like — this is — I don't know what's going on. I don't really get it.

作为设计师我看到它的反应是 — 这是 — 我搞不清楚发生了什么。我没 get 到。

Um, but then I saw the folks in research, the folks building it, and just folks internally — there was just a lot of energy around it — and I was like, cool, I think there's something here, but I just don't understand it yet.

但接着我看到 research 的人、build 它的人、内部的人 — 围着它的 energy 非常多 — 我就想"OK,这儿有点东西,只是我还没看懂"。

And I think that really was an example of an illegible idea.

这真的是一个 illegible idea 的例子。

And ultimately what came from it was the skills framework, and the markdown files that instruct Claude on how to do something.

最终从它演化出来的是 skills framework + 那些指导 Claude 怎么做事的 markdown 文件。

So that came out of that specific prototype that was not something I was directly involved in — that was more the folks working on this prototype extracted that out of it.

那是从这个特定 prototype 里出来的 — 我没直接参与,是 prototype 团队自己提炼出来的。

But when it did come to working on Claude Co-work, and I was thinking about — oh yeah, what is the form factor for those things — seeing that prototype and seeing the kinds of information that people found really helpful (like seeing Claude's plan and to-dos, seeing Claude's context and the files it was going through) — those kinds of things are things that I ended up pulling out of that prototype into Claude Co-work.

但当我在做 Claude Co-work、在想"这些东西的 form factor 是什么"时 — 我看回那个 prototype、看大家觉得哪些信息真的有用(比如看 Claude 的 plan / to-do、看 Claude 的 context 和它正在过的文件)— 这些东西我最后从那个 prototype 拉到了 Claude Co-work 里。

So yeah, I think about — how can designers almost be more like VCs in this way, internally only, when we're looking at prototypes?

所以我在想 — 在内部看 prototype 时,设计师能不能更像 VC 那样去工作?

This is super interesting.

这特别有意思。

I did a research project recently with this guy Terrence Rohan, VC actually — we looked at patterns across people who have joined companies very early that ended up being massive successes — like Palantir and Stripe and Linear and Notion — and one of the factors was the idea is so crazy that everyone's laughing at it: "this is impossible, you're never going to do this, this is the craziest thing."

我最近跟 VC Terrence Rohan 做了个研究 — 我们看那些非常早期就加入了后来巨大成功的公司(Palantir、Stripe、Linear、Notion)的人,有什么共性 — 其中一个因素是:idea 疯到所有人都在笑 — "这不可能,你永远做不出来,这是最疯的事"。

Why would you even think — like Palantir — all the — OpenAI actually was one of them, just some research lab doing some stuff.

你怎么会想这事 — 比如 Palantir — 还有 — OpenAI 也是其中之一,就是个搞研究的实验室。

So it's interesting that — it's not like every time this will work, and not every crazy idea that sounds like it makes no sense will be good — but I think what you're saying is — pay attention to stuff that's interesting to you and isn't totally clear.

所以有意思 — 不是每次都 work,不是每个听起来不 make sense 的疯 idea 都会是好的 — 但你说的是 — 关注那些"你觉得有意思但还没完全清晰"的东西。

Maybe you can be the person that helps pull it together.

也许你能成为那个把它整合起来的人。

Yeah.

是的。

Yeah, that — but also if there is some energy around it but I don't always understand what the energy is, to dive deeper and try to understand what that is.

对 — 但还有就是,如果它周围有 energy,但我又总不太理解那 energy 是什么,要去深挖、搞懂那是什么。

Because I think people who often gravitate towards these early ideas can't always articulate why.

因为那些被早期 idea 吸引的人,往往说不清楚为什么。

And it's sort of up to you to dive deeper and understand that.

这就需要你自己去深挖、去理解。

That's one of — there were three patterns we found.

这是 — 我们一共找到三个 pattern。

One of the other ones was — just pay attention to people getting very excited about this thing even if you don't get it.

另一个是 — 关注"那些对这件事极度兴奋的人",哪怕你自己 get 不到。

Mh.

嗯。

And it's like sounds crazy. That's so interesting. Okay.

听起来挺疯。这太有意思了。OK。

And then what was the other one?

那另一个是?

Oh, the founders are just top 1% was the other piece there — which everyone had — Anthropic radius. So, you got that one.

哦,创始人就是 top 1% 那条 — 大家都有 — Anthropic radius — 那条你已经做到了。

Oh, man.

我天。

Jenny, what a crazy time we're living through.

Jenny,我们活在一个多么疯狂的时代。

What a — so much change.

变化太多了。

Okay, before we get to our very exciting lightning round — is there anything else that I should have asked you that you want to leave listeners with, that you want to double down on?

OK,在进入 lightning round 之前 — 还有什么我应该问、你想跟听众强调或留下的话吗?

Um, I think I just want to call out the Anthropic Design team and shout them out — just because it's a team of folks that are really humble, and they're not always allowed out on social — but they're doing a lot of really great work, especially through this time where our jobs are changing so much.

我想 shout out Anthropic 设计团队 — 这是一群非常 humble 的人,不总是能上社交媒体 — 但他们在做大量好工作,尤其在这个我们工作方式剧变的时期。

Uh, the team is so resilient — they span this whole spectrum from people who are really technical and prototypy, all the way to folks who are really high craft and delivering stuff that's going out the door and is fabulous.

这个团队特别 resilient — 横跨从"非常技术 + 偏 prototype"到"非常高 craft + 在交付要出门的产品"的整个谱系。

Um, and we are hiring throughout the year.

嗯,我们全年都在招。

So I just wanted to call that out — if I didn't scare you with the way we work internally at Anthropic.

所以我想 call out 一下 — 如果我对"内部工作方式"的描述没把你吓跑的话。

If that sounds more exciting than terrifying, would love to connect.

如果你觉得听起来更 exciting 而不是 terrifying,欢迎联系。

What sounds exciting is getting access to these Slacks where all the features [laughter] are being built.

听起来 exciting 的是 — 能进到那些 feature 正在被 build 出来的 Slack [笑]。

Yeah, that's the core benefit.

对,核心福利就是这个。

Let's talk to super intelligence right now and tell me where I should invest. I'm just joking.

我们现在就跟 super intelligence 对话,让它告诉我该投哪儿。开玩笑的。

And then in terms of hiring, is there anything specific that people should think about if they want to apply?

至于招聘 — 想申请的人有没有什么具体可以考虑的点?

Think a little bit about the archetypes that I mentioned — especially the strong generalist and the deep specialist.

稍微想想我刚才说的那几种 archetype — 尤其是 strong generalist 和 deep specialist。

Those folks we're really excited about — but generally folks who are —

这些人我们非常想招 — 但总体上 —

The block and the deep T. The block, the block of the deep T. What could we be calling them?

block 形和深 T 形。block — block 的 — 深 T 的。我们该怎么叫?

Uh, yeah — folks who feel like those archetypes resonate with them, but also folks that are just really excited about the technology, have been building a lot, and want to be on the frontier.

嗯,对 — 那些觉得这些 archetype 对自己有共鸣的人,但也包括对技术真的兴奋、一直在 build 大量东西、想站在 frontier 的人。

Amazing.

很赞。

Well, with that, we've reached our very exciting lightning round, and we've got five questions for you. Jenny, are you ready?

那么,我们就到了非常 exciting 的 lightning round。给你五个问题。Jenny,准备好了吗?

All right, I'm ready.

好的,准备好了。

Here we go.

来。

What are two or three books that you find yourself recommending most to other people?

你最常推荐给别人的两三本书是?

The first one is The Power Broker by Robert Caro — which is an incredibly aggressive recommendation given that it's like 1100 pages.

第一本是 Robert Caro 的 The Power Broker — 这推荐很 aggressive,因为它有 1100 页。

Uh, but I think in this era when our attention spans are so short, I think this is actually worth reading end to end.

但我觉得在这个我们注意力极短的时代,这本书真的值得从头读到尾。

Um, because there are very few collections or memoirs that span someone's entire life, and you sort of see how somebody changes throughout those decades.

很少有传记 / 文集能横跨某个人完整的一生,让你看到他在这几十年里怎么变。

Um, and it's also somebody who's really controversial, and it's nice to read a nuanced view of somebody — Robert Moses — and I think we just lose out on some of this long-arc thinking because we're thinking so much about right now.

而且这是个非常有争议的人 — Robert Moses — 能读到一个细腻、立体的视角很好;我们因为太聚焦"当下"而失去了"长弧度思考"。

So, it's just an important reminder that careers are long — and it's also really good for understanding how somebody just gets things done really well. So, Power Broker.

这是个重要提醒 — careers are long(职业很长) — 也是理解"如何把事情做成"的好书。所以,Power Broker。

Um, the second one I recommend to a lot of people is a book called Insomniac City, written by Bill Hayes — who was the partner of the scientist Oliver Sacks around the time that Oliver Sacks died.

第二本我推荐很多人的是 Insomniac City,作者是 Bill Hayes — 他在科学家 Oliver Sacks 临终时是 Oliver 的 partner。

And it's just this really beautiful, ethereal memoir of Oliver Sacks's last days and their love story.

那是一本特别美、空灵的回忆录 — 关于 Oliver Sacks 最后的日子和他俩的 love story。

Um, I think this has very little to do with the stuff on your podcast, Lenny, but it's just a book that I really love.

嗯,这本书跟你 podcast 主题没什么关系,Lenny,但我就是很喜欢。

Um, and it makes you think about mortality, but also love and life and stuff like that.

它让你想 mortality(死亡),也想 love 和 life。

So, that's one of my favorite books.

所以是我最爱的书之一。

My goal here isn't, you know — I'm trying to create — we're trying to create Renaissance humans.

我目的不是 — 我在尝试 — 我们在尝试培养 Renaissance humans(文艺复兴式的人)。

So, all of this other stuff is excellent.

所以这些"非主题"的东西也都非常棒。

Cool.

好的。

Interestingly, I saw Julie Zhuo — famed design leader — was reading The Power Broker recently.

有意思的是,我看到 Julie Zhuo — 著名设计 leader — 最近也在读 The Power Broker。

I don't know what's going on over here, spreading in design.

不知道这是怎么一回事,设计圈在传染。

Okay.

OK。

Do you have a favorite recent movie or TV show that you really enjoyed?

最近有没有特别喜欢的电影或剧集?

Um, I watched A Sentimental Value recently.

嗯,我最近看了 A Sentimental Value。

I watched it on a plane — which is, you know, how directors want you to watch their films.

我在飞机上看的 — 你也知道,导演希望你这么看他们的电影(笑)。

Um, but it's a Norwegian film by the same director who did The Worst Person in the World.

这是一部挪威电影,导演就是拍 The Worst Person in the World 的那位。

I think just the pacing, the writing, the relationship between the characters is really subtle and beautiful.

那个节奏、写作、人物关系都极其细腻、漂亮。

Um, it's basically about this family, sort of a family drama, but also about this house that they lived in their entire lives.

它讲的是一个家庭 — 算是家庭剧 — 但也是关于他们一辈子住的这栋房子。

It's beautiful because the house is sort of a character.

这房子本身像一个角色,所以特别美。

So, I don't know what else to say about that, but that was a really good movie.

不知道还能说啥,那真是一部好电影。

Um, and then I would also recommend obviously The Pitt season 2.

然后当然还要推荐 The Pitt 第二季。

You know, we're on that. We're on that.

我们都在追,我们都在追。

I think everybody just likes to watch people who are really competent at their jobs do something. Um, so yeah.

大家就是喜欢看"非常胜任自己工作的人在做事"。所以,是的。

Imagine being an actor on that show — just how much you have to learn and memorize all these terms.

想象一下在那部剧里当演员 — 要学多少东西、记多少医学术语。

Yeah. Yeah.

对对。

It just also seems really fast-paced, too.

而且节奏特别快。

Like they do so much stuff in one shot, and there's just so much movement and stuff like that.

他们一镜头里要完成那么多事,运动量超大。

Seems really really hard to be an actor on that.

在那剧里当演员真的非常非常难。

And I only recently realized Noah Wyle was in ER as like a younger person — and now he's like the head of this.

我最近才意识到 Noah Wyle 当年是 ER(急诊室的故事)里的年轻演员 — 现在他是这部剧的主心骨。

Oh man.

天哪。

Okay. Favorite product you've recently discovered that you really love — cannot be Co-work.

好,最近发现的特别喜欢的产品是? — Co-work 不算。

Not one that I actually discovered recently.

其实不是最近发现的。

Um, but I — Retro — I've been using it for basically two years now since it came out.

嗯,是 Retro — 我用它差不多 2 年了,自从它上线。

Um, and I think I discovered new benefits of it recently.

最近我发现了它的新福利。

So for folks who don't know about Retro — it's like this small community photo sharing app in which you can only share photos from a given week, as opposed to all time.

不了解 Retro 的人 — 它是一个小型社区照片分享 app,你只能分享某一周的照片,而不是所有时间。

Um, and it basically has none of the social media stuff.

基本上它没有社交媒体的那一套。

Like you can't really see counts.

你看不到点赞数之类。

There are no ads, etc.

没有广告。

Um, but one really nice thing is now that I've been using it for 2 years, I can look back at each year and see "oh yeah, this week 2 years ago I was doing this" — and it's become this really special way to live through each week of my life, basically.

用了 2 年之后,一件特别棒的事是 — 我可以回看每一年,看到"这周 2 年前我在做这件事" — 这变成了一种特别的方式去 live through 我生命的每一周。

Wow.

哇。

And it's also a beautifully crafted app if you're looking for building your own taste in design.

而且如果你在培养自己的设计 taste,它也是个 crafted 得很美的 app。

Yeah. Designers love Retro.

嗯,设计师都爱 Retro。

I could see — I could see that. Okay.

我看得出来 — 看得出来。OK。

Do you have a favorite life motto that you often come back to in work or in life?

有没有在工作或生活里反复回到的"人生座右铭"?

Yeah.

嗯。

Um, not sure if it's my favorite life motto, but one thing I do catch myself saying a lot is just — "it is what it is."

不确定是不是我最爱的 motto,但有一句我经常说的话 — "it is what it is"(就是这样)。

My dad says that all the time. I love —

我爸老说这句话。我超 love —

It sounds super defeatist, but I promise it's not.

这听起来特别 defeatist(认命),但我保证不是。

I think just given how much stuff is going on in the world right now, and especially with the industry — you can't control everything — and so sometimes "it is what it is" just brings the levity you need to move forward.

考虑到现在世界上 — 尤其行业里 — 发生的事这么多,你没法控制一切 — 有时候"it is what it is"能给你向前走所需要的那点 levity(轻盈感)。

I went to — I did a 10-day meditation retreat a while ago, and I came back from it and it's like "Dad, you've been right all along."

我之前 — 我做过一个 10 天的禅修,出来后我想"爸,你一直都是对的"。

This is the whole answer to it all.

这是一切的答案。

It is what it is.

It is what it is。

You can't — don't cling, don't try to change.

你不能 — 别执着,别试图改变。

Just — it is what it is.

就是 — it is what it is。

It is what it is.

It is what it is。

There's so much depth to that.

这话深度太大了。

I was like "okay, smarter than I even thought."

我当时就想"OK,(我爸)比我以为的更聪明"。

Okay, final question.

OK,最后一个问题。

Coming back to Co-work — is there a mind-blowing use case, something just like "wow, that's so cool that Co-work can do that" — either something you use it for or you've heard somebody using it for?

回到 Co-work — 有没有什么 mind-blowing 的 use case,让你"哇,Co-work 居然能做这个" — 你自己用的或听别人用的都可以?

One thing I really like is just like — introspection.

我特别喜欢的一件事是 — introspection(内省)。

And so I have this folder basically of local notes — I use iA Writer for it — and I just write whatever, and over the years have collected a bunch of different notes — they span all different things, like one-on-one notes, random thoughts, tiny memos, interview notes, etc.

我有个文件夹放本地笔记 — 用 iA Writer — 我什么都写,这么多年攒了各种笔记 — 1-on-1 笔记、随想、小 memo、面试笔记等等。

And my favorite — it's cool to me — is using Co-work to analyze that and have insights out of it, and actually create things out of it.

我最喜欢的事 — 觉得最酷的 — 是用 Co-work 分析这些,从里面得到洞察,真的从里面 create 出东西。

Um, anytime I can learn something new about myself, I love that.

任何时候只要能学到关于自己的新东西,我都很爱。

But a very practical thing I did with it the other day was along the lines of hiring — I was like "oh yeah, I want to articulate what I look for in design craft, because a lot of people struggle to articulate that."

前两天一件特别实用的事是关于招聘 — 我想"嗯,我想把我在 design craft 上看什么说清楚,因为很多人很难说清楚"。

And I just had it read through all of my notes — interview notes and other things I cared about and memos I've written in the past — and then it made me a rubric for evaluating that.

我让它把我所有笔记 — 面试笔记 + 其他我在乎的事 + 以前写的 memo — 全读了一遍,然后它给我做了一个评估 rubric。

So, that kind of introspection where it's like "oh, I wouldn't have realized even these things about myself that I've been putting out there implicitly" — that's been really cool for me.

这种 introspection — "原来我之前隐含地表达出来的关于自己的这些事,我自己都没意识到" — 对我来说特别酷。

That is so cool.

太酷了。

So, just to make this very clear for people — you have a folder with all these things you've written, one-on-ones, meetings — like you could do, I don't know if you all are allowed to use Granola, something like that, like meeting transcripts — and ask it.

让大家更清楚 — 你有一个文件夹,里面放了你写的所有东西,1-on-1、会议 — 类似你们可以用 Granola(不知道你们是否允许)那种 meeting transcript — 然后问它。

And it's like — I was gonna ask what prompt you use, but it's just like "read all these things I've written and help me probably just like understand how I feel about what is design".

我本来要问你用什么 prompt,但其实就是 — "把我写过的所有这些读一遍,然后帮我理解我对'设计是什么'的感受"。

Yeah, basically I think it was like — "hey, I have a bunch of interview notes and a bunch of notes related to design craft in this folder."

对,基本上就是 — "嘿,这个文件夹里有一堆面试笔记和一堆跟 design craft 相关的笔记"。

Um, "read it, and then help me craft a memo / rubric for how I assess craft in interviews."

"读一遍,然后帮我做一个 memo / rubric,我在面试里如何评估 craft"。

So cool.

太酷了。

Yeah.

是的。

Jenny, this was awesome.

Jenny,这期太棒了。

What a — what a time to be alive.

这是 — 活在这个时代,真奇妙。

What a time.

真奇妙的时代。

Two final questions.

两个最后的问题。

Where can folks find you online if they want to reach out, and how can listeners be useful to you?

想联系你的人去哪儿找你?听众怎么对你 helpful?

Yeah.

嗯。

Um, I'm on Twitter / X — is what we're calling it these days. Um, it's jenny_wen.

嗯,我在 Twitter / X 上(现在该叫 X 了)— jenny_wen。

That's probably the best place.

那是最好的地方。

Not really on LinkedIn as much.

LinkedIn 上不太活跃。

So that's the best place.

所以就 Twitter 最好。

Um, and how can folks be helpful to me?

嗯,大家怎么对我 helpful?

Send us your product feedback.

把你的产品反馈寄给我们。

You know, we're working on Co-work or anything Claude-related really.

我们在做 Co-work,或者其实是任何跟 Claude 有关的。

Just send us your feedback.

把反馈寄过来。

We'd love to make it better for you.

我们想为你把它做得更好。

Jenny, thank you so much for being here.

Jenny,非常感谢你来。

Yeah, of course.

应该的。

It was great chatting with Lenny.

跟 Lenny 聊得很棒。

It was wonderful. Jenny, thank you. Bye, everyone.

非常 wonderful。Jenny,谢谢。大家再见。

Thank you so much for listening.

非常感谢收听。

If you found this valuable, you can subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app.

如果觉得有价值,可以在 Apple Podcasts、Spotify 或你常用的 app 订阅。

Also, please consider giving us a rating or leaving a review, as that really helps other listeners find the podcast.

也请考虑给我们打个分或留个评论,这真的能帮其他听众找到这期 podcast。

You can find all past episodes or learn more about the show at lennyspodcast.com.

所有过往 episode 和节目信息在 lennyspodcast.com。

See you in the next episode.

下期再见。