Dive Club 🤿

Dia [https://www.diabrowser.com/] from The Browser Company has completely taken over the internet. We’re finally seeing what an AI-native browser can be and it’s pretty exciting :) So this episode is a behind-the-scenes with their Head of Design, Dustin Senos [https://x.com/dustin]. Some highlights: * How to build a product strategy around AI * How The Browser Co approaches prototyping * Dustin’s perspective on MCP and agentic design * How their definition of “good” evolved from Arc to Dia * Their process for exploring patterns for interacting with AI * The #1 piece of advice Dustin would give younger designers * a lot more We mentioned Nate Parrott’s episode [https://www.dive.club/deep-dives/nate-parrott] who was the first design hire at The Browser Company

This week’s episode is a first of its kind because we’re doing the ultimate deep dive into one of my favorite products: Raycast [https://join.dive.club/raycast-content-email] We’ll here from the founders, design team, and even the hype team and go deep into all kinds of topics: * The hilarious story of Raycast’s YC application * 3 weekly rituals that are perfect for remote teams * What they’ve learned about designing AI experiences * What we can learn from how their hype team operates * How the design team has changed the way they collab with engineers * a lot more This is easily the most in-depth episode I’ve ever made so I hope you enjoy it :) * Thomas [https://x.com/thomaspaulmann] and Petr [https://x.com/pitnikola?lang=en] (Raycast founders) * Roy can Rooijen [https://www.linkedin.com/in/royvanrooijen/?originalSubdomain=de] (Designing AI) * Jordan Amblin [https://x.com/JordanAmblin] (Designing mobile) * Alexander Antonov [https://x.com/aantonov_?lang=bn] (Designing windows + DS) * Pedro Duarte [https://x.com/peduarte] (Hype lead) * Inga Hampton [https://x.com/ingapng] (Designer + Illustrator)

The last two weeks with Inflight [https://join.dive.club/inflight] have been the most exhilarating of my entire career… So I want to use Dive Club  to provide unprecedented levels of access to life as a design founder. I’m talking about the messy behind-the-scenes, hideous Figma concepts, and all of the winding turns that we've taken to get where we're at today. This is gonna be as raw as it gets. And hopefully by shining a light on some of the things I'm learning, it turns into a video series that you want to keep watching ✈️

This week's episode is with Darrin Henein who is the VP of Design at Shopify. We talk about how they create a culture of excellence and how AI is influencing the way they practice the design. Some highlights: * What makes for a great design critique culture * Darrin’s expectation for how designers prototype * How Shopify’s new AI mandate impacts designers * Traits Darrin notices in promising younger designers * What designers can learn from the best communicators at Shopify * Why Darrin believes designers need to think beyond static prototypes * a lot more * GKIII’s Cost of Craft article [https://gk3fyi.substack.com/p/the-cost-of-craft] * Frenzy drop sales product [https://www.shopify.com/enterprise/blog/how-to-create-hype-with-product-drops] * Astronaut video game that Darrin released [https://lastronautgame.com/] * Red Dot Design Award won by Shopify’s POS hardware [https://www.red-dot.org/ko/project/pos-go-63754]

There’s a new design tool called Subframe [subframe.com] that’s officially caught my eye 👀 So I asked their co-founder Filip Skrzesinksi [https://x.com/uptightchill] to give us a demo and talk through their vision. I found some of their AI interaction patterns fascinating (especially the way they approach prototyping and contextual edits). If you’re interested in the future of design tooling then I think you’ll like this episode and you can use the code DIVECLUB to get your first month free 👌