Julien Martin - Why Amo's Design Hits Different

00:00:00As software becomes easier to create,what does it take to truly differentiatewith design?>> If you're smiling when you use this app,even after the 45 days, you know youcreated something really special withusers. It's all the little things. Forexample, on Ammo and Bump, when youwould browse through your friends, youdon't have to build everything to befunctional. It can be great to use it.>> How do you form a culture of creativityand consistently think outside the boxas a designer?>> It doesn't have to have confetti. Itdoesn't have to be to have blue colorsor saturated colors everywhere, but ifyou always think about, "Hey, whathappens when I tap this button? What'sthe reaction? What's the feedback?" It'sperhaps it's just a tiny animation.Perhaps it's ahaptic feedback that is really carefullydone on your phone. Perhaps it'ssomething else happening on the screen,but it's this type of interactions anddelight that really create a uniqueexperience.>> Welcome to the Dive Club. My name isReid, and this is where designers neverstop learning.Today's episode is with Julian Marte,who is the head of design at Zenly,which sold to Snapchat, where again hebecame the head of design. Now,eventually Snap shut down

00:01:15Zenly, whichled much of the core team to leave andcreate a new product called Ammo. Now,this is some of the most impressiveconsumer design that I've ever seen. Butbefore we get into what makes Ammo sospecial, this episode actually starts 20years ago in a Belgian restaurant in NewYork City.>> When I tell the story, especiallyrecently during,you know, at Zenly or Ammo, people justdon't believe me. So, we we kind of madefun of this as a almost like internaljoke that people were discussing ifwhether or not I was actually lyingabout this. Back then, and it's a longtime ago, it was 2006. I am from a cityin Eastern France, which is calledStrasbourg. It's a beautiful city. It'sIt has a It's packed with history. It'spacked withbeautiful architecture. There's a lot ofculture there like both German and andFrench. There was nothing. No job.Especially not in the design space. Ihad a very smallkind of shitty experience in the graphicdesign. Um not even web so much.So, a friend of minehad this restaurant in New York. And umhe kind of invited me over just for 3months as a extended holiday.Mhm. And I was young. I was a little bitfoolish. And um I was actually 22.

00:02:31No, 24, sorry. And I went there and Ikind of helped him. I helped him in hisrestaurant.So, I actually became a manager of oneof the another restaurant. And whathappened is um I decided to stay. Idecided to stay as a tourist in the US.I thinkI can talk about it now because it's I'mnot really shameful about it, but it'sdefinitely something that resonatestoday in today's in world politics andUS politics. But I went I I overstayedmy visa. I didn't want to go back toFrance. Actually, what's funny is that Iwas illegal, but I paid my taxes. And inthis restaurant, I wasafter the shift, I Oh, there was alwaysone customer visiting me in theafternoon quietly in the corner drawingstuff on his on his notebook on hisMoleskine book. He came every afternoonat the same hour for the same amount oftime ordering the same thing.A waffle and a coffee and a like adouble espresso. And you can tell likepeople usually don't order just singleespressos or ristrettos or doubleespressos. It's really kind of a Frenchor European thing. It's very just simplestrong coffee and that's it. So, Ifigured this guy was not from here. Asit turns out, he was from Barcelona inSpain. And he was co-founding

00:03:46a newcompany in the same street where therestaurant was. And the company wascalled Behance. Yeah, love it. He'sMatias Corea,>> one of Behance co-founder, and you know,he's very nice to me and he's invitingme over um to the to to visit the officespace.And after my shift, I visit them. Ibring some pastries and stuff to saythank you, and I come over.And the office is just an apartment. Butit's the apartment of Scott Belsky.Andand it's really funny because there'syou can tell by the look, by the smell,by everything that every there'ssomething going on in there. Likeit's beautiful space, um beautifulapartment, very New Yorker apartment,andthere are like many huge paper sheets,you know, plastered on the walls, on thewindows even. So, it's kind of blockingthe lights a little bit.Many screens, and there are like fourpeople there, Scott, Matias, and twoengineers.And Dave and Henry. And they give mecrypto, say, "Hey, this is what we do.This is what we built.Uh if you want, you can come every dayif you want after thethe after your shifts, and you can helpus. You can ask questions. You can justbe an observer if you want." And I'mlike, "I would love that. Thank you forinviting me over. I don't know if I canhelp, but I would love to." And almostwithout thinking about it, I

00:05:02do thiskind of weird thing, which is I want thefull package. I want to be here at 24/7.And they did not expect that either, andthey um they tell methat they cannot afford me. They don'thave any money for now. They tell me,"Hey, we cannot pay you, but if you wantto come every day, we won't stop you. Wecan pay you lunch, but that's it." So,I say, "Okay, let's do that." I remembersomething which was really scary andfunny at the same time, is you know,it's kind of Wednesday night, somethinglike this, andit's 11:00 p.m. I was smoking backthere.So,Scott's apartment was on the sixthfloor, and every time I had to come downby the elevator and go out in thestreet, smoke cigarettes, and go up. AndI can tell that this was bothering tothem because I didn't have a key.There was no code or whatever, so everytime I had to ring and they had to topull me over there. And so they werelike, "Hey, just smoke by the window."Smoke by the window. Just stop, youknow, going downstairs. So I'm like onsixth floor smoking cigarette.>> [laughter]>> Young French guy, you know. And [snorts]uh it's 10:00 p.m. I'm like, "Okay,guys, I'm done. I'm I'm tired. I'm goinghome." And my child is like, "What areyou doing?"

00:06:17Like it's 10:00 p.m. There'sstill much much work to do. Okay?Uh okay, what should I do? Like and II remember coming back home at 1:00 a.m.or 2:00 a.m. Super tired, going back tothe office at 9:00 a.m. the day after.The real hustle. And I was working sevendays a week for almost a year and a halfdoing just that.>> Real quick message and then we can jumpback into it. So Jitter just releasedimage to video and it's a pretty bigdeal. All you have to do is upload anasset and Jitter will instantly generatea short video clip from it with the helpof AI. It's an easy way to add motionand depth to static backgrounds, maybecreate little clips for brand visuals,or just in general make any scene feelmore alive with subtle movement. It'ssuper fun to play with and availabletoday. Just head to dive.club/jitterto try it out.Don't be the person with the portfoliothat doesn't have a custom domain. WithFramer's latest release, you don't havethat excuse anymore because theypartnered with Hover to provide aseamless flow where you can select freeor discounted domains that willautomatically be connected to yourFramer site after purchase. [music]You heard me right. Framer is offeringfree custom domains for the first yearwhen you upgrade your site to a yearly[music] plan. So

00:07:32definitely don't missout on this offer. You can head todive.club/framerto claim your domain today.Okay. Now onto the episode. [music]>> It's like a movie. Like everything thatyou were saying, I understand why peoplepotentially make fun of it or questionthe lore is because it literally soundslike a startup kid movie. Even the theyou know, the young French guy hangingout the window of the late-night grind.It's too funny.>> Yeah, exactly. Butthe you know, my my choice wasdefinitely my mentor. Like there is noother word. Like he told me things like,"Hey, you know, Behance back then wasjust a blog. It was just a blog sellingsome paper stuff. Like, you know,notebooks, notebooks with the actionitems. They they call this actionmethod. So, we'd have action items thatyou couldjust a to-do list." Mhm. Paper to-dolist. High-quality paper, but you know,it's justit's just paper. I mean, it's crazy. Andthen there was thisproductivity tips on Behance blog andthey were just getting started on theBehance network to what it is today.Like this huge creative professionalsocial network. I didn't know anythingabout web. So, this Matthias guy islike, "Hey, can you wireframe this forme? Can you design this view for

00:08:48me?This screen? Whatever." I'm like, "Wait,I don't know how to do that." He's like,"Youjust do it like you thinkgo go ahead.Just do it. I will let you know if it'sbad or not." He asked me to design theseicons in the in the Behance editor.There is a an editor where you designyour own portfolio there and projects.And there's kind of this plugintext editor where you know, the icons,link icons, bold, italic, indent, youknow, all these you know, typicalthings. And it was using an open-sourcething and it didn't play very well withthe overall design of the first Behancenetwork design.So, he told me to redesign all the iconsto match the design.But I didn't know how to do it. So, Iwent on Photoshop and I designed squareby square, pixel by pixelicons hoping this would look great, butit didn't look great. I didn't even knowwhat was a vectorand vector shapes or so on. So, itlooked verypixely and eight bits.So, he didn't want that. This is [ __ ]Go ahead and do it all over again. Iremember spending a week designing iconswithout knowing how to do it. This iswhere I discovered Illustrator.Photoshop also had vector shapes backthen, but I didn't use them.

00:10:03Um andyeah, slowly but surely I was gettinginto this andlearning everything that was reallyexciting. Like, icon design and webdesign was my first love and it kind ofevolved into many new things afterwards.>> You definitely didn't realize that youwere becoming a designer at that point,I'm sure, but you also probably didn'trealize that you were surrounded byfuture industry titans. I'm wondering ifthe early experience with that group ofpeople>> [snorts]>> shaped you in any way that you're ableto identify. Like, did you pull fromdifferent lessons there or even justthings that you would observe insomebody like Scott that you think hadan impact on the rest of your journey?>> For sure. Like, I always consideredmyself a very messy person. When I was akid, my room was always messy. Like, Iwas alwaysall over the place, thinking about manythings at once, doing many things atonce accidentally because I was doingmany things at once,everything was messy. And and whenMatias came up and kind oftaught me about everything in design,his focus was really onthere was a lot of emotion, there's alot of uh intuition,anda lot of craft and preciseness that Iwasn't

00:11:18used to. Why does it matter thatthis is not aligned? He was crazy aboutit. He was like, are you serious? Like,you cannot say that. It has to beperfect. It has to beperfectly aligned. If this is notaligned, this is not going to be alignedand then this is going to look like[ __ ] Everything is going to look bad,and all these very basic principles ofdesign was all new to me, and I didn'tunderstandwhy I had to iterate for 200 times thesame web banner. Like the I had todesign a banner, vertical banner for Idon't know, I think it was for Digg backthen, something like this. And there wasa vertical banner, and you know, it wasjust a simple thing with a couple ofwall the Behance logo and a photo ofthis book, notebook we had. And it'svery simple, but it took me, I don'tknow, 3 days to do it because he wasn'thappy withhow I aligned things. It didn't lookreally balanced. I think he came up hecame from a very structuredkind of almost Bauhaus kind of, youknow, methods, and his father isactually a very prominent was a veryprominent very successful architect. So,I kind oftook everything inin a way, and this is visual design, andcraft was really the first

00:12:34my firstentry in my first door into the productdesign space.And I think it shaped who I am. Like itshaped what I became.It shaped what I what I am today, andbecame kind of one of my strengths whenit came like when I have to create newproducts and new experiences, newworlds, and so on. I really think aboutall everything like how does it looklike at the end from a user'sstandpoint, but I don't go to to toomuch processes, and it's really justabout feeling it. And it can be a weirdto say that today, but this is alwayshow I work. This is always how it willwork in the future, andhe kind of taught me this. This is whyit was really closely related to to topace and speed at Zenly and Amo, to justgo fast and very messy space, and thennarrow it down to something that is justcool, always iterating.>> Well, this is definitely one of the morelife-changing inflection points ofanyone's story that I've ever heard. So,I kind of want to keep playing it outand talk a little bit about where thiswent from here. You mentioned Zenly andAmmo.Give us a little bit of context for howyou ended up at Zenly, what you all wereworking on. I know a lot of people putit in this bucket of reallywell-designed apps, but they don'treally understand

00:13:49it, especially peoplelistening in the US. So,can you share a little bit more aboutthat story?>> Yeah, of course. Zenly was a socialconsumer appbased on the on map on a reallyat first a simple map where you can seefriends around. And it might not soundsound interesting today, but what wasinteresting back then is that beside thefirst I don't remember the first SamAltman company in the early 2010 and andLife360 that already existed back then,there wasn't really something reallyspecial in the consumer space. Find FindMy wasn't evenstandalone app in iOS back then. We cameup with this really functional app thatdidn't drain your battery at like likecrazy. So, it was very energy-efficient.And [clears throat] with phones from 10or 12 years ago, it was really somethingreally cool to have. And we came up withhow about you just create kind of anice experience using this app withfunny thingsthat younger audiences will love. Andwith cool dedication, with a logo thatis crazy and colorful that didn't makeany sense, but was still really prettylike this colorful ice cream. So, wewent all in with this. When I say allin, it's the screens were blue. Like theall thechat was blue, the

00:15:04settings, yourprofile view was blue. For no reason,just because why not? We did crazythings at this, but we it almost feel itfelt like it was a just a sandbox for usfor us to have fun.Instead of just thinking about, "Hey,how about accessibility?How about you know, of course we kind ofcared a little bit about accessibilitybut reflecting back back not so much.Like wethere were crazy things that thatdefinitely would not wouldn't pass thebar today in our today standards. Itfelt like a game and it was reallyentertaining. Every time you would openthis app it would welcome you with nicemood message that is sometimes a bityou know, a bit ballsy, a bit a bittacky with you it would say sometimes wewould say hey you look great you lookbetter yesterday but you know, it'sfunny to see you again. Today is rainyor whatever even though it wasn't rainyit was middle of July or>> [laughter]>> it's a bitSo it's always a bit over the place.Some might say it was a bit overdesigned and yes at some point it wasdefinitely over designed but itdefinitely participated in how popularwe became in some countries strategiccountries like Japan or South Korea orIndonesiaand even in Europe Eastern EuropeUkraine Russia back then it was really

00:16:19popular as well on Zenly. We kind ofcrafted a proper DNA almost a game DNAa world. There was a world that weapplied through everything all thepixels all the craft like any transitionwe designed or anything was reallycarefully thought about. There was norandomness I would say. This kind ofbecame our yeah our DNA as I mentionedandI think our users really loved it.>> Even as somebody who has no realrelationship to Zenlythe DNA piece really stands out to mebecause even if I'm scrolling throughTwitter and I come across somebody andthey have like X Zenly in their bio itstands out. Like it's like okay youknow, you are capable of a certain typeof design that actually is quite rare.>> It's been like four years that it it gotclosed down. It still sticks. Somehowpeople I'm here talking with you aboutZenly so I'm really proud of this and Iknow the whole the previous team isstill very proud of this and the lessonswe we back then were appliedat some extent at Amo as well when wecreated Amo moving forward. And allthose Zenly mafia, Zenly alumni in alltheir actual companies where they worktoday, they still,you know, apply everything we welearned. Um and it's it's whether

00:17:34it'sPhoto Room, Prelude, there are many likecompanies today that there's a lot ofZenly people there now and Amo people aswell.So, it's really I think he definitelycreated some great standards to designand immersive design, I would say. Uhbut not just that, there was of course avery very talented engineering team likethe hiring engineers at Zenly and Amowas definitely challenging, probablymore than product designers because ofhow much we we asked for them. We had tomake to make sure they were really onthe product side on the understandingwhy we cared so much, why we you wouldsit with uswith me on the table, on the desk for 5hours straight just fine-tuning somethings that might not be important,but very important.>> Okay, so you create Zenly.There's a lot of success. You mentionedlike 40 million users. You sell toSnapchat. Snapchat eventually shuts itdown. You try to buy it back, you can't.So, sounds like a lot of the core groupof people were responsible for act two,which is Amo.I'd like to go deep into that chapterbecause on the surface there are a lotof similarities at a high level. You cantell that that core DNA is responsiblefor it, but you also kind of get thisblank slate to push things a little

00:18:49bitfurther or try something slightlydifferent or maybe innovate on that onething that, you know, has been, youknow, legacy decisions. So, when youwere first starting off with Amo, whatwere some of the initial ambitions withthat project?>> Amo was created as a reaction of theannouncement of Snap closing down Zenly.We kind of knew we wanted to createanother very staple European company inthe social consumer space. But veryearly on, we knew we wanted to designsome kind of suite of apps instead ofjust one standalone app. Something thatkind of was a bit frustrating at Zenlyback then is that there was a lot offeature creeping at some point. We kindof internally compared the app assometimes as a Christmas tree. All theseyou know, shiny things all around. Allthe call to actions competing with whichwhich each other. The map was dynamic.There was already so many colors,different colors and so so you kind ofyou was kind of overwhelming and we kindof struggled every time to tone thingsdown and rework. This is why there wasso many redesigns in a way. So Amo itwas let's start over with new appstackling different problems, but youwould be able to tellwhether you are in the first app, thesecond one, or the third

00:20:04one. You wouldbe able to say,"Oh, this is an Amo app." One was thiscreative Kanva that felt like anexperimentation between MySpace,Pinterest, and you know,a little bit of YouTube in the earlydays. When you would be able tocustomize your your your own hero imageand so on. The second app was a cameraapp. Something that meant it was meantto be very simple, but it's reallydelightful to dowhen you would use it. In many ways itfelt like what Andy Allen did recentlywith his new app.>> Yeah.>> You know, camera. You know, verybranded, very feels like a toy a littlebit. Um except it wasn't in 3D, but thethird app would be kind of a cherry onthe cake. It was a would be a thank youto all our early believers in at Zenlyand saying, "Hey, we have to releasethis location app." And even if it'svery simple, it doesn't have any chat inthere. It doesn't have any functionalitybesides just being able to find friends.We released these three apps one afterthe other and from the start to the theperiod we shipped these three apps,we went crazy on iterations, on creatingthis universe from scratch again,creating the the the the look and feelof all these apps, making sure that ourbrand would

00:21:20would be would sweat throughthe details oneach of this product was definitelychallenging.And some failed, some were like pivotedalong the way. There is the third app,which was supposed to be kind of a sideproject, but came out to be the main appnow at Amaro, which is which is great,we knew the recipe in a way of Zenly, soit's called Bump, and it's going verywell, and it's different it's differentthan Zenly in many ways, but you can youcan still tell there is a DNA of Zenlyin there.>> I want to go into the DNA piece reallyquickly though. Can we talk about theinitial creative direction for theuniverse that you were building? BecauseI think most products right now, whenthey think about a suite, it's like,"Well, we'll share an icon style, orwe'll share this gradient, you know?" Itdoesn't really mean that much, but youwere able to create a visual languagethat I've never seen anything like itbefore. Like when I first downloaded, Iguess it would have been ID. I mean, Ihad never seen anything like that. So,how did you arrive at that language forthe universe?>> How we shaped the design team at Amarowas very 360. The there were two designco-founders, product design co-founders.There were Nicola Nicola Falu and myselfas the two product designers from thecore team. And the

00:22:35one of the firsthires at Amaro, actually ValentinFougeray, is I think was the firstactually higher employee of Amaro afterthe co-founders. And Valentin and I werereally responsible, of course, ofdesigning products and features and soon, but mostly as well at first oncreating this new universe. So, youcould say it's both visual and brand asan ex-section of our product, butValentin has this really great taste aswell, somy role was to give a vision anddirection and iterate together with themto something, but the first directionand vision I had was not the right one.I went all in on craftingkind of luxury products.It felt very polished. It felt almostlike tapping buttons with almost feelinglike you would tap a gem, tapping somekind of onyx stone because it was blackand a little bit shiny and so on. Therewas like some kind of oily reflectionsaround it depending on how you wouldtilt the phone.We didn't ship this one. It was verycool. It felt nice, but it wasn't funny.It wasn't It was cold. It was not warm.The It wasn't delightful. It was milesaway from the fun we had at Zenly.So, after I think 4 monthswe're like,

00:23:50this is not the right oneand I I had to go back and say, "Okay,my role right now is say, 'Okay, this iscool, but people will not expect us todo that. It's noton the quality level. It's not on thethe taste level we we we we are rightnow. So, we have to raise the bar evenabove and above. And I always like totalk about halo effects. In many waysthe Zenly designs were created based onjust a a logo and afirst set of icons, UI icons. They werevery bouncy.The logo was very colorful anddelightful and it created this haloeffect into the UI, into the product,the vibe and everything. So, we had tofind what isthe core piece, the atom that willcreate this Amo effect in at Amo. Wefound it through designing the theavatars, the profiles. How do yourepresent yourself in Amo apps? How areyour friends being represented in Amoapps? So, we kind of sit down we sitdown on iterating on how does it looklike andwe came up of saying, "This is going tobe very essential across all Amo appsthat it's the real you.The it's it's notan emoji, it's not an avatar, it's not abitmoji, it's actually you.But it's you

00:25:05being animated. It's had tobe you very expressive. And um so we canhave this we distance avatars almostlike GIFs or live photos in a way. Itwas before animated stickers from Apple.So we were very proud of this one.And from this point, it felt like everytime you would create we had this fullexperience of this weird experience ofcreating your motion. Well, it was beingrecorded and then you would see yourselfwithin this pin on a map or you know, inthis ID space around is as a spiral. Andpeople saying, "Hey, it looks like itlooks like a collage of yourself justbeing slapped like this and animatedlike almost on the fridge." So we cameup with this fridge ID of saying it'salmost like magnets you would stick on afridge but in a messy way it doesn't Ifyou look at fridge, fridges never lookit doesn't look good. It doesn't lookgreat. But people put paper on it, postit, magnets and so on. So we had thisidea of creating a collage brand basedon that without being very careful aboutthe design.Uh so sometimes it was cut,you know, pieces of text, pieces ofphotos,pieces of art and so on. All of thismixed together in a very messy way butalways thoughtful position by Valentinand so

00:26:20on.It was it feels like, "Okay, I think wehave something really cool and unique."And umwe created all the apps based on that.Even today like when you select friendsin Bump, when you interact with them,when you send items to them, emojis orwhatever, it feels like it's always apiece of stickers, a piece of paper orsomething that you threw at them in away. So this is how we came up withthat.>> I love when there's just a little kernelof an idea, you know? You have onelittle breakthrough, it unlocks onelittle motif, and then everythingspirals out of that place and beingsomeone who's interviewed a lot of myfavorite products and learned thestories behind them, that is a veryconsistent theme where you just havethis one moment of breakthrough thatcreates the strand for basicallyeverything.>> I love I just love this. It's veryorganic. It's very chaotic. It's alwaysit has to go crazy all around andultimately you would just extract thewhat's very essential about it like thecore thing that is really special anddelightful about it and you just exploreit. You just you go in crazy with it.>> I think a goal for me from this episodeis to try to extract some of the coreprinciples that went into Zenly and Ammoso that other people listening myselfmainly

00:27:36can reverse engineer it, right? And Ithink a lot of times when people talkabout delight, we think of confetti thatis slapped on at the end of a flow andwhen people think about gamification, wethink about a you know badge andleaderboard system and it's very clearthat you have been able to push pastthat and think about you know delightand game feel as like a core part of theproduct strategy and UX. Talk to us alittle bit about what it takes to get tothat point.>> You don't have to build everything to befunctional. It can be great to use anddelightful and it doesn't have to haveconfetti. It doesn't have to be to haveblue colors or saturated colorseverywhere, but if you always thinkabout hey, what happens when I tap thisbutton? What's the reaction? What's thefeedback? It's perhaps it's just a tinyanimation. Perhaps it's ahaptic feedback that is really carefullydone on your phone. Perhaps it'ssomething else happening on the screen,butit's this type of interactions anddelight that will create a uniqueexperience and people will like eventhough they can perhaps not athings out on why they love at thisusing this app and why this feels great,

00:28:51but it it participates unconsciously, Ithink, on how you perceive the qualityof a of a product you use every day.It's all the little things. For example,on a more on bump, when you will browsethrough your friends, it's thetraditional way of perhaps the the firstmechanical wayyou would design it is just, I don'tknow,panels or carousels. Perhaps it seemsyou a panel that justfolds up and then you have cells justlike a contact list, you know,the standard way of doing so. And thisis howFind My work, this is how Life360 work.We decided to just go and use existingparadigms and existing commands that aremore tactile and more physical to uselike this old phones and old businesscards. 50 years ago also they they hadthis huge Rolodex thing on the desk,which plays as cards, business cards youwill quickly be able to to go through.Or these old phones with wheels. We kindof came up with this idea of having justlike iPod way of browsing your friendsas a wheel. You just go through a wheeland just make fun because when they golike this on as an arc, when you browseyour friends at the bottom of the of thescreen under your thumb,you would see all these faces gettinganimated when they enter on the centerof the screen. So, they are were notplayed

00:30:06and then when they reach thecenter of the screen, you would see yourfriend being animated and doing crazythings, recording things. It createsreally nice anticipation and creates umsmiles every time you use such app. Ifyou're smiling when you use this app,even after the 45 days, you know youcreated something really special withusers. This is how we would think aboutas a whole, the whole experience is isone thing, but then all the tiny thinginside is another one. But it takestime. Definitely today like people sayyou can build things with two days andgo crazy and ship it, but I think if youspend just two more days instead of two,like spend four days instead of twodays, and the quality will beon top, the bar will be raised, and youwill you will have greater chances tojust create very delightful product.Or perhaps it would be just 2% or 3%better than the competitor. I think it'sit's fine. It's fine, but because youwent through to this extra mile ofcreating great experiences, or becauseyou really wanted to this gradient towork, but someone told you, "Hey, whocares about your gradient? Just shipit."I think this worked 10 years ago,but it doesn't today.>> And who knows, maybe the models do getincredible to

00:31:21the point where some ofthe quality bars that you're talkingabout are able to be hit by the masses,but what you were able to do with Ammo,that is design differentiation, right?Like that's differentiation notnecessarilythrough executing the aggregate of smalldetails, it's differentiation throughvery creative ideas that aredesign-driven and truly exist out inleft field compared to the sandbox thateverybody else is playing in. I'mcurious if you have any thoughtsreflecting on your journey with AmmoaroundHow did you get there? Like what does itlook like or take to cultivate thisatmosphere where those types of ideascan grow and thrive?>> It's really interesting question. And Ithink it goes both ways. I thinksometimes you create something sospecial and so unique as a usage, as aYou create new patterns sometimes thatyou knoware very effective, that people willthink about you for this. If you If youremember Laurent Brichter from 15 yearsago who created the pull to refresh, allthese kind of patterns, and we kind ofcame up with something similar withpatterns actually, like thethe edge zoom on Zenly and Bump when

00:32:36youhave to to pull your your your thumbalong the screen. It's kind of hidden,but once you getting used to it, youcannot use another mapthe old way. Every time I open AppleMaps or any new map on my phone forsomething, I keep going above and scrolllike you you like there is a sidebar onthe side just like a web view basically.It's crazy because it's so simple, butit's this type of experiences thatreally stick.And we always think about how would weuse it? Like do we borrow existingpatterns or do we create new ones? Justlike a game. There are infinite gamesout there, but the UIs, the way you usethem, the way you interact with the map,the way you interact with characters,items, guns, or whatever is alwaysdifferent. It's It's There are existingpatterns, but there are infinite of UIsand UX, and this is how we think abouthow we design Zenly, how we design Bump,ID, and Tilt, and so on. And sometimesit can go wrong. Sometimes you can shipsomething like There are many thingsthat Amo or Zenly that people just don'tdo not get. They would download it andthey would be like, "What's happening? Idon't understand what's happening." So,I think it's great to create newexperiences and new designs anddelightful stuff, but sometimes you'regetting lost into it. You're going toofar

00:33:51and people are lost and you'relosing the points and your users won'tunderstand what's happening.So, you have sometimes to go back, tostep back a little bit, and adjust. Andsometimes you will brute force your wayinto it saying, "Yeah, this is how we dothings. This is This is our DNA. We justship it and let's roll with it." And no,no you If your users won't use it, won'tdo it, or won't pay for it, so you youknow you're doing something wrong. So,it's always kind of a It might feelcrazy to use Amo products, for example,but it's always agame of balance. I think ultimately it'salways how you balance things out andalways arbitrage between Is thisdelightful enough, but wait, did we didwe lose in usability? Do we just youknow, have a consensus and go back alittle bit? We also think about the wordof mouth a lot like does it haveobviously a way to passively attract newusers because this person willscreenshot it screen record it or showit at school, you know, outside and saywow, this this is amazing. What did youdo? Can I try? Like what's the app?What's the name? And we neverunderestimate that this for sure.>> [music]>> I've been designing products every dayfor the last 15 years but in the last 6months everything

00:35:07has changed. With AIin the mix, I'm cranking out ideasfaster than ever but none of thatmatters if I can't get the feedback thatI need to get the team aligned and rightnow [music]getting async feedback still kind ofsucks. So I'm building the product I'vealways wanted and it's called Inflight.I use it every day to share ideas andget feedback from the team. It's totallychanging the way that I work. So I'mexcited [music] to show you. Right nowI'm only giving access to Dive Clublisteners. So head to dive.club/inflightto claim [music] your spot.I want to toss a hypothetical your way.Let's say that a series A company bringsyou on. Maybe they're like a prosumerproduct. It's not like enterprise SaaSor anything like that and they sayJulian,we want to rethink the way that wecollaborate. Everything's on the table.We want to tap into this creativity. Wewant to start winning with designviewing it as a competitive advantage.What would you be drawing from at Amoand your experience around the way thatyou all collaborated, the way that youpushed each other, the rituals orprocesses, anything that you had inplace. What would you be drawing fromthat would influence the opportunitiesthat you would look for as a consultant

00:36:22in this new company?>> It's funny you say that because I was inthe position this since I left Tumblr orI had I was brought into more advancedcompanies, French and you know,international ones and they are soobviously for good reasons, they are sointo their own culture, their own waysof designing things, of thinking aboutwhat the product looks like and how thisworks and so on that from an externalpoint of view when I join this team withthe fresh eye and so on, your firstreflexes is to destroy everything there.ThisHey, [clears throat] can I just destroyand detach everything like because rightnow I just cannot evolve into, you know,that I say, here is the design system. Idon't need any design system. I'm sorry.If you want to go back to,you know, from scratch and create newexpenses. Ultimately, I think theybrought me for this reason.Can you bring a fresh eye and challengeus and do something crazy about it? Likewe have brand, we have a product that isso serious, soboring, so 15 years ago. Can you dosomething about it? And I try to dothings and sometimesyou will have conservative people on theother side saying, yeah, this is goingtoo far, this doesn't work. Butsometimes you will also have somebodysay, this is where we need to go. Thankyou so much. Let's

00:37:37let's roll. Let'spiggyback on this and let's createsomething new. It's the same product butit feels different and it will beappealing for just a wider audience thatjust your mom and dad's from 45 and 50years old. This is exactly the type ofwork that I love to do with thesecompanies because when you join them,you have to come up with a fresh eye andit's I think it it's both a designproduct design role as well as a salesrole a little bit. People are like,yeah, but data, you know, data you likethisthis we we have to use data. I'm like,but there is no data right now withthis. So unless you try it, like trythis and let's say let's see. And thenyou you just have to pray, cross yourfingers and say, okay, I hope this isgoing to work. My reputation's at stake.There's so much about intuition andfeelings like gut feelings is veryimportant and it was a word that we usedextensively when we created ammo becausefrom one day to another we didn't relyon 6 years or 7 years of of data likeZenly. We worked our heads down foralmost a year and released three appsfrom one of course we run user testinternally and so on but it's not it'snot enough. And you release this andthen you watch this the data coming upall the metrics and so on and you'relike okay, this one is great. This issuch a failure. This okay, this is notgoing

00:38:53to work out very well. And youalways have to start somewhere and thissomewhere isa mix of expertise and knowledge basedon your previous experiences and datayou learned along the wayand gut feeling. You have to go with gutfeeling. If I would start this productfrom scratch today it would be 100% gutfeeling because this is who I am. I'mreally into this butI know this is not the right way to shipa product nowadays.>> I do want to learn a little bit moreabout how you all worked and whatcollaboration looked like at ammobecause the output's so unique. I'mwondering like was there anything aboutthe way that you all explored andshipped together that was also unique?>> Yes, it'sdefinitely part of something that isessential and even to this day this issomething I miss deeply likecollaborating with the not just with thedesign team but as a whole like there issuch a deep [clears throat] connectionbetween all the teams. Everyone was justvery product driven. It'sfrom HR team, from engineers obviouslybut not just the software engineers. Ieven the like back end engineers. Youknow, you might say you might think theyare not really involved in shaping theexperience of the product but turns outthat many great ideascame from the back end engineering

00:40:08team.And we were very careful about to makesure that this is a culture that is opento everyone and collaborative and thedesign team [clears throat] when wehired new talents, there is always a bitof protective sense of saying, "Hey,this ismy scope. This is my jam. This is mything." And we always encourage peopleto say, "Hey, sit down with this, youknow, with this engineer from this team.Spend a day together, have lunchtogether, sit down after lunch and havea coffee, and take your laptops, go inthis room,go in the couches or whatever, and justmake it happen." Andfor some it's just unnatural. Sometimesyou just want to sit all by all byyourself all alone and do your stuff,you know, to know and say, "Hey, I'mdone." And then someone will come up toyour desk and say,"What What is this? Like, I wish we hadthe discussion together before youwrapped this up. Like, to me this isThis is problematic. It can be>> [clears throat]>> perhaps much better or perhaps you canhave a different view of that it." Itstarts to become a reflex and a habit tojust do it. Just create better productsultimately. This is one thing I alwayslove to do. Again, you can do itremotely, of course, but it does It'snot the same. When you sit down next toeach otherand you create experiences together, wehad this huge sandbox of the states

00:41:23ofmap interactions with friends and so on.And you would go into the details andsaying, "Hey, can you actually adjustthe speed of this animation? It doesn'tfeel right." You don't have to waitsomeone that just ship a new build tocome up to try this new feature. Youjust do it side by side. Like, give me apreview. Let's jam together. You don'tActually, let me close down my laptopand my my file or my whatever.Either you show me how can I can I cando it with cursor or whatever or we cando it together and let's let's do it,you know.>> Can we talk a little bit about thehiring piece? Like, given the culture,the nature of the products, the level ofdesign differentiation,what were the main signals that you werehunting for when you were having thoseearly conversations with a candidate?>> It's definitely something that It veryimportant because we didn't lookat our track record, experiences,previous experiences expenses are reallyimportant but the main thing would beambition, which is I think everyone islooking for. Like everyone wants to hiresomeone who is ambitious ultimately, sothere is nothing special to say aboutthis.But then we would be very careful aboutside projects.I think side projects are more and morethey were very underestimated back thenbut today I think it's

00:42:38the strongestsignal you can get when you hire someonewhether it's in the design spaceor any anywhere else. It's what do youdo in your free time? What do you doafter work? What do you do at work? Doyou have side project at work actually?Like someone something that you came updoing a hackathon or something likethat. It just ticks all the boxes. It Itbasicallyshows that you're very curiousthat you're doing your homework becauseyou know all these new tools you can useand leveragefor your own craft, for your own productand ideas. So it's great. You'll knowexactly what's happening in the worldtoday in your space. You can leverageyour own creativity so and it bringsthis you know entrepreneurship mindsetthat is very important in a startupespecially early stage. So when we lookat someone applying and he's like wow,you shipped this and this within 6months. Okay, just for fun.Oh, you don't have any user. It's okay.It's okay. You don't have to be great atyou know marketing or distribution orperhaps you have Exactly. You don't Tellus about it. Like we don't care aboutyour previous experience at work atMeta, you work at Apple. We don't care.Like talk to us about this very specificside project.It's funny because15 years ago when I got back from NewYork after Behance and I didn't talkabout the jail part but I ended up injail. I got

00:43:53deported from my mistakes inNew York ultimately and I couldn't goback to the US for 10 years. I gotscouted and interviewed for Google andFacebook and Dropboxin 2010 and 2011, which was really coolback then as a designer to join. Therewas many of mydesign heroes working there like TeamVan Damme, Sebastian de Weize, and soon. And I interviewed there, and alwaysat the fourth or fifth steps, I wouldtell them, "Hey, uh I'm actually bannedfrom the US. Do you Can you guys doanything about it?" And never worked,but at least I tried. It was a reallyfrustrating, but every time these guyswould reach out, they found me notbecause I had this Behance experience,but becauseI had cool side projects back then. Ihad apps that I worked on,very branded apps like this ringtone appfeels like a real tape that you canbrowse back and forth with a wooden kindof texture around it, and the LCD screenon top. And they would be like, "Hey,can you tell us about this app?" I'mlike, "Wait, I can tell you aboutBehance." And "We don't care aboutBehance. Talk to us about this app." Andit was always kind of a Trojan horse toall these new cool companies. So, everytime it's always the same speech likethis. Like, people work on your sideproject, especially today. It's so

00:45:08important. Like,>> You 10 years ago, that did feel like aslightly more minority perspective.Like, people did care about like theresumes and the previous companies. AndI feel like, at least in my experience,more than ever before,companies want to see side projectsbecause what you're able to do on yourfree time with no constraints,I mean, you can go a lot further.For a lot of people that are working onmore like legacy B2B products, you know,like you can go so much further on yourside projects with these new tools andbeing creative and trying things andexperimenting. I do feel like there'sthis moment in time right nowwhere there's a lot of alpha in sideprojects. Like, a lot because the hiringmanagers want to see them. And Yes.There's [clears throat] an uptick, forsure. Like, more people areexperimenting and tinkering, but there'sstill like, my gosh, you can stand outin a very real way with something assimple as just having a littleexperiments tab on your portfolio. Youknow, like that's a slam dunk for peoplewho are looking for the next thing.>> Absolutely. I 100% align with this. LikeI had I met this great talented guy fromBay Area recently who just ended his 10years experience at Microsoft. And thenyou know, when I asked him, "How does itfeel? How Why does he go want to go backto the trenches into early stagecompanies

00:46:23and startups?" He I wasworried about, you know, this corporateAmerica, you know, on the resume.>> Mhm.>> And he mentioned to me, "I left inSeptember and since then I've beenshipping this, this, this, and this.">> Yeah.>> "John with the AI designed this." Andthen I'm like,"Okay, perfect.">> You'll be fine.>> [clears throat]>> Yeah, you'll be fine. This is exactlywhat I wanted to hear and this isexactly the right mindset. This is, youknow, the guy is so hungry and 10 yearsof Microsoft, you know, hewent out andfrustrated and saying, "Okay, now I'mgoing to go all in and do this.">> Let's go to bring this up for a secondbecause this is something that you'vebeen playing a lot with recently. Youhave off market, you're kind of helpingthis hiring process, working withcandidates and companies.Given your kind of macro perspective,what are some of the things that you'renoticing? Like how can we help peoplelistening understand what you are seeingin today's job market and how that mightimpact the way that they would kind ofstrategically position orapproach the hiring process or anythinglike that that you think peoplelistening could learn from.>> I think the main thing I've beenwitnessing and this is very early still,but four months later with off marketmatching thing, ishow the typology, the the setup, and

00:47:39howteams are getting formed up at thebeginning and how they scale iscompletely different from 10 years ago.There are many teams I'm working withright now that, you know, say publiclyand officially say, "Hey, we will be abillion company very fast, butwe'll only be seven of us."Mhm. That we won't be we won't be ahundred. We'll be just seven.And we'll be seven for at least threeyears. And they have a very clear roadmap of why there will be seven in threeyears and why there will be perhaps 15on the fourth year, but not more. Thisis why I keep saying to the designers Imeet, I say, "Hey,if you want to have a chance to jointhis company, you have to be 360. Thefounding designer role, in my opinion,on paper is the perfect role if you wantto do anything you want to do,participate in the strategy and thevision, you want to be very operationaland hands-on, crafting the product,iterating, and shipping cool things, butyou also have to designor leverage AI to design your newLinkedIn banner or whatever. I don'tknow. Something like this. And chancesare you will be the only designers formonths or years to come. There will beno one else. You have to work on yourown or perhapsthere will be a very small design team,but not much more. And sometimes kind ofcomes up as a it's very

00:48:54brutal in a way.It'sThere there aresome designers that were used to hugeteams, huge squads. Out of a sudden,they are very attracted to one of theone of two companies and I tell them,"Well, they want to meet you, but youhave to know first that it's going to bevery challenging. It's going both interms of responsibilities, pace, andscope. Like everything is so differentand and changes very fast. You have tobe very fluent in AI. You have to bevery iterative using like you you youwon't spend as much time on Figma.Actually, you won't you will spend muchmore time on all the available tools youhave and you willchances are you will actually commityour own code and changes directly inthe code base.And no one else will do it for you.This is something that is widelysearched in terms of talent right now. Ihave a close one of mine thatjust signed in a very insane companiesin Berlin here in Germany. And you knowthat I when I asked about how it doesafter two or three months after hejoined the company.They told me this guy is insane. He'sgoing super fast. He's two days after healready had a working prototype in hand.This is far more than we expected. Thisis really great. This is the perfectmatch.And this really warms

00:50:09my heart becausethis is exactly why I think this guy wasgreat for this company. So that I thinkI I did a a great job on this, but I'malso, you know, I want to do the samenow. I want to do my own stuff and bevery fast as well without sacrificingtaste andand delight.>> There's always been this gap between,you know, the the founding designerexperience and somebody that's workingat, you know, a very large design org inthis established company.But man, that gap does feel like it isan order of magnitude larger than it waseven two years ago.And>> Yeah.>> I don't know. I guess I kind of justwonderhow it all shakes out, you know, becauseas more and more teamsdo get lean and as more and morecompanies are created, what percentageof the job market for design isallocated towards smaller design orgswhere where previously you had thesemassive design orgs that were commandingso much of the talent. There is thisfragmentation that is happening andI don't know. I think a lot about likewhat are the second order effects ofthat for your everyday candidate whowho's listening to this?>> You know, 10 years ago when you came outfrom

00:51:24and Ijust like this Microsoft guy story Imentioned,when you came out from meta, Apple,Snap, all these cool consumer companieson paper and say, "Wow, you you're fromthis world." And now if you're out ofthese companies and looking for startupjobs, it's hard, like really hard. It'slike for me like II try to sell these profiles and I tryto be very transparent and bold aboutthis when I present profiles with greattrack record in this companies and I tryto leverage everything I can to thiscompany and say, "Hey, look, money isn'tthe primary driver with this profileanymore.First, he will join because he deeplycares about the mission, the product,and the team and I think you should talkto him, to her. Go ahead, you know." Andthey're like, "No, no, no.It just I don't want anyone from thesecompanies. I want someone that haseither freelance background or agencybackground or startup background, butwith side project and so on." This is90% of the profiles that needed rightnow, at least on my very modestportfolio of companies.This is exactly the type of profile thatis needed.>> I'm saying the same [clears throat]thing actually, too, where I have a

00:52:39decently wide spectrum of terms of thecompanies that are hiring. You know,some bigger companies and a lot ofstartups, but even the bigger companiesthey come to me and say, "We want tooperate more like startups.">> True. On the other side, too.>> You know, like everybody's trying to atleasttrick themselves into believing thatthey are more nimble than they actuallyare, you know? And it obviously requiresmuch largerorganizational changes and you know, youdon't just get that overnight as a bigcompany, but that is the desire. Likethe desire is to behave more like astartup and if you come from a very bigcompany, you can totally succeed, but>> Yes.>> there's something in hiring manager'sbrain that's like, you have to show methat you're not going to bring that wayof working with you.>> Yeah.>> You have this hurdle that you have toovercome out of the box and I I've seenit now enough times where it's like,okay, this is this is a pretty cleartrend and it feels weird to even say,you know, like a lot of people are inthat situation, but like that is thereality of the market right now.>> Definitely. You know, all these old waysof like building huge head counts, youknow, chasing head counts was actually ametric of success. It's like, "Hey, myteam is like 50 people now." Because youhave one product design role that isdouble, triple, quadruple. It's the

00:53:54old ways of building teams. And then 3years later, you have 1,500 people beinggetting laid off because it doesn't workanymore. Like, I can see how this is allgoing to be It's It's shifting. It'sdefinitely shifting.>> Another thing I'm noticing is that someteams don't even have the language todescribe the roles that they're hiringfor. Like, I was talking to somebodyyesterday, and it's a startup that I betmost people listening to this have heardof. It's a very cool startup. Andthey're like, "Yeah, we you know, wewant It's It's It's a designer. It's aproduct person. But like, we definitelywant them to be living in the code, too.And like, we hope that they could bekind of comfortable exploring motion andand and some like animation stuff." Andit's like, this person they'redescribing is straddling basically everydisciplineof how we traditionally thought of theengineering product design triad. Like,they want a little bit of everything.And there's not even a There's not evena word for it. They don't even have atitle for the role that they're hiring,you know?>> Exactly.>> And I was just kind of sitting theresmirking to myself cuz it's such aninteresting reflection of the state ofthe market where like, people don't evenknow what they want. They just wantsomebody to be able to come in and makean impact.>> Yes.Yeah, I want everything. Like, bring mesomeone everything. I want I wanthuge spike in gold. I want, you know,motion

00:55:09design, 3D design, productdesign. I want everything. And I wantthis person to be able to code as well.Andyeah, it's definitely I can see thatmore and more. And I think it's part ofour job, too. And I know it's your job,too, too, when you screening newcandidates and new talents to say, "Hey,this is where you're getting very strongat. And this is I have the perfect matchfor you, the perfect company. You needto talk to them.">> Uh we wea lot of ground. I have a randomquestion before I let you go. I'mcurious as somebody who has good tastein terms of consumer products and whatwho's pushing the envelope in differentinteresting ways.Is there an app or some kind of aproduct that you've come across in thelast I don't know year or two whereyou're like, "Oh, that is interesting.That did something for me. Maybe thateven tapped intosomething that feels familiar to the DNAthat you kind of grew up with in thisZenly and Amo era?">> WeChat app Mhm. is really great when youin terms of polish, in terms of craft.It It's not crazy, but there are allthese tiny touches that feels like agreat app, you know, the the ability tosend cool postcards. Almost all thedesign team from Amo are using this appon a daily

00:56:25basis and I'm dragging behinda little bit.I love Duolingo for what they do. EveryI do the craft the bar is really high.The design team there is really, reallygood and everything is so tightlyconnected together. The brand design,the motion design, thethe haptics, the everything is so, sogood. So, for me it's perfect the typeof product that is perfect in terms ofexperiences, in terms of visual design,of how I feel when I use it. And I havemany more that I cannot talk about rightnow.>> I love it. Well, I've definitely had funwith this conversation today and Iappreciate you coming on and sharing thestory. It is so, so interesting and I'malso just a big fan of everything thatyou've had a hand in making over theyears. So, I'm excited [music] to seewhat's next and your time today.>> Thank you, Reed. Thank you so much forhaving me.>> Before I let you go, I want to take just1 minute to run you through my favoriteproducts because I'm constantly askedwhat's in my stack.>> [music]>> Framer is how I build websites. Geniallyis how I do research. Granola is how Itake notes during crit. Jitter is how Ianimate my designs. Lovable is how Ibuild my ideas in code. Mavin is how Ifind design inspiration. Paper is how Idesign like a creative,

00:57:40and Raycast ismy shortcut every step of the way. Now,I've hand-selected these companies sothat I can do these episodes full-time.So, by far, the number one way tosupport [music] the show is to checkthem out. You can find the full list atdive.club/partners.