Marvin Schwaibold - Inside Shopify's New Product Design Studio

00:00:00Everything we build inside of our teamtrigger something else in somebodyelse's brain and then they use whatthey're innately good at. It could bemotion, could be coding, could bealteration, could be product tocontribute to that mission or tocontribute to that project. I feel likethe agency model helps us create andmaintain that team of almost misfitsthat all work together and solve thesame problem but from their specificlens.>> Welcome to Dive Club. My name is Riddand this is where designers never stoplearning.Remember when the Chief Design Officerat Shopify, Carl Rivera, came onrecently and he shared his vision tocreate the Shopify product designstudio. Well, today's guest is MarvinSchwiebold who was part of Molly Studiowho Shopify recently acquired to bringthat vision to life. So, we're going todo a deep dive into creativity, AItools, and what it looks like todifferentiate with design. And there'ssome seriously cool work happening atShopify right now, but before we getinto it all, I asked Marvin to share alittle bit about his journey leading upto Molly Studio.>> I started in graphic design very earlyon in my career kind of by accident. Istumbled across a design studio that Iwanted to work with. Actually,

00:01:15my momgot me my first internship at thatstudio. I stayed with that studio forover five years. That whole part of my Iguess like early career was very muchrouted around typography and brandingand like analog design. We were we werewe were printing a lot. We wereembroidering papers. We were working alot on stationary things for companies.We were making a lot of interior forrestaurants. And that that whole world,I think to me was just something that Ididn't know I could experience. Like Iwill say I was pretty average in school.Like not very good at math or or writingand reading. And when I stumbled intographic design, I felt like I had foundsomething that innately was easy for meto to consume and to understand. And Iand I kind of felt like I had thesuperpower when I was using type andand colors. I wanted to continue workingwith that agency. My parents were like,you have to study something. You can'tjust go from school straight to a job.That's not how this That's not how weraised you. And I went to the agency. Iwas like, II have to study. There's a design schoolright in our town here in Stuttgart.It's a It's a university. You can gothere and study communication design,visual communication, and typography,and you can continue working with us.So, it's like, okay, best of bothworlds. I get to learn about graphicdesign and about how to visuallycommunicate through shapes and colors,but I get to I get

00:02:30to practice it likewith real clients in real meetings andreal scenarios.>> So, what was it like then making thejump from more of the like agencytraditional graphic design background toworking in tech? Cuz you like went rightto Squarespace, right? As the next role?Like, what were some of the mentalshifts or growth areas that you had totackle moving from those two worlds?>> There was one step in between that I'llquickly mention as well. I moved fromfrom from Germany to Los Angelesand work with an agency there in themovie industry. But, already like myfirst jump going from branding andanalog design into interactive designand web design. And that was I think abig part of what shaped me early on,especially in in the web designindustry. I could use the web tomanipulate how the user would understandsomething or I could delight throughmotion or through delays or throughWebGL. And like, we worked on a lot ofprojects like Isle of Dogs and GhostStory and Def Jam and like all these funmovies. We worked a lot with A24. Youhad to craft and create experiences.They felt more like art pieces than theydid websites that would just like enticeusers and bring them along for thejourney. Like, get them hyped up about alike specific movie or specific film.That's how I ended up in in tech

00:03:45becauseI was on Squarespace's radar. They hiredme for a web concepts department thatthey had, which was an internal teamthat lived between product and brandright in the intersection of all of thegood stuff, but was disconnected fromroad map. And my first job in tech was avery unconventionaltitle or role. Like I was I didn't startas a product designer or as an intern intech or as a copywriter or as anengineer. I started in what could thefuture of the web for Squarespace looklike team. And that team had freedom andrange to mess around and prototype withthe ecosystem that Squarespace hadcreated to push the envelope forward.Which at times was scary because itsounds really fun when you don't have aroad map until you have a road map.Like show up to reviews and to meetings.We're on the hook for like coming upwith new paradigms. But the bestparadigms and the best new ideas thatthat came out of our team and out of ourstudio came out of the idea ofprototyping and and and tinkering andand just kind of messing around with allof the components and bits and pieces wehad at at our disposal. And then veryquickly fell in love with the with thecom- complexity of just buildingsoftware and building editors. AndWatson and I would create one-offwebsites. They rarely had a CMS or oror or anything like

00:05:00that. And And atSquarespace I learned to think about anecosystem and a system. I remember myfirst project working on headers. And Iwas so sure that I could tackle this andand knock it out of the park. And I Ifailed so miserably because I didn'tunderstand how to think through all theconfigurations and complexities thatmake up a specific header.>> Yeah, a few more constraints when you'reworking at that level.>> A few more constraints, exactly. Andlike learning about it like how that allcollapses and the hamburger versus thewhat's exposed in the menu. There'sdouble menus. Like there was so manythings that I that I didn't know thatactually existed. And I guess instead ofgetting afraid or getting discouraged byany of that complexity, I actually gotreally into it. I was like, "Oh, solvingthis or making this more beautifulwithin the constraints of of what oureditor is will be a huge impact for forour users and the same was fortemplates. We built a lot of templatesfor for customers and seeing those outin the world and people using them wasvery addictive and very fun.>> Real quick message and then we can jumpback into it.Never in a million years did I think mydesign workflow would change sodrastically in the last few months and abig part of it is Paper's new snapshottool. It's a Chrome extension that letsyou copy any component or element fromyour live website and then paste itdirectly into Paper as editable

00:06:16layers.So all the time I'll grab something fromprod, have Claude immediately spin it upsix different ways on Paper's canvas andthen when I'm ready to send a conceptback to Claude, it's seamless becausePaper's canvas uses real HTML and CSS.That workflow feels a lot like thefuture of design to me and you can startdoing this today. Just head todive.club/paperto try it out.If you're still designing in Figma andare rebuilding in Framer, then you'redoing twice the work. With Framer'sdesign pages, you no longer have to jumpbetween tools. The last page that I madefor the dive website, I explored andbuilt entirely in Framer. You cansketch, iterate, structure, and publishto the web all from the same place.Framer isn't just a site builder, it's adesign tool for your entire workflow andyou can start creating today for free atframer.comand if you use the code Rib, you canunlock a free month of Framer Pro.Now on with the episode.>> So can we fast forward a little bit inthe story and then for a lot of peopleyou kind of came on the map throughMolly and the Shopify acquisition andmaybe they're like checking out yourTwitter and everything. So like what'sthe story behind Molly? How'd that cometo be and what made the way that you allwere like positioning yourselves

00:07:31unique,too?>> I started working with this extremelytalented designer called J Tell. We metyears ago here in New York. He DM'd meactually on what was then Twitterum and just wanted to hang out. Wegrabbed a coffee and that coffee turnedinto like I think a 4-hour conversationabout design and and principles andengineering and how we thought about theworld and about products. And basicallyat the end of that conversation hedecided to to work together. And weimmediately started freelancingtogether.And we've worked together basicallyevery every day since that since thatinitial coffee meeting. And we createdMolly becauseat the time we were both freelancing andworking together, but we didn't have astudio. We didn't have a space likeactually work out of and call home andcollaborate in. And that's why wecreated the space. We wanted a placethat we could sit across from each otheron a daily basis and just bounce ideasoff each other's heads. And I thinkthere's that Steve Jobs quote about therock tumbler like you put a bunch oflike rough rocks into a rock tumbler andyou let it work for 24 hours and thenext day you have these really beautifulpebbles. It's because they spent thelast 24 hours bumping into each other.And turns out that how we wanted to workand and the team that we assembledaround ourselves was actually moreimportant than the projects we took on.And so a lot of the work we did and wewe started working with with with withShopify and with Shopify app, which

00:08:46is ahuge part of obviously Shopify. That'swhat really like put us on Shopify's mapwhere they were like, "Oh, this thisteam and this this group of people andthe community they've built aroundthemselves, the culture that they havecreated and the environment that theyhave and and how they solve problems isactually beautiful and we would love tosee them have an impact on on a biggermission.">> I I definitely want to dig into how theproduct design studio at Shopify works.Before we move on, I do kind of want toget a sense of what creativecollaboration looked like through thelens of Molly. So, is there maybe like abehind the scenes of a project thatyou're particularly proud of that wecould point at to understandhow you all are working and what youguys are bringing to the table?>> I feel like one of the biggest projectsat Molly we collaborated with the studiocalled that everyone's familiar with. Weworked with with with Brian Collins andand Leland Maschmeyer on on and a bunchof other like super talented people ontheir teams on a redesign of Collins.The way they always tell the story nowthat the website is live is like, wecame in to pitch for this project and wewere like, everybody's thinking aboutthe web in the wrong way and is thinkingabout consumption of information on theweb in the wrong way and we have our ownapproach of how we apply contentconsumption to all of the projects wework on

00:10:01and we will apply that not atemplate, but that methodology onto you.And they were extremely intrigued bythat because they will they hadn't heardthat type of approach before. For us itwas this idea that the web worked nodifferently than the way you would useyour phone or your computer. For us itwas more an OS basically. So, consuminginformation on the web needed to beextremely simple and extremely efficientand we tried to highlight the mostimportant things that made your companyor your business successful and thenanything else below that wasprogressively disclosed through patternsthat you would find in on your iPhone oron your iPad. And that was I thinkdistinctively different approach to howwe looked at websites and how we lookedat content in general online, which wasalso important because we worked on alot of products as well. That to Collinswas was very interesting and we spentwell over a year working with them onthis website and churned out hundredsand hundreds of different layouts andreally like took them along for thejourney of like understanding what is itthat you're trying to sell on thiswebsite or explain on this website andhighlight on this website and how can wepresent that in the best possible way.So, that was like an amazing experienceespecially because like four

00:11:17weeksbefore launching the website, Brian camein and changed everything.Start over again, which is good becauseI think where we landed now is a lotbetter than where we were. Since we're asmall team, we were able to always plugin very very effectively with ourclients and like we just hosted a lot ofone-on-ones and a lot of interviews withthem and we really actually required andexpected a lot of attention from theclient like really throw everything theyhad at us because we needed as muchinformation as possible to come up witha with with a very sound strategy.>> Any insights or lessons that camethrough working with Brian Collins for ayear?>> There's so many parts of him that makehim so eccentric and so and and so andso talented but we had these twosessions with him where we werereviewing the website and I think I comefrom a background of typography but inthose two sessions they were each maybelike six hours long I think I learnedmore about typography than in my entireuniversity years because he'sat it at compression and relentless atat reducing complexity like he wouldstand at the at the whiteboard or atbasically at the projector and and lookat the website and he wanted to reducethe amount of font size that we wereusing for this website to two.And we maybe had 12 on there at the timeand it was this back relentlessliterally back and forth

00:12:32obsessionbetween how can we simplify theselayouts down to the core essence of whatthey're trying to say while stillkeeping them very unique and and andpowerful and and watching him in actionlike that was extremely powerful to see.It's just like sticks with you onceyou're through that process once I seeevery layout that I look at now fromthat exact same lens like and justreally question every single element onthe page and try to understand why doesit need to be here? What's therelationship between this component andanother component and is there any wayto remove it entirely and if not reduceor or you know or expand the size ofthis for for a specific purpose.He's very very good at that. He's alsovery good at entertaining which is nice.>> What do you mean by the entertainingpiece?>> Something that I learned from him isthere's this difference betweeneducating a client or educating a roomversus entertaining a room. When you'reentertaining I think people are moreinclined to listen to you and to and tofollow your ideas versus educatingclients or peers or colleagues can oftencome come across as maybe morepatronizing.And Brian just had this aura of likewhen he came into a room or when heworked with us on things. We start Wehosted a lot of demo nights with him. Hewould be very good at just entertainingthe room and keeping the room inspired.And for lack of a better term, just likehappy. Like everybody was always havinga lot of fun.>> Were there practical ways that

00:13:47you triedto apply that in future interactionswith other clients?>> Yeah, definitely. I feel it's a corepart of how Molly ran It's a core partof how we work together at Shopify andhow the product design studio runs. It'sa think core part why we were acquiredby Shopify. It If you're not having funwith the people that you're working,then I think that seldom produces verygood creative output. There's this quotefrom Robert Henri, who was an Americanpainter and writer, who said, "The goalin life isn't to create art, but tocreate a life that is so wonderful thatart is inevitable." It's this idea oflike how you show up is just moreimportant than what you show up to,which was going back to like the teamconstellation like always our philosophylike the best people who are reallypassionate about something and then anenvironment of like and show that theythat they have fun. And that wassomething like Brian and the wholeCollins teams like really worked on andthat like stuck with us.>> Well, I want to get into how you createan environment where art is inevitableat Shopify. Maybe just really quickly togive people a little bit of context, canyou just explain how the Shopify productdesign studio works, how you plug in,how you fit into the broader design org?>> The product design studio at Shopify

00:15:03works in two ways. We sit alongside theproduct organization and teams from theproduct organization come to us withideas, with problems, with theories,with things they want to jam on. And sowe treat the studio similar to how wewould treat an agency in the way that wewill take on these projects, we willscope these projects, and we willintroduce a burst of energy intowhatever these teams are working on andwe'll work alongside them. Usually very,very intertwined with their teams on aspecific problem. The other way thestudio works is we find things that weget really obsessed about. Now, thatcould be internal software that we'rebuilding for ourselves and ourworkflows. That could be something thatwe're seeing in the company that maybenobody else is focusing on right now oror has the ability to focus on and we'lltake those projects into our studio aswell and create almost an initiative outof it, which has worked really well.It's super fun because it creates somuch context. Like, we work with so manydifferent teams across such a multitudeof of of surfaces from checkout to pointof sale to the dashboard and the adminand sidekick and all of our AIfunctionalities and everybody has adifferent opinion and different lens andwe need to juice our team in a differentway to get to

00:16:18specific outcomes. Andthat plays really nice into how we justbuild for our teams well. We like, we'llbuild internal tools or internaldashboards to make our life easier andour easier and usually that then lendsitself useful to other people on in inthe organization as well. And so, thatkind of like creates this feedback loopof like, we build something, somebodyelse uses it as well and everybody liketinkers and works together on it. But,that's basically how our how how how ourwhole team operates.>> I've been seeing some of the internaltools on Twitter recently and I'mcurious like even something likeArtifact. Like, is that something that'scoming out of the studio? Like, what aresome of the things that you've beenobsessed with lately that you've beentinkering with?>> Shopify is a remote-first company. We'reremote by default, but we come togetherin in offices and especially here in NewYork we have a design lab that we workon right now, but innately it's remoteand that means that people need to beaware of what other people are workingon and Artifact was a way for us tocreate a really easy and frictionlessway to just upload work. And the thething is we have videos and Figma filesand and demos and snippets of vibe codeddashboards, all these different piecesthat live in different environments, andArtifact is a place we can just uploadall of it and like view it all at thesame time. And it makes

00:17:33staying up todate with the work really easy, and itand it makes reviewing work really easyas well. This is exactly like what I wastalking about. This is something thatinnately came from the team and camefrom the studio, and then was respectedand and and pushed and protected by byleadership, funded for for lack of abetter term, to push up to the to theboard organization. But that's how thewhole company basically works.Everybody's a tool maker.>> I want to dig into what it looks like tokind of be this injection of energythrough a product team. Like can we justgo absurdly deep into how you allcollaborate? Like what are you all doingto foster this environment of creativitywith a team? What the deliverables evenare that you're bringing to the table?>> On the one hand, the way we worktogether as a team is that there'sthere's a group of experts that are allvery good at very specific things. Wehave motion design, we have productdesign, we have art direction, we haveengineering. And everybody has almostlike special skills. And sometimes Ifeel like you need to create like anenvironment where all of those differentskills and all those people feelcomfortable enough to thrive in. Andwhen you create that environment for forfor people, it's it's easy to createit's easy to create good work. So, wetake a lot of time

00:18:48to focus on thedetails, but we're also able to focus onthe details because we have people onthe team who are very good at microinteractions and motion. Like they'reobscenely good at art direction andproduct design. And like we we try tofocus on as little things as possiblewith the most amount of people to getthe best output out of the work. One ofmy biggest mentors, I don't think heknows I exist, but his name is GregDuncan, and he came up with the termwallet gardening, which basically meansif you put a bunch of wild flowerstogether, the output of that wild gardenis innately more interesting than ifit's and if it's not a wild garden. Theissue with that is like you have tocreate this environment in which thosedifferent wild flowers can basicallythrive in and I feel like everyone'sgenius is like right next to theirdysfunction and everybody's good at onething and our job in the studio and andand our job in in in tech and at Shopifygeneral is to create an environmentwhere everybody can thrive at the thingthat makes them really, really good andthat's how we get really good output outout of our team and out of ourselves.It's It goes back to the Robert Henriquote of like, you have to be able tocreate a world that is fun to live inand if it's fun to exist and live in inthe world or in the environment, thencreating artists is inevitable. Like itjust is actually easy.>> I was kind of curious like how much theMolly roots and almost that agency styleway of

00:20:03working was persisting inside ofShopify and it really actually soundslike everything in some sense is almostthe same. Like you kind of get to bethis almost horizontal layer thatproduct teams tap and even thinkingabout my own experience as a designer, Iwould have loved loved to be able to tapyou guys to get like motion help orcrank up the creativity or just get afresh perspective on something. Itsounds like a really interesting setup.>> We try to inject as much just positivityand energy and and uniqueness into intoeverything that we work on at Shopifyand I feel like the agency model helpsus create and maintain that team ofalmost misfits that all work togetherand solve the same problem but fromtheir specific lens. This was earlier inmy my my career, I was working with uhJesper Vos, talented engineer and hehelped me install who now works on ourteam, she's a motion designer and weworked on thisportfolio for photographer that thenended up winning website of the day,website of the month and like blew up,became really big for this photographercalled Madeline Della and I remember thesynergy between the three of us wasbeautiful because I was focusing on ourdirection and on typography and onlayouts and Yael was really into likeanimating and and and and transitioningbetween all these different fonts thatthat I was using and and Jasper was incharge of basically

00:21:18putting it alltogether making it exist on the web butthere was no hierarchy between the threeof us. There wasn't there was no handoffprocess like the back in the day you'dhave the waterfall process right withlike design hands off to motion motionhands off to engineering and thenengineering takes takes it home. Thiswas weeks and weeks and weeks it feltmore like a helix. We were just spinningaround each other and everybody hadnotes on everybody else's work and wejust evolved it until the three of uswere like really really happy with thework and then we pushed it out and Ithink that's exactly how how we work inour in in our studio now. There isalmost no end state to to a project. Ithas to get to a point where everybody'sgiven as much of what makes them uniquein the team to the project and thenit'll usually be in a state that youotherwise couldn't get to.>> I love the mental picture of the helixand it's also interesting how frequentlyyou bring up motion and animation as acore component of what all you what youguys are exploring. Do you think thatmotion is more a part of the core DNA ofwhat you all bring to the table maybemore so than a a traditional productwork?>> 100%. I think that motion can hint atthe hierarchy of the content that you'rethat you're looking at right? So wewould build a website and you wouldclick on a CTA and a sheet

00:22:34would overlaythat sheet quite literally overlaysitself over the website and now yourmental understanding of where thatcontent lies is oh it lies on top. Sothat means if I press escape maybe thesheet goes back and you're back on themain page. Like being able to visualizean animation like that through a viewtransition and making that the the themotion very linear and showing to theuser exactly what's happening next is isvery important for for users tounderstand to understand what'shappening. I mean that'sthere's a very great video from from thehuman interface team from 2019 calleddesign food interfaces that speaks aboutall all of these complexities and theidea of how motion shows hierarchy andyou use animation to basically explainwhat the interface is doing. It's it's ait's a key part of understanding ofunderstanding everything and it justbrings together obviously what what boththings strong strong typography andstrong layers just a lot of emotion orit can evoke a lot of emotion in userswhen they're interacting with products,with brands.>> I want to keep pushing on justeverything that you're doing to fostercreativity and to truly differentiatewith design. I'm curious, is there anexample that we could point to orsomething that would kind of shine alight on what collaboration looks likefor you all?>> We're

00:23:49about to launch shopify.designwhich is an an an internal project we'vebeen running to really actually shine alight on design at Shopify and thetalented different people we have in inthe whole organizationand we're bringing all of that togetherin like one website and one brand andthat brand started off in Figma and wedid a bunch of layouts and alterationand you understand the structure of ofwhat it is that you're building and themark and all of that and then ittranslated very quickly into into motionstudies of how the brand would movewhich then translated into a five codedtool that that that J Town and the teamwas working on that basically became aneditor to emulate what the animation wasdoing and that then became thefoundation for the website we'rebuilding for it right now. So, it's likethis idea of like everything we buildinside of our team triggers somethingelse in somebody else's brain and thenthey use what they're innately good at.Could be motion, could be coding, couldbe alteration, could be product tocontribute to that mission or tocontribute to that project and I thinkthat was one of the funnest projectswe've we've worked on since we've workedat Shopify right now and it's being likereceived really well internally and likeeverybody's obsessed with it and it'sdefinitely a nod at the constellation ofthe team. Not just our team buta nod at like

00:25:04how to get to these likehigh impact outputs and I feel like thethe the the the the thing that I keepcoming back to is this quote from FrankSlootman who's the CEO of Snowflakewhich is narrow the plane of attack,right? You don't want to be a mile wideand an inch deep with your team. That'show you lose creativity. That's how youlose the environment where somebody witha specific skill set can be successfuland can work in. You want to keep theteam together. You want to keep the teamreally close and you want to sequencemore than you do parallel. You sequenceone after the other. We'll work on thistogether and then we work on the nextthing together and everybody stickstogether and inspires each other andworks together versus everybody's out ontheir own doing multiple projects at thesame time.>> I want to go even deeper on that piecebecause the sequencing thing isinteresting especially through thecontext of like a new Shopify.designbecause there are so many stakeholdersand interested parties, right? So likehow do you narrow the plane of attackwhen you're creating something thatpresumably a lot of people have a say inor want to you know voice some type ofan opinion. Like it's one thing to havecreative ideas but it's a totally otherthing to maintain that creativity as itprogresses through an org.>> You start

00:26:19with a mark and you start withwith a mood board and you start with avision and an idea and a world that youwant to kind of create. I think we'revery good at bringing together all ofthe people on our team to create even ifit's just a mood or a vibe of like thisis what we want to build and get peopleexcited about. And if you can get peopleexcited about what you're doing then youcan start to create momentum. And if youstart to create momentum that then helpsyou to to flow through and then youtackle every piece of the project oneone after the other and bring peoplealong for the journey. I think that's tous a very important part. We have a lotof counterparts on these projects, a lotof people who are stakeholders in theseprojects, and the most important thingwith all of this is just like bringingthem along, like showing them thethinking behind how did we land on thisand why did we land on this and how dowe think this positively impact whatwe're all trying to achieve, and sellingthem over. And once they're sold over,and once they're on your side, itbecomes a lot easier to that justprogress as a unit and and and moveforward. And I feel likein some ways that's a very healthyapproach to look at to look at projects.We looked at theat a layout for this for this websitelast week, and we were all in themindset of like, this is really good,but it's also time. Like, this has to goout into the world. This has to

00:27:34belaunched inside of our company. This hasto be digested and metabolized by us, bythe stakeholders, by our colleagues, andthen we can continue working on it.Which goes back to my main point aroundworking in agencies versus working inhouse. In agency, it's more of thisfinite idea of the website that we'veworked on with the client has to launchon this specific date, and it has to goout, and then it's goodbye and ahandshake with your client, and you kindof never really see them again. Which isnot how we approach work at Molly atall. Launching a website for a clientwas 50% of the way there. After welaunched the website, it became the realthe real challenge of testing thelayouts, testing our components, testingour strategy, and oftentimes, includingour own website at the time, we'd haveup to 30 versions of that website live,and we're continuously AB testing our ABtesting multi-arm bandit testing thewebsite and the hierarchy of thatwebsite against the market, and justfiguring out what stuck and what madesense. Because my assumption of where Iwant the carousel component to be on thewebsite is a personal assumption that Ihave or the studio can have. Thatdoesn't mean that that's how the marketor the users will react to thatcomponent. So, reshuffling content on,say, a website for instance, or adashboard, was a was a really importantpart for us to figure out why and whatorder are we even

00:28:49doing things in? Thiswas part of what I guess also separatedus um from a lot of other digitalagencies was more of this productthinking background that we just appliedto websites. We thought about websitesand products. We saw them in the sameway.>> And probably fit in quite well then atShopify and more of thethe impact that Tobi has had on theculture as well. Which makes me evenkind of curious like you've worked withsome pretty incredible people over thecourse of your career and I think youyou know you already mentioned differentways that you know working with peoplelike Brian or um other clients have kindof shaped you and the what you'vebrought to the table as a designer. Areyou able to already see the way thatTobi is kind of rubbing off orinfluencing the way that you approachthe practice of design?>> The way he approaches everything isthrough this innate lens of he's hyperobsessed and just curious abouteverything and anything that is going onat at at all times, which is liberatingbecause it allows you to ideate and toand to iterate and to understand all thenew tools that are coming out right nowespecially in this AI boom that we'reworking right now. But more so I thinkthe credit goes especially also to toKarri Arrocha, like our chief designofficer, who just creates a verybeautiful like culture

00:30:05in which we'reallowed to exist and work in. And I I Ifeel like there's there's something inthe way he approaches work and in in theway Tobi approaches that just resonatesa lot with how we like to approachthings. Like our output is really reallyhigh because we try to iterate andideate through as much ideas as possiblein the fastest amount of time just toget to an end point where we can look ata lot of different things that we'veworked on. And then from there you canpick strings or channels to follow andthen fall deeper into. And I thinkthere's something also to be said aboutworking at a at a at a company where thefounder is so deep in the work. Tobi'sin the code all day and in the work.>> I've been seeing the the commit graphs.>> Yeah, the commit graphs are crazy. Imean, AI's obviously accelerating a lotof this for us, but I think I wouldn'twant a work company where the thefounders of the and and and the and theleaders of the company weren't asobsessed with the current state ofaffairs, I think, in in design and AI umas they are. Which I guess maybe bringsme more to like the main way we like towork within the team in a Shopify ingeneral is just through the work. Wemanage each other through the work. Weshow up through the work. We show eachother the work. We identify through thework. The work is what you bring tomeetings. We have a standup with ourteam every morning. Everybody shows upwith work and

00:31:20what they've worked on.And we're brutally honest with eachother. Usually I'm the one who gets introuble. Um but ideallypeople on the team that have a lot offeedback for youand you just work through it with themtogether. And then you show up the nextday or a few hours later with with withmore ideas and more iterations. Andthere's just this constant contributingto the mission shop line of commercethat we're all like really into.>> One thing that Dive Club has madeabundantly clear to me over the lastyear is that the practice of design ischanging. And the old process of gettingfeedback just doesn't quite cut it intoday's world. That's why I'm excited toannounce that InFlight is officially inopen beta. It's the feedback tool thatI've always wanted and it's built for aworld that moves at the speed of AI. So,I can share my prototypes, give contextin video walkthroughs, and InFlightmakes it easy to get the exact feedbackthat I need to move forward. Whetherit's voting on directions or maybe evengetting the green light to ship a newidea. And all of this is available in asingle link that I can drop in the Slackor maybe even share with power users totest out a new prototype. I use InFlightevery day and it's totally transformedthe way that I share work. So, I'mexcited for you to try the product. Andif you ever want to jam about it,

00:32:35justemail me at rid at inflight.co.How has all these new capabilitiesimpacted the way that you all areoperating? Like, can you talk a littlebit and you mentioned J Tel vibe codingtools, buthow has that influenced the practice ofdesign for you?>> Immensely. It's an immense It's animmense shift. It's an immense impactand it's a huge unlock. I feel like theway we're able to show up as designersthrough the new technology, especiallyOpus 4.6 and codex at the moment, isjust fascinating and really fun to see.Like, this doesn't mean that we strayaway from what makes us successful andwhat makes us unique and what makes usgood. We have I wouldn't call them swimlanes, but we stick to Figma, AfterEffects, and Photoshop and all thesevery ingrained tools to get to specificoutcomes and to get to specific ideas.But then switching and using agents toget to that next level is fascinating.Like, going back to the Shopify designexample, there was a lot that went intothe uniqueness of making thatthe motion behind that whole brand isvery, very unique. Coming up with a toolto replicate that motion was difficultenough to do, but it wouldn't have beenpossible if we didn't have. The waywe're able to output work and the way

00:33:50we're able to put prototypes togetherhas entirely shifted. Uh for for thewhole company for the whole company. Ithink there's We have umThe data at the moment shows that 50% ofall designers are using AI tools all allthe time. Actually, in our onboarding toShopify, you have to commit at least twopull requests as a designer to the maincode, like to the main branch.>> Really? Oh, that's cool.>> It's an innate responsibility we allhave at Shopify to use the tools and touse the tools at our disposal and andfor the work that we do.>> There's a tension that maybe exists insomebody who's listening's mind. I kindof have it in my mind where on one handwe talk a lot about how AI coding toolsalmost narrow our playgrounds and theykind of you know, push us down a smallersubset of the spectrum and we're likesolutionizing in this little area wherea lot of the things that you're talkingabout is clear. You're able to justcrank through concepts and just throw abunch of the things at the wall andthat's kind of a core part of how youhave operated for a long time. Evengoing back to you know, talk about theColumns website and and making hundredsof versions of what this could looklike. Talk to me a little bit about thattension. Like how do you maintain thesame levels of creativity when you areplaying in code

00:35:06rather than, you know,something that feels a little bit morefamiliar as a designer?>> It's an important question. It'ssomething that I wouldn't say strugglebut that we very much discuss especiallywithin our team a lot. On the one hand,you want to understand and digest andmetabolize all of the new tools that arecoming out. Like me personally,I've committed to GitHub 60-70 timesthis year. I haven't committed a singletime before this year. I didn't know howany of this really worked and and here Iam like cloning repos and buildingharnesses and and and and workingthrough with all of all of the newtools, right? Like I have an open clawbot on Telegram that like calls me. Onthe other hand, I feel like especiallyas creators, as creatives, you don'twant to losethe thing that I guess to me it's likethe thing that got me to this point intime right nowobviously wasn't coding tools becausethey just didn't exist. So, for lack ofa better term, I feel like going back toyour roots and using tools that you knowhow to use to solve problems isdefinitely not not a bad thing. I don'tthink we should only rely on on AI toolsto solve our problems for us. But if youhave an idea of what you want to do, ifyou understand the technology and theconstraintsand and what they and and how they canhelp you, then

00:36:21opening up Cursor orTerminal and switching to one of thenewest models and going into plan modeand explaining to it exactly what youwanted to do and watching it go off issome of the most like magicalexperiences I've had so far in my careerand it's unlocked me a bunch because youdon't have to persuade emotion designeror a developer to come along with you ona journey to get to a prototype to thenconvince maybe your group or the largerorganization or something, right? And Ifeel like that's oftentimes what we'vealways been working towards and whatmakes us so unique in in in the designfield is you want to accumulate and youwant to have players on your team thatcan all together create really reallybeautiful prototypes. We used to do thatwith origami and with After Effects andFigma and and and motion in Figma andall of these different tools. That is alot easier to do with code at themoment. You can plug cursor into Xcodeand you can start working onon on on a new version of of the shopapp and that just wasn't availablebefore this time. So I feel like whatI'm seeing a lot with our team and withdesigners on on all of these differentteams is just like it's unlockingeveryone a ton and it's creating so muchmore output that creates so much morereactions

00:37:37and that then all accumulatesto just better output for everyone.>> You've definitely been AI pilled. Youeven have the open claw Telegram set upgoing on and I think it's also importantto like highlight the fact that likeyou've been doing this for like 60 days.Like we're talking about less than 60days of committing to the code base. Soyou are not that far ahead in the grandscheme of things than somebody who'slistening who maybe knows that it isimportant but hasn't taken some of thosesteps yet. So like what are there someof the things that you've learned in thelast 60 or so days that you think otherdesigners who potentially maybe you'reon the sidelines could benefit from?>> Again and this comes back to the to theidea of curiosity and being able to justuse these tools and get inspired by thetools. If you haven't used an agentbefore or or one of these models before,just use them. Like get on asubscription plan and figure outsomething that you want to build. I feellike a lot of the times, especially asdesigners, everybody's working on aproject right now. You can literallyopen up your computer, go into Figma,there's something open in Figma that youprobably need an engineer or a wholeteam of engineers or motion designers towork on, throw it into Cloud Code, andlet it have a go. Let it have a go at atthe problem and and see what it outputs.It's a skill that everybody has to pickup and everybody has to learn.

00:38:52I wouldjust advise people to just don't beafraid of it. Like just start using thetools. As you start using the tools andyou start building more context andawareness of how the tools actuallywork, it it's it's a lot easier to startto understand them and trust them andand work and work better with them. Um Ithink I I've I've gotten really far inin a short amount of time, but I alsohave a very strong team around me ofpeople who motivate me, who help me, whopush me. We work primarily in person, soeverybody's sitting next to everybodyand we're always working on thingstogether. It's so much easier to tapsomeone on the shoulder and be like,"Hey, I need to get up to or an API orsomething. I don't know how to do that."Oh yeah, don't worry about that. Likeyou can find that over here orask your bots. Like just ask it. Toolsare innately patient. This is the mostpatient teacher you will ever have.>> Mhm.>> These screenshotting your desktop withthe error state and throwing that backinto into terminal and telling it, "Idon't understand what's happening here."He probably solves the issue.>> that 30 times a day easily.>> Yeah, and you screenshot it and you sendit back and it understands what'shappening, what's going wrong, and thenyou can have it explain it to you too aswell. I do this all the time. Likebefore you do this, explain to me whatyou're going to do and why. And thatoftentimes helps me understand thecomplexity of of what it's doing.>> I appreciate how approachable you madeit there because

00:40:08I've been likeyesterday somebody messaged me andthey're like, "You know, do you have agood Cloud Code tutorial?" I'm like,"You don't understand." And you canliterally have your first prompt be likeI have no idea what you are or what Ican do or what to do. Like I have youknow, I don't know anything. I knownothing about code, but I have thisidea. Can you just talk to me about likewhat does it look like to collaboratewith Claude to bring an idea to life andit will get you there. It will get youthere. You might have to pay some airmessages in and some random screenshots,but the amount of times even that I liketake a screenshot of a terminal, pasteit in there and just say, "Now what?" Ifanything, what I'm what I'm trying toget at>> the onboarding for Claude Code is openin Claude Code.>> Like>> open it and start talking to it andstart just basically interacting andhaving a conversation with it back andforth.>> I'm I'm working on a on a demo right nowfor something that I'm not even I'vegotten past this point now where I'm noteven trying to be like hyper specific. Ican sometimes, if you're in the rightmindset with the tool or in in the flowI'm in right now, I'm talking to it morelike how I would speak to an engineer.Like I don't like how this feels rightnow. Can we work on on a differentapproach? And then it'll give me a listof like what why don't you like Do youwant to make it snappier or do you wantto make it more bouncy or do you notlike the way that it animates in? Often

00:41:23times I'll also ask it ask me clarifyingquestions if you're unsure of my promptcuz I'll ramble or send a voice note inin in into the tool and then I'll haveit spit back basically my idea to mewith clarifying question. That reallyhelps. Not to plug in like other toolshere, but agentation for the listeners,fantastic tool that you can>> Yeah, it's a big deal.>> reach tell it to run it. It's point andshoot and that is like for UI designit's very good at like fine-tuning andreally helping you work out the thedetails. I used to just screenshotthings and then highlight, "Hey, thisbutton needs to be over here or thisfont needs to be smaller." Agentation isa is a fantastic tool that thatbasically helps you solve that.>> A new type of value that the Twitterfeed is providing to me now is justpeople learning something and then Ijust can grab the tweet and put it intoClaude and be like, "Hey, look intothis. Like, is there something that Ishould be tweaking or is there somethingthat I should be learning or something Ishould be contributing to like amarkdown file?" Like, you don't evenhave to dig all the way into thedetails. Like, the amount of times Ijust feed Claude tweets like, "Is thisIs this relevant? Is this relevant?Should we steal something here?" AndI've tweaked so many things about theway that I work just from pasting intweets.>> Again, it shows to someone like youwho's been using the models

00:42:38thecapabilities of these models. I think Ibrought this up earlier to you, but wevibe coded this really small tool overthe holidays toJ telling me just to createum a sequence of images back-to-back andthey would just cycle through. It's likean end-of-yearrecap that we wanted to post. And we gotit running and it worked really well. Wewere able to post our asset. And then afew weeks later, I needed it forsomething else again, but the tool thatwe had at the time was down.So, I just screenshotted the wholetweet,threw it into Opus, and just had itrebuild it for me from scratch again.And now it was my version of that tool.It worked perfectly. It one-shotted it,and I could just use it. So, it also Ithink just says a little bit about thatwhole paradigm of throwaway software andcontextual software versus large-techsoftware, which we're experiencing rightnow.And we're just entering a world whereyou'll be able to build tools for yourspecific workflow.>> Which is a new creativity in itself, youknow? Like, so much of the creativitythat we're talking about is in theoutput, but what I'm finding is so manycreative opportunities in what my designprocess could look like for this givenchallenge. Cuz it's like, you can go inso many different directions. Maybe Ibuild a tool. Maybe I try a totally

00:43:54different way of feeding context to themodels. Like, it's like a set ofproblems to solve before I even get towork on the actual design challenge thatis proven to be quite life-giving forme.>> We were measured as creatives by ourability to understand the tools. Thebetter you were at understandingAfter Effects or Origami or any of thesetools, for better or worse,ranked you higher or lower between yourpeers and in an organization versus Iguess the idea behind why you were usingthe tool, right? And I feel like rightnow we're entering this world where thedesign process for everyone is becomingway more contextual.versus before, everybody has to open upthe tool in the same way because thetool is just built in the specific wayand the architecture and hierarchy ofhow the tool is created is always in thesame way. I use four things in Figmaevery every time I open Figma. I don'tneed half of the complexity that thattool brings. So, a more lightweightversion of that tool would be probablybetter for me to use, right? If thatdoesn't exist, you have to understandand work your way through the complexityof today's tooling and then use them ina specific way to get to the output thatyou want. And I feel like what we'reseeing right now is people creatingtheir own workflows. That alone is

00:45:09ascreative as you can get. Building a setof tools and stringing them together ina way you want it you want them strungtogether to get to your output is aninsanely cool to see and it's likeopening up all these new possibilitiesand doors, which I think people get toonegative about tools in general about AIand I think a lot of people are veryskeptical and worried about all of thisstuff.I'm an avid optimist. I try to see mostthings from like like through a lens ofof positivity and like these tools areallowing me to do so much more than thatI that I just couldn't do before and areaccelerating the pace at which I'mallowed to like execute and and justsometimes also just metabolize my ownideas. Like I don't have to go tosomebody else to ask them to work onthis project with me. I can get to aprototype that I can then show to agroup of people way faster by myself.And that then might be inspiring enoughfor those people to get on board.>> A lot of what you're saying makes methink that the limiting factor ishonestly just ideas. Like if we're ableto crank through that much more outputlike you're talking about, maybe one ofthe main things that separates the trulygreat designers inside of an org is canyou actually just be this well of ideas?Like can you have something new to showup with on a regular basis at thesestand-ups or at Creed or whatever yourtouch points

00:46:24are.>> I just have so many things that I alwayswant to try or that I'm thinking aboutor that I see especially when I'm onTwitter or just consuming information orreading books or articles or seeing allthe tools that that people are creating.That whole quote steal like an artistlike I learned graphic design by copyinggraphic design. Like that was the mainthing we had to do and that I tried todo. And I think by the way for listenerswho are maybe also a little bit youngerin their career, the best thing you cando when you see something that youreally like that's really beautiful istry to recreate it. Like>> Yeah.>> take this screen, put it in Figma,rebuild it. Try to find the right fonts,try to find the right assets from themif you can if you have to, but rebuildthat screen that you that you looked atto understand, you know, the complexityand and what goes into it. And the samething I think right now for me goestowards these these these tools thatpeople are posting. Like there are somany cool things that people are doingwith open cloth box, right? Like everytime I open up any social media profile,I'm like, "Okay, there are nine newideas that I now have that I want tofeed to my bot." Or there are four newthings that this thing animates and thatI want to try out now. Orthe way this person is putting somethingtogether is like and now you have a nowyou have agentshundreds of agents working for you thatcan do all these things and I feel likeyeah, I I don't know. Toby always saysit in the like AI turns some people intolike

00:47:39a 100X and other people stay atthat level. I feel like that's justthat's just what it is. Like I think AIis enabling people with agency andpeople who want to ideate and who wantto move and who want to iterate to moveway way way faster. And and I think it'sa it's a testament and and a test to allof us to see how fast we can understandall of these new models that are comingout and just using them to our advantagestrategically to our advantage like butthe goal shouldn't be to buy put for thesense of by coding it should be to getto a point where now you need a tool toget to the next stage. I feel like I'mlike 22 again and and like when I firstgot into web design and interactivedesign.>> It's same.>> I feel obviously lucky and we broughtthis up before as well where it's likewe are designers and engineers and forpeople who are listening to your to yourpodcast, product managers and leaders,we are expected to be at the cuttingedge of all of these new tools. That'sour industry and that's what we're doingand that's what we're working on andhaving exposure and having people aroundyou and an environment that allows youto create and mess with these tools andlearn is I mean it's awesome and it'slike really cool to be especiallyShopify like we really enable people andand and invoke that kind of freedom butalso responsibility to like these thingsexist. You you can use them you can useas

00:48:55many tokens as you want. At Shopifyjust crank out as many as many ideas asas you need to to get to the results andthat's like something that we all likereally really obsessed about and alreadyexcited about. I've seen so many peopleat the company who are so so so good atdesign and engineering start to learnhow to use these tools that's made themso much faster. And there's so many moreideas. These aren't ideas that you wouldnecessarily post on X or that willactually go into the code base the waythey were vibe coded but everybody'stalking about them and they create somuch more momentum within our teams andand it's just yeah it's it's a superexciting time to to be around all all ofthese.>> And it's not just faster too, right?Like it just allows people to raise thebar. Like it'sit's kind of a funny example now talkingto you but literally I'm going to hangup this call and the thing that I'mgoing to do next is I'm going to make aprototype and it is directly inspiredfrom someone on your team. I don'tremember his name, but it's the web appfor shop. There's this like panelinteraction that I love. Like you likeclick on a category and it like adds asecond layer and almost blurs thebackground behind it. And I had it savedand I was like, "Oh man, that gives mean idea for something that I'm workingon. I have no idea

00:50:10how to make it. Ihave no idea."So much so that I wouldn't even attemptto mock it up statically in Figma yearsago because I actually don't reallyunderstand>> I wouldn't have thought that it waspossible.Till I saw it.>> And I'm like, I'm just going to see.Like I'm just going to try and see if Ican make this happen and I I have noidea if it'll work or not, but it's soclearly raising the ceiling of what Iconsider the possibility set ofdeliverables as a designer. Like Iwouldn't even have touched something inthat tier and now I'm like, yeah, I Imean to an extent I feel like I can doanything.I just need to try, you know?>> What a wild time to be able to to to dostuff like that. Um this is what I callThis wasn't possible before.>> And you can get like a little win underyour belt and after you get a few ofthem, you're like, okay, what if I did alittle bit more? And what if I did alittle bit more? And I just keep pullingback the slingshot a bit further eachtime before I just launch it and seewhat I can make. And you know, thethings that I'm working on now are in adifferent stratosphere than what I wasworking on last month. So I think itreally does come down to just, man, justtry. Just get some reps. Like if you'relistening to this and you haven't put insome reps, like just try to makesomething because it really actually iseasier than it seems until you

00:51:25get inthere and you're like, oh my gosh, Ican't believe I just worked.>> It's like anything in life. It's likelearning an instrument, right? Like youjust have to use it. Like you have touse the tools and understand them.>> All right, well, we've covered a lot ofground, Marvin. Before I let you go,I want to tie this back to somethingthat Carl Rivera was talking aboutbecause we had him on the podcast, thechief Design Officer, a few months ago.And he basically was liketalking about why he acquired Molly andpointing at, yeah, one, this injectionof of energy and kind of, you know,shaking things up. It was also tied tothis goal of design differentiation andhow important that is moving forward.So, I'm kind of curious for yourperspective. Like, when you look intothe future and dream about what designdifferentiation looks like for Shopifyand how this can be a competitiveadvantage in the long run, I'm curiouswhat types of things come to mind foryou.>> I think the design differentiation to memeansone, we are as a company able to iterateat the speed of conversation and at thespeed of technology moving, which issomething that's that's very that's veryimportant to Shopify. I think designdifferentiation means that in thefuture,

00:52:41we're looking at more of amalleable interface that morphs andshapes itself around contextual needs ofthe merchants, more so than at maybe onespecific like our direction or adminuplift for lack of a better term. And Ithink design differentiation also meansjust like reallyhoning in on honing in on the details. Ifeel like we're very good like Artifactis a good example of something that isvibe coded and put together by a team ofpeople who wanted to solve a problem,but the branding behind it, theanimations behind it, the logo behindit, and all of these little microinteractions that we added to the toolto make it feel like something really,really, really beautiful that you wantto interact with is what gives it souland what gives it meaning and what givesit excitement. And I think you have tomarry those two worlds together to getto that outcome.>> Well, maybe you just laid the foundationfor a future malleable software atShopify episode that I'm already lookingforward to. And Marvin, thanks forcoming on, man. This has been really,really fun. Big fan of everything thatyou're doing and I appreciate yousharing a little bit about your journeyand the types of things that you'reworking on today.>> Appreciate you. Thank you so much.Brett, thank you. This was great.>> Before I let you go, I want to take just1 minute to run you through my favoriteproducts because I'm constantly

00:53:57askedwhat's in my stack. Framer is how Ibuild websites. Jenway is how I doresearch. Granola is how I take notesduring crit. Jitter is how I animate mydesigns. Lovable is how I build my ideasin code. Mobbin is how I find designinspiration. Paper is how I design likea creative and Raycast is my shortcutevery step of the way. Now, I've handselected these companies so that I cando these episodes full-time. So, by farthe number one way to support the showis to check them out. You can find thefull list at dive.club/partners.