Colin Dunn - What it takes to design a breakthrough AI product

Today's episode is with Hannah Hearth who recently became the Head of Product Design at Vercel. We talk about all of the changes that are happening in our industry and what it all means for designers. Everything from how AI tools are changing the practice of design to how this impact the way we think about our career paths.Some highlights:Hannah’s #1 trait for great designersThe most underrated storytelling tacticDoing more with less while not burning outExamples of how AI is changing the design processHow design orgs should think about adopting AI toolsHow much coding is happening on the Vercel design teamPreserving craft and design thinking with collapsed timelinesa lot more

9 Helmi 51min

Get 10% off Karl's Become a Design Engineer course: https://join.dive.club/karlToday’s episode is with Karl Koch (https://x.com/_kejk?lang=en) and it’s filled with practical tips for new design engineers looking to push past what AI gives you out of the box.We go deep into:- Adopting the design engineering mindset- What the job market looks like for design engineers- The difference between frontend and design engineers- Specific language to create better interaction design- The details Karl is sweating in his role at Duck Duck Go- + a lot moreGet 10% off Karl's Become a Design Engineer course: https://join.dive.club/karl

4 Helmi 45min

This episode is a deep dive into Rive—the engine powering experiences like Spotify Wrapped, next-gen car dashboards, and so much more.After hearing Luigi and Guido Rosso’s vision for the future of interactive software, I’m convinced it will be a big deal for designers 👀

2 Helmi 43min

One of the biggest parts of my design practice is knowing which tool to reach for when coding with AI.There are a lot of options and they’re changing every week 😅So in this episode, I break down:1. The mental model I use to think about different types of AI coding workflows2. How that model guides which tools I actually reach for day to day3. The new AI coding product I’m completely hooked on right now- Tools listed: - Lovable (https://lovable.dev/) - Figma Make (https://www.figma.com/make/) - Dessn (https://www.dessn.ai/) - Conductor (https://www.conductor.build/) - Warp (https://www.warp.dev/) - Inflight (https://www.inflight.co)

28 Tammi 19min

Sometimes you open up a website and it's so good that you're left wondering... how the heck did they pull that off?In this episode the designer of the original Amie website, Xavier Jack (https://x.com/KMkota0), is going to give us a little tutorial of what it looks like to bring web experiences to life with 3D.Some highlights:- How he prototyped the viral Amie website- How he made the Amie interactive balloons from scratch- How he uses mental models to understand 3D design tools- Amie.so (http://amie.so/)- Desktop.fm (https://desktop.fm/)- Three.tools (https://three.tools/)- Shopify Winter 2026 https://shopify.com/editions/winter2026- Wiggle bones https://wiggle.three.tools/docs/manual/getting-started- Blender (3D modeling software)- Three.js (JavaScript 3D library)

26 Tammi 45min

Last month the head of design at Lovable, Nad Chishtie, walked us through the portfolio of one of their recent design hires, Matt Sellers.So today's episode is a behind-the-scenes of what it actually takes to create a portfolio that gets you hired at one of today's top startups.He shares some really tactical mental models that I think everyone can benefit from.Some highlights:Why Matt removed 80%+ of his workWhat made Matt's micro copy so effectiveHow Matt built his micro animations in FramerThe finer details of Matt’s portfolio and micro-interactionsHow Matt changed his portfolio strategy and why it workedWhat it takes to make your portfolio an experience rather than a cataloga lot moreNad Chishtie’s episode

21 Tammi 33min

There's been a heck of a debate around the future of coding and design tools lately... but what's actually happening inside of today's top teams?Where is all this headed and how does the future of our tools shape the role of a designer?Today's episode is with Stephen Haney (https://x.com/sdothaney) who is the founder of the new design tool Paper.And for the last few months he's studied how design teams actually use AI in their everyday roles... everything from tooling to prototyping to process.He walks us through some of his key findings and how that's shaping his product strategy for Paper 👇Some highlights:- The “designer playground” approach- How AI adoption looks at startups vs. big companies- Why designers at big companies aren’t PRing to production- AI usage being mandated in performance reviews for designers- The new localhost sharing problem and how teams are solving it- Why local development is winning over cloud tools for design teams- Why companies use of AI tools doesn’t match what you see on Twitter- + a lot moreBasecamp’s “Shape Up” project management philosophy (https://basecamp.com/shapeup)

19 Tammi 48min

Gab and Nim are the co-founders of a startup called Dessn which allows designers to prototype in the context of their production codebase (without any of the setup).So I asked them to hook it up to the Inflight repo and give me a little demo to see what’s possible.I’m pretty sold 👀

14 Tammi 34min