Dive Club 🤿22 Aug 2024

Maheen Sohail - Navigating ambiguity in AI design

This week’s episode is with Maheen Sohail who is a senior staff designer working on generative at Meta. She joined as one of the earliest designers on both the VR and AI teams, so a big part of this discussion is about navigating ambiguity when there’s no clear playbook to follow.

We go deep into:

New types of interface patterns for AI
The unique ways she thinks about prototyping
Ethical considerations when designing AI produdcts
How Maheen explores AI models through side projects
Why the goal posts for what it means to be a designer are shifting
a lot more

⭐ KEY TAKEAWAYS

Nobody knows what they’re doing

This is especially true when you’re designing products for emerging technologies like AI. It’s easy to look at people working on these AI-native products and assume they have it all figured out… but we’re all still learning and exploring what’s possible. This came up in George Kedenburg’s episode too.

Curiosity > everything

I asked Maheen what traits are more important than curiosity for people interested in designing AI products. Her answer? Nothing.

The importance of passion projects

There’s a trend I’m noticing in these interviews… the designers who are creating cutting edge use cases for AI are the ones actively exploring the technology with side projects. Reading essays isn’t the way to learn. You have to want something to exist in the world and use that as a reason to figure out what’s possible. For Maheen it was using AI models to colorize images of Pakistan. For Nate Parrott it was using AI to hallucinate in HTML.

Maheen references Alex Cornell’s storytelling abilities
Maheen’s demo for animating drawings (it’s very fun)
We referenced Colin Dunn’s episode about the importance of naming in AI products
Maheen’s colorized photos of Pakistan
Maheen’s FakeID podcast
Meta’s AI release
Maheen raved about the Rosebud journalling app

Denne episoden er hentet fra en åpen RSS-feed og er ikke publisert av Podme. Den kan derfor inneholde annonser.

Episoder(213)

Nate Parrott - How a Side Project Became Claude Design

Did you know Claude Design started off as a side project from one person?That's what this week's episode with Nate Parrott is all about. He shares the origin story along with a ton of examples of how ...

4 Aug 52min

Charlie Deets - Designing the internet computer

Charlie Deets (https://x.com/charliedeets) has designed Safari, Arc, and now Dia…Needless to say he knows a thing or two about designing browsers 😅So in this week’s episode Charlie shares the princip...

29 Jul 54min

Pablo Stanley - Protecting your creativity in an AI world

Pablo Stanley (https://www.pablostanley.com/) has built as many creative tools as anyone in our industry.So in this episode he gives us a behind-the-scenes of his latest creations (including how he pr...

21 Jul 51min

Jason Yuan - Designing 99 "No"s for a single "Yes"

Jason Yuan (https://x.com/jasonyuan) has one of the most fascinating minds in design so naturally I like to keep tabs on what he is creating 😎This episode is a deep dive into Jason Yuan’s creative pr...

15 Jul 57min

Meaghan Choi - Designing Claude Code (and what's coming next)

It kinda feels like how design operates at Anthropic is consistently 3-6 months ahead of the rest of the industry.As a result, Meaghan Choi (https://x.com/meaghaneschoi) (Design Lead for Claude Code) ...

8 Jul 53min

Meng To - Codex superpowers for designers

Meng To (https://x.com/MengTo?lang=en) is one of the people I keep tabs on to see how he's evolving his workflow as he builds his ideas with AI.So I sat down with him to get a look into what his proce...

30 Jun 35min

Loredana Crisan - Figma's big bets for the future of AI design

This week we are going behind the scenes of Config 2026 with Loredana Crisan (Figma’s Chief Design Officer) https://www.linkedin.com/in/loredanacrisan/We talk about Figma’s vision for AI, why design i...

24 Jun 50min

Brett Williams - How a Visual Designer Became a Builder

What does it look like when a designer with zero technical background commits to shipping something real?That’s what this week’s episode with Brett Williams is all about.He gives us a behind-the-scene...

16 Jun 50min