Why Intent Matters More Than Ever for AI and Product Design
"Good design doesn't happen by accident." The Headway design team digs into design systems, the real gap between what clients want and what they need, and how AI is reshaping their process.
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Transcript
[00:00:00] Melissa Gallagher: A good design doesn't happen by accident. It's very much. A series of decisions that have to come together that are thoughtfully considered and discussed, that intentionality behind it in terms of craft, constantly deciding to continue to learn new technology, learn new ways of working in order to to keep your craft up.
[00:00:23] Billy Sweetman: Welcome to Intent and Craft. Product Design podcast where we dig into design systems, how we use AI in the design process, and what it really takes to scale design for software. For more than a decade, the Headway team has been helping startups and enterprise teams design and build better products. We wanna share what we've learned along the way with you.
[00:00:43] Billy Sweetman: In each episode, we break down the intent behind the decisions we make, and then the craft behind the actual execution. In this first episode, the Headway Design Team talks about what the name, intent, and craft actually means to us as individuals. What business leaders constantly get wrong when it comes to investing in design.
[00:01:00] Billy Sweetman: And the gap between what clients think they need and what they actually need when they bring us in. We also get into where AI is saving us real time in our design process right now, where the tools still fall kind of short, and what we're most excited about as the line between design and development continues to blur.
[00:01:16] Billy Sweetman: Now, let's get into it.
[00:01:17] Jacob Miller: What's the, the origin story of Intent and Craft to what's kind of the meaning behind the name? Why did we choose the words Intent and Craft, and what does it say about the design work that you do? That we do at Headway? And the future of design. So Billy, what's your answer to that?
[00:01:34] Billy Sweetman: Yeah, I think the name really stems from the two different parts that makes up design, right? The intent of all the decisions that we have to make, what we're trying to achieve, what we're trying to help our customers or their customers understand, and the work that they might be trying to accomplish. And then the craft behind actually.
[00:01:59] Billy Sweetman: Getting those tasks done, what does it look like? What does it feel like? How does that all come to ha together in like a cohesive product? And I think it, it's more important now than it probably has been with, you know, sort of the advent of all the, um, AI tools and things that are out there. So really as, as that kind of enables us to move faster and do things.
[00:02:26] Billy Sweetman: Quicker. The intent is more important now than it ever has been. And then the craft side of it is more important as well, because we're gonna get a lot of just good enough stuff here that really needs that finer touch and that refinement. So that really a great origin story. But kind of like what that name signifies is, is that comprehensive design lens on everything that we do.
[00:02:50] Jacob Miller: Yeah, and okay. I'll like touch on the origin story a little bit. This show has been an idea for like five years or more maybe, I think maybe six years. And so now we're finally bringing it to life to kinda like give a focus to design and the conversations around design. And allowing our team to kinda share what we're experiencing internally, what we're experiencing with clients, and to share that with everybody and hopefully invite other folks in the industry to, to have conversations with us about the things that they're seeing too.
[00:03:17] Jacob Miller: So, Bree, what do you, what thoughts do you have around the name or what, what Intent and Craft means to you?
[00:03:22] Breanna Shappy: Yeah. I think when we think about intent, it's are we thinking about the right things and how are we thinking about those things? There's a lot that goes into making even a small decision on a feature for a product, and that could be something like, what are we gonna do for this?
[00:03:39] Breanna Shappy: Micro interaction. We were looking at some examples for a carton checkout experience the other day, and it was a very small piece of a larger experience flow, but there was a lot of conversation. We spent probably an hour talking about the minute decisions within that flow. We looked at several different examples that was the intent behind what the decisions were and what each of those options.
[00:04:03] Breanna Shappy: Meant, and they were all slightly different. They were all good options. It's not like we had any bad options. It was just that there were a lot of different avenues that we could take with that specific part of the experience. And then the craft portion of that is does it feel good to the user? Does it feel good to the business?
[00:04:24] Breanna Shappy: And I think balancing those two things is important. And I think a lot of that too is like, just because it works doesn't mean it's good. So there's like this piece of craftsmanship and like, I think, I don't know, every time I think of craft, I go back to like the trades. So like woodworking or like automotive and things like that.
[00:04:45] Breanna Shappy: There's like a hands-on craft and I think that's definitely true of design as well. Even though you're pixel pushing on computer.
[00:04:51] Jacob Miller: Yeah. How do you balance, like the taste that you have for understanding like what's good right? Good for the product, good for the user, good for the business. And then like what the external team that you're working with and their perspectives, like, how do you kind of balance that?
[00:05:05] Jacob Miller: How do you communicate that together?
[00:05:08] Breanna Shappy: Yeah, so I think some of it is very just tactical, like timelines, budget, of course. Mm-hmm. And being able to know that we're going to have confidence executing on something within a set time and budget, I think is really important. Sometimes we'll look at an option and it'll be the best option, but then when we compare that to Will, how much time is that gonna take to build.
[00:05:30] Breanna Shappy: It may not be the best option anymore. So I think there's pieces like that where sometimes we have to put something like that into, well, this is a reach goal. Let's put that in the backlog. We know we like this. If we have some more time, it's more budget later on, maybe we could circle back. And then I think some of it too is just past experience and like industry trends, some things.
[00:05:51] Breanna Shappy: May feel outdated just because of the tech that something has or the way it looks. So being aware of what's modern, and then there's also this piece of uniqueness that I think is important, and making sure that the decisions you're making not only feel. Unique in terms of the product and the ecosystem that you're working with, but they're also enjoyable and functional to use.
[00:06:16] Jacob Miller: Sam, how about you? What? What does Intent and Craft mean to you? And everyone on the team here has worked with smaller startups, launching a new product to market, maybe just the founder and maybe one other person, you know with them, but also you've been working with like enterprise teams too. Maybe talk about that a little bit, like how you've kind of.
[00:06:33] Jacob Miller: Your experience of intent to craft in a very small team or just a founder versus, Hey, I gotta deal with a ton of stakeholders and figure out like how to balance all this stuff.
[00:06:45] Sam Pecard: Yeah, for sure. I think when you're on a smaller team, it's, it's, uh, maybe like you're closer to, um. Uh, you like your immediate stakeholders and, and I think it might be easier to, to look at like, what, what business outcome or, or behavior are we trying to, to impact or influence?
[00:07:05] Sam Pecard: I think that can be maybe a little more challenging in the enterprise level, just like, because there's so many layers, but, and the, it's easy to just maybe get caught, you know, tunnel vision a little bit. I, so I think it's, yeah, it's just really important to be able, like pause, peel back the layers and make sure we're actually.
[00:07:21] Sam Pecard: Addressing like a specific behavior or like I said, like a business outcome that we want to influence. So that kind of like encompassing the intent piece of the name and then, yeah, I guess as far as like craft more of like how we do it, you know, how our, like how we make something and, and just looking at the systems that we put in place to help support, like the intent that we're, we're trying to, uh, reach for.
[00:07:47] Jacob Miller: Yeah. Melissa, how about you? I kind of have the same question because I, I've seen you do a lot different projects and your expertise within UX audits as well. I'm just curious what, if you have anything else to add?
[00:07:58] Melissa Gallagher: Yeah, I think it's keeping in mind that good design doesn't happen by accident. It's very much a series of decisions that have to come together that are thoughtfully considered and discussed, and that's what makes.
[00:08:14] Melissa Gallagher: Something good, that intentionality behind it. And then as well as in terms of craft, constantly deciding to continue to learn new technology, learn new ways of working in order to, to keep your craft up.
[00:08:30] Jacob Miller: Melissa, I'll stick with you for this. This next question actually, what's one thing that like business leaders consistently under invest in when it comes to design?
[00:08:38] Jacob Miller: And they're like, what are kind of the costs of that? Because they dismiss it or don't feel like it's important or make excuses or whatever that may be.
[00:08:46] Melissa Gallagher: Yeah. There are a couple things I think of when you ask that. One is they underinvest their own time and energy that they have to put into making whatever it is that they're looking to accomplish.
[00:09:01] Melissa Gallagher: You know, we spend a lot of time with our stakeholders understanding their problem, their vision. We're not going to go away and six months later come out with a piece of design and call it good. So I think they underinvest in their own commitment to the projects as well as like putting together a process.
[00:09:21] Melissa Gallagher: Kinda like I mentioned, it's a lot of decisions that have to come together and a lot of documentation that has to come together and oftentimes. In smaller kind of founder-led engagements, it's only one person. They have it all in their head, and now you have to download that into my head. And then if you're hoping to scale, we have to make sure other people understand it, so they don't really think about that commitment of having to document processes.
[00:09:49] Melissa Gallagher: And then in larger enterprise level engagements, there might be one or two historians who have been there for a very long time and they are the kind of keepers of all this information. Or it, it's kind of universally understood and then coming in as a newer person, understanding acronyms or understanding any of that stuff.
[00:10:09] Melissa Gallagher: So as you might've noticed, nothing that I mentioned is the actual design work. That part comes a lot quicker and a lot faster. When you understand where you're going, you have documented processes and you have that access to, to your stakeholders or key decision makers.
[00:10:26] Jacob Miller: Yeah. I love that historian like kind of title you put to people.
[00:10:29] Jacob Miller: 'cause that, I feel like that's so true. Like my dad's like one of those people, he doesn't work on software, but that he's that guy where he works like he, he's like the Bible, like he knows all the
[00:10:39] Billy Sweetman: stuff. Like
[00:10:40] he's
[00:10:40] Melissa Gallagher: the, and they're busy user manual
[00:10:42] Jacob Miller: basically. Yeah.
[00:10:43] Melissa Gallagher: Yeah. They're hard to get ahold of, so.
[00:10:45] Melissa Gallagher: Mm-hmm. It's really tough.
[00:10:47] Billy Sweetman: I think one thing that I was thinking as Melissa was, was talking is we work with a lot of early stage startups and enterprise customers, and I think each of them under invest in processes and things that, you know, like early stage startup doesn't spend enough time understanding why enterprise is successful in stealing those bits for early stage startup and then enterprise doesn't understand.
[00:11:13] Billy Sweetman: Or under invests in sort of the fluidity and speed at what an early stage startup can do with their limited resources and under invest is understanding that. I think an example I see a lot with early stage customers is they look, sometimes they'll look at design as a means to an end. And not as a foundational system for their entire existence really going forward.
[00:11:39] Billy Sweetman: And that can really lead them down some interesting rabbit holes or constant redesigns. And it ends up costing them a lot more money in the end than if they would've thought that way, just from the get go and kind of built those, those foundations. And then on the flip side, enterprise customers, you know, sometimes they're so.
[00:11:58] Billy Sweetman: Ingrained into their system, they're almost risk adverse to trying interesting things or trying to push those boundaries, which doesn't allow them to evolve and, and really lean into their design teams and allow their design teams to kind of expand the way they express themselves, either in software and marketing and things like that.
[00:12:19] Billy Sweetman: So it's just an observation that I've had a lot is just they're not spending enough time studying each other and pulling the bits and pieces that really matter.
[00:12:28] Breanna Shappy: Just riffing a bit off of what Billy was saying. I think design is one of those disciplines that is very silent in how it presents itself if you're not in the design field.
[00:12:39] Breanna Shappy: And I think that means if you're not thinking about the design, it usually means it's done well. And I mean, you could think of anything like the design of anything. I studied package design when I was in college, and I didn't realize how much actually goes into designing a label or designing a box. And.
[00:12:58] Breanna Shappy: Like you just go to the grocery store and you pick something up off the shelf and then put it in your cart and go on your way. But somebody put a ton of effort into making that. And I think that's the same with product design. And because of that, I think business leaders can overlook just design as a discipline and lean more into engineering as a discipline, just because that's like the inner workings and the functionality that's gonna get the thing to market.
[00:13:22] Breanna Shappy: But. If you don't have a good front end user experience and all the backend works, that's not really gonna make people wanna use your product.
[00:13:31] Jacob Miller: Yeah. It's funny you were, when you were talking about labels, this is a common problem that I think I have is like if I get something and it's been in the fridge.
[00:13:39] Jacob Miller: And I, it's not easy to identify the expiration date. I forget that I should probably eat this sooner than later. I'm like, I'm gonna have this instead today. And then I'm like, ah, I should have had that yesterday, or whatever. It's like things like that, it's just like sometimes it's impossible to find the expiration date.
[00:13:53] Jacob Miller: It's not on the bottom. Where is it? Oh, it was on the little plastic rim that I removed when I opened it. Oh. Yep. And now, I don't know. I think we can move on to this next question. When a founder or a product leader first brings you in. What's usually the gap between what they think they need for their project and then what they actually need?
[00:14:13] Billy Sweetman: I can jump in. I got this one. We see a lot is, a lot of times we'll get brought in and, and folks will think of design as, oh, they're going to, they're gonna put the interface, the interface together. Um, and then we usually come in with. All right. We got a lot of questions like, who is this for? What are they doing?
[00:14:29] Billy Sweetman: And then we kind of get into like the data side a little bit so we can understand what needs to be represented, where, how does this transform throughout the process? What's important in these different roles? And, and we spend a lot of time working in this like foundational app mapping process with a lot of our customers and sometimes.
[00:14:49] Billy Sweetman: You know, a lot of our early stage startups and even some of the enterprise customers, they have this like eureka moment when we go through with that because they don't always understand even how their products currently work or how those things are connected. And that helps us drive a lot of insights and really understand what's in what's important right off the bat.
[00:15:11] Billy Sweetman: And sometimes it feels unnatural for folks that a designer's coming in and doing that. Especially on the, on the data side, a lot of times we'll do like flow diagrams, but really understanding like. Where does this come from, especially enterprise customers? 'cause data sources come from all over the place.
[00:15:26] Billy Sweetman: It's not just one single feed that pulls in and we need to understand how that stuff functions. So a lot of times we'll do that before we do any sort of interface thing. And a lot of times those artifacts become really valuable throughout the organization in a way for other teams and other disciplines to come back and look through that stuff.
[00:15:45] Billy Sweetman: And a lot of people don't. They don't assume they need that or even know that's an option of something that can be created for them.
[00:15:54] Jacob Miller: Yeah, that's interesting. I never really thought about it that way, where a lot of the, the assets that are created are like just actually valuable to everyone in the organization and not just the team that you're working with.
[00:16:05] Jacob Miller: I even think about that stuff at Headway internally. Like, Hey, we, we did this thing over here and we, we share it between either designers that are on different projects or designers to developers or just. You know, whether it's like anyone on the leadership team, like, oh, that's really interesting, like the fact that they found like the insights of like, oh, they found it really valuable.
[00:16:23] Jacob Miller: Or they're, they're sharing it internally with their, their team or whatever that looks like. It's one of those things where you, you underestimate like the value of the things you create day to day and just think like, oh, this is only for me. Mm-hmm. Until you actually show it to some of it's like, oh, that's really cool.
[00:16:38] Jacob Miller: Did you know this? No, I did not. And it's like all of a sudden. There's like all these, like, like you said, the eureka moments or light bulb moments. I'd imagine too, like with, especially with like software, because like turnover on teams can be kind of high at certain companies. The people, the team that built the product may not be the same team that's either.
[00:16:57] Jacob Miller: Improving the product or building a new version of it. And so they're probably, like you said, like they don't understand how it all works. They like, Hey, it all, it works today, but I don't know why it works. Right. They never actually mapped out everything. Or maybe the, the previous agency that built it for them never gave them an app map.
[00:17:14] Jacob Miller: They just like maybe assembled it but never shared some of those assets like you're talking about that they kind of went away for six months and came back and here you go, kind of thing. Yeah. It's just, that's really interesting. Does anybody else have any thoughts on that?
[00:17:27] Breanna Shappy: I think what's interesting when we chat with clients, I would say more so on the startup side, but we've seen this with enterprise as well.
[00:17:34] Breanna Shappy: Folks will come in with what they think is a very clear idea about what they want and what they need and their audience for that. And then, we'll, we'll run this exercise called simulated shopping, and it's a research exercise where we actually take their idea and we start showing it to strangers. And what we experience during that is very interesting because there's always these moments where people are, are telling me.
[00:17:57] Breanna Shappy: Vastly different things than what the founder or the executive came in and told us they want the product to do or what they think the product is. And we show these clips of the interviews to clients and they're like, what do you mean they didn't get my idea? What do you mean made of like my feature?
[00:18:17] Breanna Shappy: And so I think in that case it's always very interesting for folks to, to get that feedback. And with us being. Like an unbiased person. Like we're not the ideation space of the founder or the executive coming in to work with us. Um, we're just like, Hey, you know, you can come in and and chat with us and just be honest.
[00:18:38] Breanna Shappy: And we always, we tell people like, be yourself and just let us know what you think of this. We get a lot of very candid answers and people will flat up tell us that like, things are not a good idea. I would never use this. And then we'll ask them, well, what would you use instead? And what they come out with is always very interesting.
[00:18:55] Breanna Shappy: And when we take that back to the client, it's interesting for them. They have a, a eureka moment to use Billy's language, but then it also helps shape the end product. Of what getting that product out to the user actually needs and what they actually want and how they want that packaged. And that's gonna be a lot more successful than just getting whatever you think the user needs.
[00:19:20] Breanna Shappy: Like you really have to go out and talk to the audience and make sure that you're talking to the right audience and you're actually bringing 'em something they're really gonna you.
[00:19:29] Jacob Miller: Where do you think AI creates a risk in design, in the design process that business leaders aren't thinking about?
[00:19:35] Melissa Gallagher: For me, I think kind of like to what Breanna was talking about doing that simulated shopping and getting kind of honest feedback, the risk is not getting that pushback of not having those guardrails or someone there to say, maybe this isn't the direction you should go in.
[00:19:57] Melissa Gallagher: I feel like a lot of times with that technology, it's more about, yes, let's get you to the solution. I've had all your documentation. Let's get it out quickly. But there's not that step of, is this the right problem that you're solving? Is this the right audience? Like that is the one component that I don't think is built in just yet.
[00:20:19] Melissa Gallagher: You have to kind of search for it.
[00:20:22] Jacob Miller: Yeah, because I've even seen where they do like these kind of like AI avatars where they'll, they'll test it with like, kind of, I don't even know how it really would work or how it works, because I've seen it where it'll put like interfaces or ideas in front of these avatars and then they would give like, like fake feedback essentially.
[00:20:41] Jacob Miller: But they're supposed to act like that type of user or that type of customer or whatever. But it, it is, it is interesting 'cause it's like, oh, they could be, have positive feedback. Or the negative feedback could just be an assumption based on the model, and it's not like what a real person in the real world would actually say because human experience is unique.
[00:21:01] Jacob Miller: Obviously things change in real time all the time. It's hard to also, any related experiences that are outside of the knowledge base of that model can't be put into that. It's a very, very unique thing and mm-hmm kind of the human in the loop part is like super essential when it comes to that.
[00:21:19] Sam Pecard: Yeah, like you have to, you have to have a reason for every decision that you make.
[00:21:23] Sam Pecard: And so with ai, like with like what were saying, a lot of that can just be automated and it's great 'cause you get there faster, but then, then you're not necessarily like there along the way to help even understand why you're making these decisions. So it's, it is, yeah. Like you're saying, making, making assumptions that can definitely have an impact with your product down the line.
[00:21:44] Billy Sweetman: Yeah, I think like. There's sort of like your product is your reputation, right? So like. We wanna have some sort of guardrails on like what gets released out to customers and also do they know that this might be a beta feature or something that we're testing, like we can get things out to people quicker.
[00:22:03] Billy Sweetman: And doing that in your main product, I think we've all kind of seen sort of the reaction, whether it be on Twitter or Reddit as things get launched and people are like, what is this? No one asked for, why do I have this here? And you know, did they actually get a signal that says that should be something they push forward or not?
[00:22:21] Billy Sweetman: So I think that's, that's something that's kind of risky to, to do. But on the flip side of that, we are empowered now to build like really authentic MVPs and prototypes a lot faster, that feel more realistic than the standard click through of a couple of screens. So I'm really excited that we'll be able to test and get feedback from folks on something that.
[00:22:45] Billy Sweetman: Looks a lot and feels a lot more realistic, so that's kind of exciting. The other risky thing that I've seen is, and we've been a part of a couple of, you know, like AI process weeks or, or deep dive sessions, and we've done our own internally, um, is if you don't. Really put some guard rail guardrails around it.
[00:23:10] Billy Sweetman: It kind of just will do whatever it wants to do. And you know, you always see the like, oh, Claude code wrote this whole UI from me, but it's like it's not built with a foundation. And then all of a sudden it suddenly drifts off to the side a little bit and it's doing interesting things. And you're like, well, I actually, no, I, my input.
[00:23:28] Billy Sweetman: Focus state should maintain this color. Why did you change it? And things like that. And so that's something that we've been really diving into is how do we help build those guardrails through like design systems and process so that you can get something that feels more realistic and follows your, your process and guidelines.
[00:23:47] Jacob Miller: Today's episode is brought to you by Headway. Do you need to design and build a world class user experience for your software, but feeling like you just can't get there on your own? That's where Headway comes in. We're the folks who help ambitious startups and enterprise teams bring their product ideas to life through design, development and product strategy.
[00:24:06] Jacob Miller: We don't just give you user interface designs and leave you to figure out the rest. We work with you and your target customers to create beautiful user experiences, build scalable design systems, and provide Silicon Valley level talent to get it done right the first time. Whether you're launching a new software or just looking to add features, we've got your back.
[00:24:27] Jacob Miller: We've worked with startups in industries like logistics, healthcare, FinTech, and EdTech, helping them solve their biggest software challenges. And here's the thing, no matter how complex your product is, we can help you gain clarity and get the job done together. We're so confident that we'll be the right fit, that we offer a 50% money back guarantee.
[00:24:50] Jacob Miller: If you don't think we're working out within the first 45 days ready to see how we can help you and your team. Just head over to headway.io and book a
[00:24:58] Billy Sweetman: free consultation today.
[00:25:02] Jacob Miller: I think the next one would be where do we feel like AI will be the most helpful first when it comes to design or maybe sharing things that you've been using it for lately that have been like super helpful?
[00:25:12] Breanna Shappy: Yeah, I think a big push that we've had on the team. Is using it for prototyping in particular. I know Billy just kind of alluded to that a little bit in his previous answer, but we did a spike on a few different tools back in the fall and tried to run different examples of designs we had made or remaking designs for, popular features for websites and seeing if we could make an an adequate prototype and.
[00:25:46] Breanna Shappy: One thing that I think the Figma traditional prototyping method has is it's just, it's very tedious. You gotta drag all the, like the little noodles around the screen and like, it's very time consuming and I think it's also limited. You can't do things like animations very easily there. There's a lot of like Wizard of Oz type hand waving that happens to make something look like.
[00:26:13] Breanna Shappy: Kinda real, but even still you have to kind of talk through, well, you know, it's gonna do this. And I think when presenting ideas to clients, having it be as real looking as possible, I think is quite helpful in getting decision makers to. Get on board with an idea or make a decision. So we've seen that being able to pro prototype with tools like Figma Make and cursor and cloud code have been really impactful, not only in the sense of speed and and tedious.
[00:26:44] Breanna Shappy: It is certainly faster, but I think that output that we get from that is a lot closer to what it would look like in a production environment. And that also empowers us to have. Better conversations with our developers so that, again, if we're in that space of using a clunky prototype that isn't really doing all the things like how I describe something and how a developer might interpret that there's gonna be a gap.
[00:27:08] Breanna Shappy: Whereas if I can show them an animation on a. Clean prototype that I've made with ai, it's pretty clear. And then we're just talking about like timing and, and some smaller adjustments rather than like, let me go Google this animation for the kit you're using and we don't really like this level of spin we want it to, and you just get like so in the weeds that it wastes time.
[00:27:30] Breanna Shappy: So I think that's definitely one big unlock that our team has found. I've
[00:27:34] Billy Sweetman: used it for two, two projects and, and I think the idea for just like expressing ideas so you can hand those off to developers or trying things out is, is really valuable. So we've had this conversation about building a custom plugin, uh, that allows designers to basically go through their entire file and apply and apply the gap values from the variable system within inside of Figma that they might have manually typed in.
[00:28:02] Billy Sweetman: It's a tedious process in Figma. You gotta click a button, go to the variable, click a button, go to the variable. It's a lot. So sometimes people just type it in and I was able to like mock up a proof of concept with um, Claude and Cursor and get something up and running myself to prove that that could exist.
[00:28:19] Billy Sweetman: And then be like, Hey Dev, can you make this a reality, uh, on something that, you know, make it so it's actually scalable and makes sense. But I was able to like build that out and prove it out and. That's kind of a cool process for testing out an idea really quickly. Otherwise I gotta go to a developer, ask them, Hey, do you think this is possible?
[00:28:40] Billy Sweetman: They gotta do the research. They go, yeah, I think you can do it. And then I have to wait for them to make it and kind of sit around or I have to learn how to write code and do all this other stuff. But I was able to like, I know brute force my way through it with Claude and Cursor doing it for me with enough guidance and, and so that was kind of a cool.
[00:28:59] Billy Sweetman: Process to getting a custom plugin built that we needed.
[00:29:03] Jacob Miller: What do you hope either comes out or gets figured out within the design process in regards to using things like cloud code or any AI tools in general and like what parts of the process you feel like are a big opportunity to be improved with some kind of automation versus, uh, the way that you're doing it today, like in Figma or something like that?
[00:29:22] Melissa Gallagher: Yeah, I think there's a lot of opportunity there. Between the developer and designer handoff, getting an understanding of what ultimately we want at the end of the day, and also getting buy-in from stakeholders. It's hard for them to see the vision until it's like finally developed and out in the world, but being able to get buy-in by showing them something more polished than just a couple of wire frames, that's super valuable.
[00:29:56] Jacob Miller: Yeah, I, it's funny 'cause I see there's folks at, at some certain teams, at certain organizations that are, where they're lighting, the designers push things to like production. How do you guys feel about that kind of stuff? Have you done it at all? I'm just kind of curious.
[00:30:11] Billy Sweetman: I have not pushed anything to production for any of our clients yet.
[00:30:17] Billy Sweetman: I've done enough damage myself. I would say that I feel, I feel, uh, less about the need to push to production and more about like, let me work. Like sometimes we don't always have to go back to Figma to build everything out. If we have like a, a proven pattern in like just let us build in the actual interface and then maybe have someone else.
[00:30:43] Billy Sweetman: Prove it and double check it and push it. I think the thing that Figma just announced with, I believe it was Claude Code, or even what Paper is trying to do, where you're actually building in the live interface, is very exciting. 'cause that makes designers less of translators. You know, like we gotta build something and then someone needs to translate it.
[00:31:04] Billy Sweetman: We actually can just be there. We can test it on all our different browsers and test it mobile and, and see those real assets and design in that space. I mean, we still need the infinite canvas that Figma provides, but it would be nice to be able to have a tighter loop that we can then have some responsibility and some control who, and really not waste a developers time to.
[00:31:27] Billy Sweetman: Like Breanna was saying earlier, mess around with animations when like, let us get in there and do that and craft that and then submit it as an actual code element that they don't have to translate later on.
[00:31:39] Jacob Miller: Yeah. You mentioned paper. Are there, what tools seem really, really interesting to you right now that either you've just seen people sharing things online or been to the website, uh, or seen things on YouTube or maybe have been experimenting with that seem really helpful or interesting or promising.
[00:31:58] Billy Sweetman: Yeah, paper dev is interesting. I've been following their roadmap. They're gonna start, at least they currently have planned out. From what I saw, is to be a little bit more, being able to design in the real coded elements similar to this thing that Figma just announced with cursor or cloud code. Those are real interesting.
[00:32:15] Billy Sweetman: And then for. I'm trying to think of the other one. It was shared in our internal design channel, but it was a similar tool where the design canvas is the literal code coded elements that you're working with in manipulating and changing, which that seems really exciting. It seemed a little limited. You know, you still want the infinite canvas that Figma provides, at least I do for that exploration and being able to try stuff out and sort of that freedom.
[00:32:41] Billy Sweetman: But then being able to refine it as an actual component that could then be shipped off is really interesting to me.
[00:32:48] Jacob Miller: Yeah. 'cause it seems like with Figma, the collaboration's a really effective, where people can go into the canvas together, they can leave comments, they can talk, they can chat. But then like with these coding tools, it's like.
[00:33:01] Jacob Miller: This is like your own, you're like in your own little project. It's not like other PE un, unless I'm unaware it's not that other people can jump in and like collaborate in the same way and well, I
[00:33:14] Billy Sweetman: think
[00:33:14] Jacob Miller: show examples on the side, like, hey, well what if it was like this? Like it's hard. It's hard to, it's like, well, no, I gotta do my own cloud code thing over here.
[00:33:21] Jacob Miller: And then we just kind of compare them side by side or whatever.
[00:33:23] Billy Sweetman: Yeah,
[00:33:24] Jacob Miller: right. Like the process, that kind of process hasn't really been figured out.
[00:33:27] Billy Sweetman: No, and I think it's still two different, it's two different like experiences. I think like in Figma with the open canvas. A lot of that is creative exploration, like, and I still think that's the main intent of Figma is like, I'm, I'm trying to figure things out.
[00:33:43] Billy Sweetman: I need a, I need. Everything to be unlocked. I'm not gonna engage with auto layout yet. I'm just trying to see what does this look like? What does it feel like? How could these things be built together? And then once those decisions have been made and you're feeling comfortable, now you get into this more rigidity that you're trying to establish because now you're trying to ship to a dev to build these components out.
[00:34:05] Billy Sweetman: And so you're using variables. You're using styles and you're building out different states for things, but then you kind of hand it off to Dev to translate that into the, the real element, like we're still building a simulated element and then they're building the real element, and I think the refinement to building the real element that.
[00:34:26] Billy Sweetman: Closing is gonna be really nice. 'cause then we can help out with that and we can help drive that instead of essentially building the same thing two times. 'cause that's what we're doing now, or three times or four times, depending on how many platforms we're working on.
[00:34:39] Jacob Miller: Yeah. Is there 'cause of the, like the app mapping process we do, is there, because currently a way to.
[00:34:46] Jacob Miller: Kinda like connect the dots there, like where, hey, mock up something with this app map data. Have you done something like that before? We've attempted to, it has not been great. Not been great. What did you try? I'm just kind of curious, maybe share your experience with that. Like, Hey, this sounds good. Like, oh, I'll put it here and it'll, I'll put this great first version, this great MVP to maybe share your experience.
[00:35:09] Billy Sweetman: Yeah, so we've. Take in sort of some of our app map information and I mean, this was a rough proof of concept, so put some parameters on it. Rough proof of concept. We didn't go too deep on it. But we did it two different ways. We were one, Hey, we have this brief, this is the information we have. Here are some documents.
[00:35:27] Billy Sweetman: Create an app map for us. Uh, and we, it gave us kind of a high level app map or a flow diagram, but it missed a lot of the nuance. And the way that we are working and it, I wanna look into like lucid charts and see if there's a more, something that I can craft more prompts to get it to what I want it to be.
[00:35:48] Billy Sweetman: The, when we were doing CLA two Figma, it was a one and done it. Shout out the app map and they were done. And you have to kind re-prompt it and do that. Sure. Taking the app map item and having it spit out a screen. When we did that in Figma, make it, I mean. It was okay. It still created a bunch of gaps for various things.
[00:36:11] Billy Sweetman: It's a lot better when you can give it the app map information and then like a mockup.
[00:36:16] Jacob Miller: Oh, okay.
[00:36:16] Billy Sweetman: Like some of the explorations that you had done, Breanna, where we actually gave it the mockup and then it was a lot more informed about what it should be. That worked a lot better. But it's still like you spend a lot of time prompting afterwards to, to really craft, to get it into the spot that you need it to be.
[00:36:35] Jacob Miller: Yeah, it's like wrestling it into where you want it to go and you could have just made it yourself.
[00:36:42] Breanna Shappy: Well, yeah. I think like the way I thought about using AI and like prompting it is you have to, having had experience leading teams and giving direction, you have to give it direction as you would give a team member direction, and you have to be very specific.
[00:36:58] Breanna Shappy: If there's things that need to happen, so you can't leave out details because in the sense of like working with a person, they're just gonna fill those in. And what you have in your head and what the person you're working with or the agent you're working with has, is not gonna be necessarily the same.
[00:37:17] Breanna Shappy: So being very specific about what you want in that prompt is gonna be helpful. But then also I think to Billy's point, the tools aren't quite there yet. And so what ends up happening is even if you're that specific, your output still has to be edited. And then it's sort of in the case of like if you're working with an intern with no industry experience at all, and they just don't what they're doing.
[00:37:42] Breanna Shappy: So I think there's like this space of the AI has to improve and the more you use it. I think you get better at prompting, but there's still just like this gap in the tools like it, it can't do certain things yet. That doesn't mean that it won't be able to in the future. And I think that's exciting too.
[00:37:59] Breanna Shappy: 'cause I think as designers, creativity is important and most of us wanna hang out in the creative space and not in like this tedious. Like data heavy or like number crunchy space that sometimes you have to do in order to build features and make sure things are correct. So the more opportunity we have to be in that like free flowing open.
[00:38:24] Breanna Shappy: Canvas and Figma like I think the happier folks are. So allowing AI to do some of those tasks and help us get there quicker, I think will allow for hopefully more creativity, which I think will help solve for some of the like AI sameness that we're seeing now where it's like a lot of the stuff that is being output from AI in that creative space is very like same.
[00:38:49] Breanna Shappy: Same. And. Having uniqueness in your product and your brand is gonna help you stand out. So you don't want everything to look the same because then there's no differentiator.
[00:39:02] Billy Sweetman: Just to follow up on what Breanna said, I think, yeah, the ability, there's like all these micro opportunities for automation that we can leverage AI for.
[00:39:12] Billy Sweetman: That's really exciting. Like we always joke, oh, okay, you've designed out what this brand and what this look should be. Now you have to go in and make the hover state for all of these and then the tags and all this other stuff. And like getting a first draft of all of that automated and crossed the line is a very exciting prospect.
[00:39:33] Billy Sweetman: And then, you know, being able to hone that afterwards, 'cause a lot of that stuff isn't a lot of fun. It's not terribly exciting to do. It's a lot of manually translating things. So the less we have to manually translate stuff, I think that'll be, that is gonna be more, uh. Where we can then be more expressive and try different things and be a little bit more interesting with our buttons and inputs and, and brand decisions.
[00:39:58] Billy Sweetman: Because we don't have to worry about like, oh, is this gonna fit in the box that we have? Because, well, the tools will help us. Get it in there.
[00:40:05] Jacob Miller: Yeah, it's almost like the details are really where the impact's made. 'cause it's like under getting just more answers to questions that you don't have answers to or, you know, I think the one thing that John talked about on even Keeled podcast about the development side in code is that, you know, in the past as a human coding, like sometimes you, you.
[00:40:25] Jacob Miller: He called it like human slop, where like, hey, sometimes you just make errors as you're typing things out or mm-hmm. Copying and pasting things in from different sources and stuff like that, or bugs just start to happen. You don't have the capacity within either the timeline or the budget to like go in and clean up everything before launch or within maintenance and all that kind of stuff.
[00:40:45] Jacob Miller: And with this, it's like you can focus on all those details that really matter and help polish a product because now more than ever. You know, the expectations are higher for version one and for all the improvements and the speed of the experience, the how fluid things are. Like Brandish said earlier, like good design, you don't actually.
[00:41:06] Jacob Miller: Think about the design when it's that great, like you're just, oh, this is serving me well. I'm enjoying what I'm getting from this thing. You're not really thinking about the design, where sometimes people are like, I don't like how that looks like. Or you're just like, this is really ugly, or this is confusing, and you get frustrated and all of a sudden you're thinking about how it's designed.
[00:41:23] Jacob Miller: Like, I wish this was here instead. And so. The more time you can focus on those things, getting the human feedback, simulated shopping, whatever that may be, I think that's great. So like you said, the less time on the foundational stuff or the repetitive stuff, the better. And I don't know, like if it's a matter of like Figma fixing those things, or just plugins from the open source community or mm-hmm.
[00:41:49] Jacob Miller: Just new compliment products that do that thing in parallel with Figma or other tools and stuff. The future will be. Kind of unraveled as we go. It's like how design will work it. It's from a marketing perspective. And then even just talking with the development team, like the way that they're, that we do our work compared to a year ago is, it's just fascinating.
[00:42:09] Jacob Miller: Like how much I'm using like Claude and Claude code to do things. Mm-hmm. Like it's just fascinating. Like I, a year ago I never thought I could do the things I'm doing today, and so it's hard to imagine like what design work will look like. But I think going back to like the origin of, and the name of the show is that.
[00:42:26] Jacob Miller: As long as you have the intent behind what you're doing and understand your craft really well, like those tools will just help you do your job better. But as long as you're, you're, you're following like the basic principles that actually matter.
[00:42:39] Billy Sweetman: Yeah. I think one too, one thing too is like a lot of times we're looking at this to solve and automate things that we've done, but also using it to.
[00:42:50] Billy Sweetman: Ask more questions of yourself when you're doing different design work. That's something that I've recently been doing a little bit more of is, is using Claude as sort of like, Hey. If I was going, if you were gonna go do this, what are some questions that you would ask me, uh, to give you the correct answer for this?
[00:43:09] Billy Sweetman: And then using that as a prompt for me then to think through, oh, okay, well maybe I should add this, or maybe I should consider this, or maybe I should do something like this. And that's been really useful as like. Kind of a sounding board almost instead of, or just to expand your thinking a little bit.
[00:43:25] Billy Sweetman: 'cause sometimes we get trapped into our repeatable patterns that we've done and it's always good to kind of push ourselves a little bit.
[00:43:32] Jacob Miller: Yeah. Well, as we wrap things up, I do wanna talk about kind of like what's next for the show. This is episode one, but what people can expect in future episodes. I probably won't always be here to do things to ask the questions, so I may pop in from time to time depending on the context of the episode.
[00:43:49] Jacob Miller: But, uh, I know that we'll be inviting other folks from other companies and, and other experts to join us on the show from time to time. But, you know, Billy, would you maybe like to share some of the topics that we've been thinking about and. What we'll probably cover in the coming months.
[00:44:05] Billy Sweetman: Yeah. We wanna talk a lot about the process.
[00:44:09] Billy Sweetman: Really just the process of, of design at all the different scales that we en we've engaged with here at Headway. So everything from early stage startup design to running teams, design ops at larger enterprise and, and what is, what does the actual work look like? A lot of times, you know. We get a lot of fancy demos and we see like case studies and things like that, and really a lot.
[00:44:33] Billy Sweetman: We want to find a space for us to dive in deeper, uh, to, to what does the process look like because it's different everywhere. There's like set rhythms and, and rituals that teams can do, but like it does look a little bit different everywhere and really just kinda uncover that nuance. That it, that is on every project.
[00:44:52] Billy Sweetman: 'cause every project's different, every product's different. Every team's a little bit different. So really having conversations around that.
[00:44:59] Jacob Miller: Yeah, and I think it also, to get really specific to be, it'd be great to have either Dan or Tim or both of them to talk about design systems from a development perspective, talking about CPS and things like that.
[00:45:10] Jacob Miller: Just, and again, we mentioned earlier like the handoff process, like going from design to development, what's been working, what's not working, and kind of what the future of design systems even looks like too.
[00:45:21] Billy Sweetman: Thanks for watching Intent and Craft. Wanna support the show, subscribe and try notifications. You never miss an episode.
[00:45:27] Billy Sweetman: You can also share it with your team or leave a rating and review to help other designers and product leaders find us. We'll see you next time.