Lenny's Podcast 速读：OpenAI 设计负责人 Ian Silber——AI 时代，为什么现在是成为设计师的最佳时机

这是一场围绕「设计师在 AI 时代到底要变成什么」展开的观点访谈。Lenny Rachitsky 先从一项科技从业者情绪调查里的反差问起：工程师普遍觉得 AI 放大了自己的能力，设计师和用户研究员却更焦虑、更疲惫。Ian Silber 给出的答案不是让设计师立刻改行或学会所有工具，而是把设计看成一组仍然需要人来承担的判断：理解用户、发明新的交互、决定什么值得做，以及在技术快速变化时选择该快跑还是该慢做。本期节目适合想判断设计、产品和 AI 工作边界的人，也适合正在被工具更新速度压住的人。

本期由 Lenny Rachitsky 主持，嘉宾 Ian Silber 是 OpenAI 的产品设计负责人；节目页面介绍，他此前在 Instagram 工作八年，也曾参与 Instagram 创始人创办的新闻应用 Artifact。节目于 2026 年 8 月 16 日发布，时长约 1 小时 12 分钟。1

Lenny 把调查里的现象说得很具体：设计师和用户研究员在「不知所措、焦虑、担心、疲惫、乐观程度」等维度上都处于最差位置，也最不愿意把这个职业推荐给刚进入职场的人。节目没有把这组判断包装成一条完整的行业统计结论；它是 Lenny 对自己调查结果的概括，Ian 也先承认，自己看到的设计社区并不只有悲观情绪。2

Ian 认为，工程师已经先经历了岗位变化：coding agent 把「提出任务—得到代码」这类反馈较快的工作压缩得很厉害；设计却仍然要经过试错、用户反馈、内部对齐和判断。设计师可以更快地产生 100 个方案，却仍然要知道为什么丢掉其中 99 个，也要承受大公司的对齐成本。于是问题变成了：公司究竟还期待设计师交付一套传统流程，还是期待他们负责更大范围的问题定义和方向判断？定义悬空，焦虑就会增加。2

这也是 Ian 在 OpenAI 采取的缓冲方式：公司把自己当作研究实验室，招聘时不要求设计师已经有 AI 背景，却看重他们是否好奇、愿意探索。对他的团队来说，降低压力的办法不是发布一份「设计师必须掌握的工具清单」，而是让资深和初级设计师都能试坏点子、快速丢弃，再把更多时间用于创造和判断。2

Ian 反复强调的差别，不是设计师不会用 AI，而是两种工作的反馈结构不同。让 coding agent 写一个函数，结果往往较快就能判断：代码能不能运行、测试能不能通过。产品设计则更像一个开放的反馈回路：你以为想法很好，做出来可能很糟；改一版后，还要交给用户或同事，看他们是否真的理解、是否真的需要。

AI 把「产生方案」这一步压缩了，却没有替人完成「哪一个方案值得留下」的判断。大公司还会加入另一层成本：多个团队、研究、产品、工程和管理者要对问题和方向达成一致。因此，Ian 对设计师的判断不是「AI 没有改变设计」，而是 AI 改变了产出速度，设计的反馈、对齐和取舍仍然存在。这个区别很重要：如果只用产出数量衡量，设计师会显得落后；如果把工作看成从问题到结果的完整回路，变化就没有那么简单。2

Ian 的建议很朴素：把 AI 放进工作的每一步，而不是等自己先想出一套完美的新流程。一个想法出现时，可以直接丢给 Codex、Claude 或其他 agent，让它帮忙思考、做原型，看看这种工作方式会带来什么。它不必一次就成为标准流程；先试，才会知道哪里有用。

他用自己的经历说明「适应性」为什么比一张工具清单更重要：他休陪产假期间试过 coding agent，当时工具会不断卡住；一个月后 Codex 发布，同一个方向突然变得可用。对设计师来说，这意味着昨天失败的尝试未必值得永久放弃，今天也不必把某个工具当成最终答案。AI 变化太快，最可靠的能力是保持好奇，知道自己仍在早期阶段，并且不断重新试验。2

「现在没人应该觉得自己落后」是这段对话里最值得保留的一句话。Ian 不是说经验已经没有价值，而是说设计流程还没有稳定到足以形成一套新旧分明的等级制度。今天刚开始探索的人，和已经工作多年的设计师一样，都要面对工具、能力和交互方式的快速变化；差别在于谁愿意把这种不确定性变成实际尝试。2

Ian 回忆自己十几岁学设计时，需要查看网页源代码、使用 Dreamweaver 一类工具，才能理解一个页面是怎样被构建出来的。现在，一个人可以在几分钟内把想法变成可运行的版本。这个变化让设计的表达门槛下降，也让更多人能够参与「提出问题—做出东西—观察反馈」的循环。1

但他所谓的「黄金期」并不是因为视觉制作会变得更值钱，而是因为当任何人都能快速做出东西时，产品之间更难靠功能清单拉开差距。Ian 把设计师仍然要负责的三件事说得很清楚：真正理解用户，发明新的东西，形成自己的观点。产品是否让人愉悦、是否真的解决了某个未满足的需求，最后仍然要有人作判断。

他举的例子也说明了这种判断为什么不能从历史模板里直接复制出来：iPhone 把多点触控变成新的交互范式，Instagram 抓住了人人拥有手机这一条件，Snapchat 则用当时显得奇怪的交互方式改变了人们的交流。AI 产品同样在面对没有成熟先例的问题：人应该怎样用声音和智能体交流？一个 agent 代替人完成任务时，用户要怎样表达意图、检查结果、决定是否信任它？这些问题需要新的产品判断，而不是把现有网站的外观再生成一遍。2

Ian 对问题的回答很直接：AI 已经是一个「incredible product designer」。他随即把这句话拆开：AI 还未必是最好的视觉设计师、信息层级设计师、排版师，也未必最擅长用户体验和交互设计；但它已经能帮助任何人产生、组合和试验产品想法。

因此，AI 设计能力的上限不能只看它能否生成一个看起来漂亮的界面。Ian 认为，人类仍然有三种关键优势：看人们如何使用产品并理解他们真正需要什么；发明过去没有先例的新东西；以及对产品形成明确的个人观点——「我在为谁构建？为什么构建？」随着生成内容越来越多，用户对真实理解和独特取舍的感知，反而可能更重要。2

Lenny 用风险投资家、网景（Netscape）联合创始人 Marc Andreessen 提到的蜘蛛侠表情包形容产品组织：产品经理、工程师和设计师都担心别的角色会消失，觉得最后留下的是自己。Ian 的答案比较克制：三种角色的能力边界确实会变模糊，个人可以做更多相邻工作；但在规模较大的公司，仍然需要有人负责问题定义、团队协调、产品质量、系统可靠性等不同「帽子」。

这带来一个有用的区分。创业公司需要的是能在职责之间流动的通才；大公司则很难让一个人同时负责设计、工程、全公司对齐、资源配置和产品运营。岗位不会因为工具变强就自动消失，岗位之间的协作方式才会改变。设计师可以更接近产品和工程，工程师也可以更偏向设计，但明确的责任仍然帮助团队把复杂项目做完。2

Ian 给团队的一个反直觉建议是「just do less」。如果已有系统或组件能解决问题，就别重新设计；如果功能本身没有必要，就别把它做出来；如果只是扩展旧功能，就别为它另起一套体验。速度越快，设计师越需要跳出当前页面和当前项目，观察整个系统里是否已经有可以复用的东西。

这就是他所说的 systems thinking：不只关注一个页面或一次交互，而是理解底层 primitives 如何组合成更上层的能力。Ian 提到 Notion 早期把产品做成可组合的积木，认为 AI 产品也要避免大量彼此孤立的一次性体验。对 ChatGPT 这样的产品来说，系统思维还包括让模型理解这些能力怎样被组合，让用户最终得到一个简单、连贯的体验。2

这也解释了为什么设计工作不能被「快」统一解决。ChatGPT 的 composer 等功能可能每天都在变，需要快速试验；而「让 ChatGPT 深度进入个人生活」这类超级应用级问题，关系到长期的信息架构和用户习惯，值得在白板、Figma、原型和内部试用上花更长时间。Ian 的判断标准是：先问这部分技术和需求是否已经稳定，再决定是四小时内发布，还是先把一百个方案中的九十九个丢掉。2

Ian 把 ChatGPT 形容为一个跨度极大的产品：有人用它想今晚吃什么、规划发型；有人用它自动化日本的农场。大多数人只使用模型真正能力的一小部分，这种「capability overhang」不是一定的坏事，却要求设计团队同时照顾新手和重度用户。

他的办法是两层结构：默认体验保持简单，让大多数人无需理解模式和开关；前沿能力先给真正关心的人试用，等它们成熟后再沉淀进主体验。桌面应用、Codex 和 ChatGPT Work 都可以成为实验场，但最终面向数十亿人的能力必须变得自然，不能要求普通用户自己选择正确的模型、速度或工作模式。2

这就是「blank-box problem」：一个空白输入框看似灵活，实际上把表达意图的负担交给了用户。Ian 说，团队正在尝试让系统通过追问帮助用户澄清意图，也在把纯文字聊天变成可操作的区块，例如 Writing Blocks 允许用户直接编辑、改写和复制一封邮件或一段文字。图像生成、数据分析和不同职业场景，也可能需要不同的界面能力。

更长远的方向是一个更主动、更有上下文的产品：它可以读取日历、Slack 等外部信息，理解用户正在做什么；它可以通过语音接收更丰富的输入，也可以从回答问题走向代替用户完成任务。Ian 想象的「超级应用」不是把所有功能都堆在首页，而是让一个统一入口知道什么时候应该快速回答、什么时候应该聊天、什么时候应该出去执行工作；持久的工作流则让用户不必每一次都从头开始。2

Ian 描述的是一支互补的团队，而不是一群能力完全相同的全能设计师。团队里需要通才，也需要视觉设计、品牌表达、原型、战略产品思考和前沿探索等不同强项。对他来说，最重要的能力包括：对 AI 的好奇心、快速学习和试用工具的意愿、原型能力、对未来的判断，以及系统思维。

这组标准有一个清晰的前提：候选人不需要已经有 AI 背景，因为 AI 变化太快，过去的经验很快会过时；但候选人需要愿意理解工具怎样工作、怎样把工具放进自己的流程，也要能思考如何创造让更多人使用 AI 的工具。设计师的竞争力不在于背出某一代产品的最佳实践，而在于能否把新能力转成别人真正愿意用的东西。2

在「失败角」里，Ian 说自己在 OpenAI 经常觉得每天都在失败：他要边做边学怎样组建设计团队、怎样招聘、怎样管理快速增长的组织。他在 Instagram 做过 IGTV，结果是一次「huge flop」；后来团队推出 Reels，发现早期方案里带着错误假设和不该保留的约束，于是快速改变、重做，最后得到更成功的产品。2

这个故事和他对 AI 的态度是一致的：不要沉迷于一次发布的成败，也不要把「看起来很自信」误认为已经掌握了工具。Lenny 提到「AI confidence theater」，Ian 则赞成保持谦逊，承认每个新模型都可能改变昨天的判断。对设计师来说，比较可靠的做法是把 AI 当作加速试验的工具，同时把注意力放回结果：人们是否喜欢这个产品，它是否解决了真实问题，下一轮反馈要怎样改变它？

Ian 最后的乐观不是「AI 会替设计师解决一切」，而是「优秀设计的空间会更大」。当产品生成变得便宜，理解人、发明新交互、选择哪些东西值得留下，才会成为更稀缺的工作。1

以下保留公开视频转录中的英文原文、口语重复和 [music]、[laughter] 等声音标记；中文紧跟在对应英文段落之后。公开视频原始转录没有为每一句提供稳定的说话人姓名，少数段落还包含主持人与嘉宾的连续问答，因此对这些段落保留「主持人 / 嘉宾」的混合标记，不把不确定的句子强行归给某一人。时间轴按约每 10 分钟标注一次。2

I've been doing this sentiment survey of the tech workforce. Surprisingly, designers are just the most unhappy on every dimension.

中文：我一直在做一项科技从业者情绪调查。出人意料的是，设计师在每一个维度上都最不开心。

We're unclear right now what is expected of a designer. Someone who might be classically [music] trained in a certain way of working now feeling like, "Oh my gosh, I need to really change everything."

中文：我们现在还不清楚对设计师的期待到底是什么。一个接受过传统训练、习惯按某种方式工作的人，可能会觉得：「天哪，我得把一切都改掉。」

You believe this the best time in history to be a designer.

中文：你真的认为，现在是历史上成为设计师的最佳时机吗？

We're all extremely early in this process. There's just a huge opportunity for designers. Nobody should feel behind right now. I think that if you literally started today, you're going to have a leg up on pretty much most people. There's just so much opportunity [music] to change the way you work to make great things.

中文：我们都还处在这个过程的最初阶段。设计师有巨大的机会。现在没人应该觉得自己落后了；如果你今天才开始，我觉得你反而会领先绝大多数人。改变工作方式、做出好东西的空间太大了。

If you look at engineering, it's just a completely new job versus a few years ago. I'm curious how that translates to product design.

中文：如果看工程师这个职业，它和几年前已经完全不同了。我想知道，这种变化会怎样落到产品设计上。

Engineers have 10 or sometimes like 100x their productivity, but our design team hasn't because the design process still takes time. It's still sometimes you have to try a bunch of things and throw them out. Still [music] very messy and fluid. We had a podcast with head of design cloud code Jenny when she talked about [music] there's been this traditional design process prototype mock test research iterate and now there's just no time for that.

中文：工程师的生产力提高了 10 倍，有时甚至 100 倍；但设计团队没有，因为设计过程依然需要时间。你有时还是得试一堆方案，再把它们丢掉。设计依然很混乱、很流动。我们之前采访过 Claude Code 的设计负责人 Jenny Wen，她说过去有一套传统设计流程：做原型、出视觉稿、测试、用户研究、迭代；现在已经没有时间完整走完这套流程了。

There's certain features for chatbt where we really obsess and we really spend a lot of time we try 100 things we throw out 99 we finally ship one and other things we really embrace building in public we take big swings and then we learn quickly. Do

中文：ChatGPT 有些功能，我们会反复打磨，投入很多时间：试 100 个方案，丢掉 99 个，最后发布 1 个。另一些功能，我们会拥抱公开构建，大胆迈步，然后快速学习。你觉得 AI 将来会成为非常优秀的产品设计师吗？我认为它已经是一个非常出色的产品设计师了。

you think AI will ever be an extremely good product designer? I think it already is an incredible product designer.

中文：我认为它已经是一个非常出色的产品设计师了。

Today my guest is Ian Silber, head of product design at OpenAI. Ian's been in this role for three years now, which is a lifetime in AI time. Prior to OpenAI, he was at Artifact, the news app from the founders of Instagram that I absolutely loved. Before that, he spent 8 years at Instagram. The role of design is in such an interesting place right now and Ian has such a unique and insightful and fascinating take on the future of product design and what the AI tools that we use everyday will look like in the future. A huge thank you to Cleo and Joel Loenstein for suggesting topics for this conversation. Before we get into it, don't forget to check out lennisproass.com for a year free of the hottest and most beautifully crafted AI products in the world available exclusively to Lenny's newsletter subscribers. With that, I bring you Ian Silbert. Ian, thank you so much for being here.

中文：今天的嘉宾是 OpenAI 产品设计负责人 Ian Silber。他在这个岗位上已经三年了——以 AI 的速度来说，这几乎是一辈子。在加入 OpenAI 之前，他在 Instagram 创始人创办的新闻应用 Artifact 工作；再之前，他在 Instagram 工作了八年。现在设计的角色正处于一个很有意思的位置，Ian 对产品设计的未来，以及我们每天使用的 AI 工具将变成什么样，有独特、深刻而且很有吸引力的看法。感谢 Suleo 和 Joel Lowenstein 为这场对话建议话题。节目开始前，别忘了去 Lenny'sProductPass.com，Lenny's Newsletter 订阅者可以免费获得一年精选 AI 产品使用权。下面请听 Ian Silber。

I'm so excited to be here. Thanks for having me.

中文：我很高兴来这里。谢谢你的邀请。

I'm even more excited. Something that I'm very excited to get your take on. I don't know if you've watched me doing this, but I've been doing this uh sentiment survey of the tech workforce over the past couple years. I think it's the biggest survey of its kind where we basically survey people in tech about how they're feeling about their careers, their work, their roles, especially with the rise of AI this last year. And kind of surprisingly, designers and user researchers are just the most unhappy on every dimension, like every actual dimension. They're the most overwhelmed, the most anxious, the most the least optimistic, the most worried, uh the most tired, also the least likely to recommend their role to people entering the workforce. I'm curious if you're seeing this yourself in the design community, and if you are, what do you think is going on?

中文：我更兴奋了。有件事我很想听听你的看法。我不知道你有没有看过我做这件事，但过去几年我一直在做科技从业者情绪调查。我觉得这是同类调查中规模最大的一项，主要了解科技从业者怎样看待自己的职业、工作和岗位，尤其是过去一年 AI 兴起之后的变化。很出人意料的是，设计师和用户研究员在几乎每个维度上都最不开心：他们最不知所措、最焦虑、最不乐观、最担心、最疲惫，也最不愿意向刚进入职场的人推荐自己的职业。我想知道，你在设计社区里也看到这种情况吗？你觉得问题出在哪里？

Uh, first of all, it's an incredible survey, and it's such great, I think, information to have as an industry. Um, and I think it's something we need to unpack, you know, and I see I I see a mix uh for sure. I think like I can speak most to design. Um, and I mean I talk to a lot of designers that are very optimistic and very excited. Um, and so I see in my world I see luckily I I'm or I I I see a lot of that. But I can totally understand why people might be feeling very uncertain, right? Because there's so much discussion about, well, is the role changing? Should my expectations be different? Um, and you know, well, do I need to do I need to do X, Y, and Z? Do I need to be shipping code every day? And you know someone who might be uh sort of classically trained in a certain way of working now feeling like oh my gosh I need to like really change everything and I think it's to me right now it feels like the the uncertainty of of that I can totally understand right because as an engineer I think people have they've already sort of gone through that shift like we see that engineers are working totally different and we also you know one thing I do hear and I this came up a lot in my own team when when we did we do similar surveys internally One of the big things that came up was you know we see that uh uh you know engineers have 10 or sometimes like 100x their productivity uh but our design team hasn't right because the design process still takes time. It's still sometimes you have to try a bunch of things and throw them out right versus maybe working with a coding agent you ask it to do something it's pretty binary now at this point it usually sort of gets it pretty well. Um, and but the design process is really still very messy and fluid and you think you have a great idea and you try it and it sucks and then you try it again and it sucks and then you you give it to you know users or internal you get internal feedback and it's wrong and you still have to go through that arduous and kind of messy but really fun process. Um, and that hasn't really comp that it's compressed in that you can get much more ideas out fast, but you still need that that whole sort of feedback loop. There's the alignment of getting many people uh, you know, especially in a bigger company like that still has a lot of overhead. So the point is that I think that it's we're unclear right now like what is expected of a designer and that lack of clarity I can see totally lead to you know um some some fears uh or some unease I guess. But on the other hand I've seen that I mean our designers what's been what's great I think about at OpenAI is like we're such an experimental company. We are driven by you know research and we treat our company as a research lab and we totally embrace that and that's a new thing that I really kind of learned and and have really come to love about OpenAI is that started as a research lab that DNA is like deeply embedded in everything we do and as designers I think that you know you come here we look for people that are not don't have a background in AI but are like really curious about the tools and how it can And we found that like just by sort of supporting that excitement to explore that people feel less pressure. Um it's not like you need to change the way you work but it's more about encouraging exploration. Um, and when we've done that, when I go and talk to um, both very senior designers and early career designers at our company, they're so excited because they I I literally was just asking some people before this cuz I wanted to get some different takes and they, [snorts] you know, I think the feeling is that like they have so much more ability to be creative, to express themselves, to try bad ideas and throw them out. you can just like really move through lots of different ideas and it becomes this incredible way to create and the things that I'm seeing from my team the the bar is raising um the the I think the thinking is getting stronger the more that they're using um these tools. So, I think for the people that that that are starting to embrace this, they're starting to feel really excited and realizing that they have just so much agency as as designers and like um you know, so much more ability to have like really high impact uh as as a as a designer.

中文：首先，这是一项很棒的调查，对整个行业来说都是非常有价值的信息。我认为我们需要把它拆开来理解。我看到的情况确实是混合的。我接触到很多非常乐观、非常兴奋的设计师，所以在我的工作范围里，幸运的是，我看到很多这样的情绪。但我完全理解人们为什么会不确定：关于岗位是否在变化、对自己的期待是否应该改变，讨论实在太多了。一个接受过传统训练的人可能会想：「我是不是每天都得写代码？是不是得把整套工作方式都改掉？」工程师似乎已经经历了这种转变：我们看到他们的工作方式完全变了。我的团队做类似内部调查时也反复出现一个问题：工程师的生产力提高了 10 倍，有时甚至 100 倍，但设计团队没有，因为设计过程仍然很混乱、很流动。你以为一个想法很好，试出来却很糟；再试一次，还是很糟；交给用户或内部同事，又会得到错误的反馈。这个艰难、混乱但也很有趣的反馈循环仍然存在。它只是被压缩了：你能更快地产生更多想法，但仍然需要完整的反馈回路；在大公司里，还要付出让许多人对齐的管理成本。所以现在大家并不清楚设计师究竟应该承担什么，这种不确定自然会带来恐惧和不安。另一方面，OpenAI 的特点是实验性很强。公司由研究驱动，把自己当作研究实验室；这种研究实验室的 DNA 深深嵌在工作里。我们并不要求设计师有 AI 背景，但会寻找对工具及其可能性真正好奇的人。支持这种探索热情，人们就会感到压力更小。我们发现，无论资深设计师还是职业早期的设计师，都会因为拥有更多创造、表达、尝试坏点子并迅速丢掉它们的能力而兴奋起来。工具用得越多，团队的思考和标准似乎也在提高。

This episode is brought to you by our season's presenting sponsor, WorkOS. What do OpenAI, Anthropic, Cursor, Replet, Sierra, Clay, and hundreds of other winning companies all have in common? They are [music] all powered by work OS. If you're building a product for the enterprise, you've felt the pain of integrating single signon, skim, arback, audit logs, and other features required by large companies. Work OS turns those deal blockers into drop-in APIs with a modern developer platform built specifically for B2B SAS. Literally, every startup that I'm an investor in that starts to expand up market ends up working with Work OS. And that's because they are the best. Whether you are a seedstage startup trying to land your first enterprise customer or a unicorn expanding globally, work OS is the fastest path to becoming enterprise ready and unblocking growth. It's essentially Stripe for enterprise features. Visit workos.com to get started or just hit up their Slack where they have actual engineers waiting to answer your questions. Workos allows you to build faster with delightful APIs, comprehensive docs, and a smooth developer experience. Go to work os.com to make your app enterprise ready today. What I'd love to do in this conversation is help folks that are in that bucket of well this is sucks and things aren't going well because as you said and this is exactly what we found that survey is about half of people are having the best time of their career having the most fun the most optimistic about where things are going and then the half are not having a really hard time. And exactly what you said, the people that are having a great time report like the main the most the strongest correlation is they feel amplified by AI. It's actually making them better. And that's that the way you described engineers, they're they're seeing that now. They're like, "Holy I can do so much more." And so just to kind of reinforce the point you're making, think attributes of people that are doing well um feel amplified, very curious, have time to explore, feel like they can be more creative. Is there any more thing more along those lines of just like patterns of people that are doing really well and having a great time that might be helpful for people to hear that are not having a good time?

中文：本期节目由本季冠名赞助商 WorkOS 赞助。OpenAI、Anthropic、Cursor、Replit、Sierra、Clay 以及数百家成功公司有什么共同点？它们都使用 WorkOS。做企业产品的人都经历过接入单点登录、SCIM、RBAC、审计日志以及大型公司要求的其他功能的痛苦。WorkOS 用面向 B2B SaaS 的开发平台和即插即用 API，把这些成交障碍变成更容易接入的能力。无论是种子期创业公司争取第一个企业客户，还是独角兽拓展全球市场，WorkOS 都能帮助产品更快具备企业服务能力。它本质上像企业功能领域的 Stripe。访问 WorkOS.com，今天就让你的应用具备企业能力。接下来我想帮助那些觉得「事情很糟、进展不顺」的人。我们的调查正好发现，大约一半的人正处在职业生涯最好的阶段：最开心、最乐观；另一半则过得很艰难。过得好的人最强的共同点，是他们觉得 AI 放大了自己的能力，让自己变得更好。你刚才描述的工程师就是这样：他们发现自己能做的事情多得多了。除了感到被放大、好奇、有时间探索、觉得自己更有创造力之外，你还看到哪些能帮助其他人的共同特征？

What I see in in the the folks that I think are really embracing this, right, they are using it every step of the process to kind of help them, right? And it and I think it helps, you know, we have we have a community of course of designers that are all trying this together. So if there's any way to kind of uh find that and that that's something that uh we should think about more as a broader community how we kind of help each other but like I think that learning kind of different ways of working right and so it might be okay I have this idea let me just actually start by trying what if I just threw this right into codeex or cloud or whatever tool you use like throw it into uh into an agent to help you think about it to help you prototype it just try a different way of working um it doesn't necessarily mean that that has to be the exact right way. But um I don't know. I think we found that just people that are are embracing this that are adaptable. I think adaptability is like another term that I think we all hear a lot now, but it's like so true. It's like knowing that this stuff changes very quickly. What didn't work yesterday might work today. I mean literally like within you know six months this entire industry has shifted. I remember I was actually out on on paternity leave uh towards the end of last year and I was working on some side projects. I was trying some uh coding agents and it just like it worked but it just kept kind of running into these hiccups and and then like a month later like codeex drops and I try it again and it's like oh my gosh it just works. Um and that I think changes a lot of the design process because now all of a sudden if you do have an idea you can like plop it in there and just try it. Um, and so anyways, I think it's it's just really about like not being scared. I think another thing to think about is that we're so early. We're like so in early innings of this entire um evolution, right? It feels like things have changed a lot and it feels like maybe we're pretty far into this shift. But the good news for anybody who is trying to design or get into design whether again like if you're early career or late career or you never even like actually design anything but you've been thinking about it is like we're all figuring this out as we go. Nobody has like some perfect answer um about the how the design process should work. Um and it's whatever you think is working today will probably change again. And so I think what's encouraging about this is that nobody should feel like behind right now. I think that if you literally started today, you're going to have a leg up on pretty much most people. Um and uh just really thinking about like how you can just make great stuff. Um and uh there's just so much opportunity to change the way you work work or to to just to make great things. and [snorts] what we think is like really cutting edge today will look so archaic in you know a year let alone a month right and that's something I' I've learned you know I've been at open air for three years and I think about the stuff that they you know we were working on when we when I first joined um I mean I remember getting a demo of of like our our early voice mode that we hadn't shipped or computer use that like you know barely worked worked uh and now it's like become it's it literally has become part of the process of how we design. We use both of those tools to to build software. And so anyways, the point is it's like changing very quickly. We're all extremely early in this process and nobody really has like the it figured out.

中文：我观察到，那些真正拥抱 AI 的人，会在工作的每一个环节使用它。设计师之间也有一个共同尝试的社区。我们应该进一步想想，怎样让更广泛的设计社区互相帮助。学习不同的工作方式很重要：比如有了一个想法，不妨把它直接放进 Codex、Claude 或你使用的其他工具，让智能体帮你思考、帮你做原型。先试一种不同的工作方式，它不一定就是正确答案。我们发现，真正拥抱变化、能够适应的人做得更好。适应性听起来像一个被说了很多遍的词，但它确实重要：这些东西变化得很快，昨天不起作用的东西今天可能就有效了。我去年年底休陪产假时做了一些副项目，试过 coding agent，当时它能工作，却总是遇到障碍。一个月后 Codex 发布，我再试一次，突然就觉得：「天哪，它真的能用了。」这改变了设计流程：有了想法，你现在可以把它放进去直接试。关键是不要害怕。我们仍然处在整个演进过程的早期。事情变化很多，看起来像我们已经走了很远，但无论你是职业早期、职业后期，还是只是一直想做设计，我们都在边走边摸索。没人有设计流程的标准答案，今天有效的东西很可能很快又会变化。现在没人应该觉得自己落后；如果你今天开始，反而可能领先大多数人。真正重要的是做出好东西。三年前 OpenAI 早期的语音模式和 Computer Use 还几乎不能用，如今它们已经成为我们设计软件时会使用的工具。变化太快了，我们都还在很早的阶段。

I love that you've also when we were chatting ahead of this year, you you actually told me you believe this is the best time in history to be a designer.

中文：你在我们录音前聊天时还说过，你认为现在是历史上成为设计师的最佳时机。

Yeah, I mean I I truly believe this. Um I can't even imagine you know I so when I uh okay history lesson when I was getting into design I mean I was like uh in my teenage years right and I was like uh you know to learn things it was like you know I uh I was kind of like learning design and code and you could like view source on a HTML web page and kind of see how things were built and that was like kind of how you had to learn and you know um you could I don't know it's like Dreamweaver and you know like there were these really to tools that actually were really cool. Um but to compare those to today if I were just getting into design the fact that you can like learn so quickly you can kind of like have an idea to working version of it in like like a matter of minutes. Um it's just you can be so expressive and and you can um I think anybody can be a designer right um and I think that as more and more software is made more and more products are made I think that the I do think that the human element of design is going to really be start to become more and more important. It's that's always been the case that I think that, you know, companies with great design, you know, can uh of course stand out. I think it's going to be more and more important, right? I think that products that um fully understand their users and that make something delightful when anybody can make anything, you know, that's going to become one of the most important kind of uh like sort of dimensions of a product and that's how people are going to evaluate it. And so I think designers uh stand like that is that is our core job, right? Um you know and and then on top of that I think that designers are just much more empowered. Uh so you know at a um you know I was talking to some friends that are thinking about starting a company and talking about the uh sort of ratio of design to engineer and how like at a startup maybe that's totally different. It might it may have been like you're going to have one designer and uh I don't know 15 engineers or something like that. You know that maybe a startup I've seen that sort of ratio. Uh but they were they were talking about well maybe we'll have like two designers and one engineer. One really good engineer who can make sure that like we're really building something that's rock solid like from from an engineering standpoint. But then we want two really creative people that are going to be thinking about how we kind of build this product. And so thinking about that, I think that there's just like a huge opportunity for designers. I think that internally we see that more and more we're we like designers we are are totally completely empowered to to take an idea to take a early research concept and try to figure out how we can actually like package that up into something that people want to use or that um that solves some sort of uh unmet need for our customers. and um that is a designer's job. And so I think that maybe more and more people start to think of themselves as designers. Um but either way, I think it's like the best I I really do think it's the best time to be a designer.

中文：我确实这么认为。我十几岁开始学设计时，学习方式是查看网页 HTML 源码，看看东西是怎样构建的；那时还有 Dreamweaver 之类很有意思的工具。和今天相比，如果我现在才开始学设计，我可以非常快地学习，把一个想法在几分钟内变成能运行的版本。你可以有非常强的表达力，我认为任何人都可以成为设计师。软件和产品越来越多，人类在设计中的作用会越来越重要。一直以来，优秀设计都能让公司脱颖而出；当任何人都能做出任何东西时，真正理解用户、做出令人愉悦的产品，会成为产品最重要的评价维度之一。这正是设计师的核心工作。与此同时，设计师也更有权力了。我和一些准备创业的朋友聊过设计师与工程师的比例：过去可能是 1 个设计师配 15 个工程师，但他们想的是，也许应该有 2 个设计师和 1 个优秀工程师。工程师确保东西在技术上牢固，两个有创造力的人则思考产品应该怎样被构建。我在 OpenAI 内部也看到，设计师越来越有能力把一个想法或早期研究概念，转化为人们愿意使用、能够解决未满足需求的产品。这就是设计师的工作。所以，也许会有越来越多人把自己看成设计师；无论如何，我确实认为这是成为设计师的最佳时机。

So along those lines, when Mark Andre was on the podcast, he had this hilarious way of describing the state of the of the product or right now. Uh he's like basically there's this three-way standoff. PMs, engineers, designers, they're all they all think the other roles are going to go away and they're the ones that are going to win in the end. And so there's less like Spider-Man meme where they're all pointing at each other. And I'm curious because I I can see a case for each role becoming the dominant role. And I completely agree with you that with all of the tools being shipped, like there's like a thousandx explosion and products being shipped, there's just like endless streams of things to pay attention to. You think design would be such an opportunity to differentiate and stand out. I haven't seen that yet in just like an acceleration of design hires and explosion as you said like two designers to one engineer. Do you think do you think that's coming? Why do you think that hasn't happened yet? Do you think it's as you said just early and people will realize oh wow we need a lot more designers. What do you think is going on?

中文：沿着这个话题，Marc Andreessen 上节目时用一个很有趣的方式描述了现在的产品组织：产品经理、工程师和设计师像是三方对峙，每个角色都觉得另外两个会消失，最后自己会赢，就像三个人互相指着对方的蜘蛛侠表情包。我能为每个角色成为主导者找到理由。既然工具不断发布，产品数量像爆炸一样增长，设计似乎很有机会成为差异化和脱颖而出的方式。但我还没看到设计招聘同步加速，也没看到你说的「两个设计师配一个工程师」。你觉得这种变化会来吗？为什么还没发生？

We might start to see that happen more. Um or if anything we might start to see engineers wanting to become a little bit more design focused. I also think that designers are getting more productive. Um it's not necessarily the same direct output of like engineers 10xing. Um but we are seeing that that designers um are are able to do a lot more. But no, I mean I think that that that is something we're sort of always thinking about and and evolving. Um the other thing I wanted to talk about too is like the difference between PM and engine and design and are they all blurring together? And my point of view is that they they definitely are and they there's always been overlap as far as I've seen it, right? I've seen designers that are like kind of really good product, you know, manager type archetype, but can design and I've seen designers that are like really good sort of polish engineer type, you know, like so that I think I've always found that these like single siloed um role definitions don't really make sense. It's just that at big companies you have to have like a ladder to put people on so you can generally kind of like organize. But in reality, you know, when you look at a team, you see that there are people that are have various strengths and people that play different roles. And so I've I've always kind of seen that. Um I think there's those lines have always been blurry, but they're becoming blurriier for sure. Um, but the other thing is I do still think that and and maybe this is thinking about it from like a slightly larger company perspective, but I think you do still need people that have certain responsibilities, right? Because if you have one person that's expected to design, to rally a team around something, you know, to align a whole company, uh to do all the work that like a PM does, for example, and also be designing it and also be engineering it, it's just maybe not you you might it might be hard to find one person that's good at all of those different skills. And so I still find a lot of value, for example, in having like an excellent PM that can help rally multiple teams together that can help um sharpen kind of the perspective or the problem space that a team is focused on um that can help with like resourcing, all of those things, right? And so I do think there will still be value in these um and people focused on different parts of building a project or a product. Um that doesn't mean that um maybe there's more fluidity that people can move between them but having somebody who is sort of generally responsible for these different things or an engineer who's like really making sure that the output is totally sound and you know is actually like um lading up to something that is going to work for the broader system.

中文：我们可能会更多看到这种情况，或者工程师想变得更偏向设计。设计师的效率也在提高，只是表现形式不一定像工程师那样直接达到 10 倍。产品经理、工程师和设计师的边界确实在变模糊，而且一直都有重叠：有些设计师很像产品经理，也能做设计；有些设计师又很像注重打磨的工程师。大公司需要职级体系来组织人，所以才会把岗位放进不同的框里；实际团队里，每个人都有不同强项，承担不同角色。边界会更模糊，但我仍然认为每个人需要承担某些明确责任。如果一个人既要做设计、带动团队、让全公司对齐、做产品经理的工作，又要设计和写代码，很难要求一个人同时精通所有能力。因此，优秀的产品经理仍然有价值：他们可以协调多个团队，磨利问题空间，处理资源和执行等事情。角色之间可以更灵活地流动，但在产品或项目的不同部分，仍然需要有人承担总体责任；工程师也要确保产出在更大的系统里真的可靠。

I completely agree. So just to make sure I understand what you're saying is just there's talk about all the roles blurring. is like maybe we'll all just be builders and we do everything and you're saying is like no that's not going to happen the like the ven di I'm picturing ven diagrams of product design engineering like converging but you're saying they're going to continue to stay their own roles there's going to be a PM design engineer but each can do more of the other roles

中文：我完全同意。为了确认我的理解：大家都在说角色会融合，也许我们以后都是能做一切的 builder；你的意思是这不会真正发生。产品、设计和工程的维恩图会相互靠近，但它们仍然是不同的角色，只是每个人都能做更多其他角色的工作。

I think that's right I I do think that like for and again this is not a blanket statement right because I think if you're at a startup that's like very different I would I would if I were starting a company right now I [snorts] would hire like the best generalist people I could possibly think of, someone who I think could kind of fluidly move between that. But maybe again that's maybe that's always kind of been true. Um, but at at a bigger company, I do think that I've seen like designers um that are, you know, maybe incredible at designing, but could really use a product manager who can help them kind of with with like hone um both their thinking and how and and then how they work and the operations of it all. So the point is I do just think that there are there are different it's it's almost like in t taking the people out of it I think that there are different sort of hats that you need to wear to build great software and I think that um those are continue to be important functions I think

中文：我认为是这样。不过这不是一句适用于所有情况的结论：创业公司和大公司很不一样。如果我现在创业，我会尽可能招聘最好的通才，找那些能够流畅穿梭于不同职责之间的人。但在大公司，我见过非常擅长设计的设计师，他们仍然需要产品经理帮助自己打磨思考、组织工作和处理流程。要做好软件，仍然需要戴不同的帽子；这些职能依旧重要。

so this begs the question do you think AI will ever be an extremely good product designer and just to like it's interesting to ask you this question because on the one hand you're like oh yeah open like ChachiP is going to become incredible at everything. On the other hand, it's hard for a head of design to say, "Oh, no, design's going to be done by AI." I'm curious to get your your take and you know, it like sounds crazy, but like engineers never thought it would be able to write code the way it is now. Um, so just yeah, thoughts on just how good AI will get.

中文：这就引出一个问题：AI 最终会成为非常出色的产品设计师吗？问你这个问题很有意思，因为你来自 OpenAI，当然会说 ChatGPT 会变得无所不能；但作为设计负责人，你也很难说设计会全部由 AI 完成。工程师过去也没想到自己会以今天这样的方式写代码，所以我想知道你觉得 AI 最终会有多强。

Maybe one way to put it is I think it already is an incredible um product designer. [laughter] Um, it it really is actually already great. The cool thing about it though is it's accessible to every single person. Um, and it's a tool that anybody can use. I do think it's really good. Now, that doesn't necessarily mean that it's like the best visual designer or best at, you know, uh, information hierarchy or or typography or even, you know, user experience and interaction design. It's not necessarily like the best at any of those. It's impossible to predict where things are going. And like I said earlier, like you know, how much has changed in three years? Of course, they're going to continue to get better. Um, but the way we think about it and and I and I really do believe this is like we're building tools to enable people to be more creative, to be um to to do more, to build more. And so it's it is already a great designer, but you it's at your fingertips to kind of figure out how to use it and how to get the best out of it. Where do you think human brains will continue to be most valuable as AI gets better at product design specifically? What are kind of like the remaining areas for us to be useful?

中文：换一种说法，我认为 AI 已经是一个出色的产品设计师了。它真正厉害的地方在于每个人都能使用它。它未必是最好的视觉设计师、信息层级设计师、排版师，也未必最擅长用户体验和交互设计；但它已经很强，而且还会继续变强。我们的思路是做工具，让人更有创造力、做更多事情、构建更多东西。AI 已经是一位优秀设计师，但你仍然需要在手边摸索如何使用它，怎样把它的能力发挥出来。你认为随着 AI 在产品设计上越来越强，人类大脑最有价值的地方会是什么？

Truly understanding [snorts] what people need. um you know I mean the human uh feedback loop of watching people use something and and understanding that um the you know inventing something new um I think uh and then of course there's just the pure like human kind of take right like oh somebody made this somebody had a point of view about this um I just think that I do think that will stand out more and more and I think that that's like an important thing for a designer to like really hone is like what is my point of view? What who am I building this for and why? Um and I don't know I think like as as as AI becomes more and more like better and better for sure there will be an opportunity to always kind of stand out and push how can you push that even further.

中文：真正理解人们需要什么。观察人们怎样使用一个东西，并从反馈循环里理解他们；发明新东西；以及纯粹的人类取向——有人做了这个东西，有人对它有自己的观点。我认为这些会越来越突出。设计师要磨炼自己的观点：我是谁？我在为谁构建？为什么构建？随着 AI 变得越来越强，设计师总会有机会脱颖而出，把事情再往前推一步。

Yeah, that touches on uh a conversation I had with um the PM of codeex. I asked him just why is AI not good at design? It's actually gotten better since that conversation, which was just like a month or two ago. And and he had a number of reasons for it. One is just like like part of great product design is doing something new. And so if it's trained on all the most interesting websites today, it's just like okay, but that's not what that's not interesting anymore. And the other point he made is like AI researchers aren't innately great at design and so they may not understand exactly what it takes to train a model to be really good at this. Uh thoughts? What do you think? What do you think it'll take to get AI to be much much better at product design?

中文：这让我想起我和 Codex 产品经理的一次对话。我问他为什么 AI 还不擅长设计。那次对话距今只有一两个月，但 AI 已经进步了。他给了几个理由：优秀的产品设计常常要做从未出现过的东西；如果模型只在今天最有趣的网站上训练，它做出来的东西也许不错，却不新鲜。另外，AI 研究者并不天然擅长设计，可能还不完全理解怎样训练出真正优秀的设计模型。你怎么看？要让 AI 在产品设计上大幅进步，它还需要什么？

I mean, the new thing is interesting, right? Because I think that everything we're doing is trying to design something that hasn't existed before, right? Um, you know, if you look at if you look at great great products that have come out in the last, you know, 10 20 years or whatever, right? It's like all of a sudden, you know, take the iPhone, we're designing for multi-touch. And that opened up like this whole new interaction paradigm. And there's no training data for that, right? You have to you're kind of really trying to understand this new thing, right? And then you had something like Instagram that was like really embracing um the sort of like the fact that everybody had mobile phones. And then Snapchat, I think, is another good example of great design and that it was kind of a maybe people thought strange sort of like interaction design, but it completely thought like flipped on its head the way people might want to communicate with each other. And to me that that is like great design. It's like truly understanding like I you know the people that like people have this problem or there's this unmet need and and I'm going to build it with this in this unique way. So yeah, I do think that there's that sort of like fresh new kind of way. And then now with AI, it's like we're designing like how do you talk to something that uh is how do you talk to AI with your voice, you know, or how do you use an agent to like carry out tasks for you? It's like yeah, there isn't a lot of precedent for this. And so I think that, you know, humans are able to kind of do a really good job kind of evaluating, you know, what good is and um, you know, or at least kind of like trying a bunch of things and and learning along the way with people. And so um I don't know, but again, like all this stuff changes really quickly. It's hard to say, but uh I think um I think there's a lot of reasons why uh having that human in the loop is going to be so important. And kind of following that thread of the human in the loop when you're hiring designers these days, what's kind of trending up in what you look for, what you think is more and more important in the designers that will be successful today, especially at OpenAI, what's trending down with anything?

中文：「新东西」这个问题很有意思。我们做的一切，都是在设计过去不存在的东西。过去十到二十年的优秀产品都创造了新的互动方式：iPhone 面向多点触控设计，打开了全新的交互范式；Instagram 抓住了人人都有手机这个事实；Snapchat 的交互方式一开始可能显得奇怪，却彻底改变了人们交流的方式。这就是优秀设计：真正理解人们有怎样的问题或未满足的需求，然后用独特的方式把产品做出来。现在进入 AI 时代，我们在设计新的问题：怎样用语音和 AI 对话？怎样让智能体替你完成任务？这些都几乎没有先例。人类很擅长判断什么是好的，也能和用户一起尝试大量方案、在过程中学习。因此，人类仍然会在反馈回路里发挥重要作用。接着说到这个反馈回路：你现在招聘设计师时，哪些能力变得更重要，哪些变得不那么重要？

This might be a luxury of having a slightly larger team, but if you're, you know, at our scale, um, you know, but even at at a startup or a smaller company, I think this still be true. I really believe in hiring a well-rounded team that has many different strengths. So, I think it's important to have kind of like your handful of or or the right ratio of sort of generalists that can kind of do everything, but uh you know, we also hire like incredible visual designers or we have like like a really amazing sort of brand team that helps us with kind of like the sort of maybe Yeah. expression of our brand both out and in a in the product um or great prototypers or um you know um and so I think that rounding that out or or great sort of product thinkers that are a little bit more strategic or people that are like really obsess over like the very cutting edge of where these things are going and I haven't found that one designer necessarily checks every single one of those boxes. I think people just naturally are, you know, drawn to certain things and I think embracing that when you build a team is actually like um if you if you have the luxury of doing that is like really valuable. Okay. So that's like my a broad statement. But then as far as what we look for, we do definitely, you know, I always tell candidates, we do not expect you to have a background in AI because again, this is evolving so quickly, but we definitely expect high curiosity about it and and and a high aptitude to jumping in and learning how how you know how you're going to use this in your process, how it works. and not just how you use it in your process, but how especially for us like how you're going to create tools to enable more people to use it. Um, and so it's more about the curiosity I think um is something that like we really push on uh or look for. And then um definitely prototyping um prototyping is something I've always valued in my career. Um, but I just think that, you know, it's become more and more accessible and so that's something that, uh, I think really does stand out usually when we talk to to candidates. And then I do think that, yeah, just like having some having a point of view on on where where these things are going or or just like any of the tools that people have worked on and really thinking that strategic thinking. I guess last last one on this is like systems thinking um is becoming more and more important and um you know especially as you're I like in our world we're it's interesting because we're trying to build you know we're building the super intelligence that has uh that has all these different capabilities and we need to think more about the underlying primitives that we can build that can kind of build on top of each other, right? Um, you know, this is something that I think like notion did really well early on was like we're going to build these building blocks, right? And then like everything kind of is composable. I think that's becoming really important too as you think about like well we don't want to build all these sort of one-off siloed experiences. We want to be able to build and ship systems that can build on top of each other so that you know when someone goes and uses our product it feels like one cohesive simple thing and the model can reason about how it can pull all these things together. So that like idea of like really understanding the system and thinking about that is becoming even more important especially because it's kind of complex of all the things that it could possibly do. This is the fifth podcast in a row I've done where systems thinking has come up as a skill that people are more and more looking for and it's it's like so funny. I need a bingo card for systems thinking but it makes so much sense and I think it especially makes sense from the designer perspective. If we come back to just why my take on why designers are kind of frustrated and and stressed right now is just there's less time to do design the traditional design process. things are just moving like engineers are shipping 5,000 PRs a day and so to your point this idea of building blocks and design system langu and and just a platform for people to build on feels incredibly important.

中文：这可能得益于我们团队规模较大，但即使在创业公司或小团队，我认为也成立。我相信要组建一支拥有多种强项、彼此互补的完整团队：需要一些能做很多事情的通才，也需要优秀的视觉设计师、负责品牌表达的人、擅长原型的人、更有战略性的产品思考者，以及专注于前沿变化的人。我还没见过一个设计师能把所有这些能力都集于一身，所以如果有条件，搭配不同长项很有价值。具体到招聘，我们不要求候选人有 AI 背景，因为这个领域变化太快；但我们确实要求他们对 AI 有很强的好奇心，愿意跳进去学习怎样使用工具、理解工具怎样工作。对我们来说，重要的不只是把 AI 放进自己的流程，还包括能否创造工具，让更多人使用 AI。好奇心是关键。原型能力也很重要，我一直重视原型，而现在原型变得越来越容易。设计师还需要对 AI 的走向有自己的判断，并具备战略思考能力。最后是系统思维：我们在构建拥有多种能力的超级智能时，需要考虑底层 primitives，思考它们怎样组合成上层能力。Notion 早期就很擅长把产品做成可组合的积木。我们不想做许多彼此孤立的一次性体验，而想做能相互建立、让产品保持简单一致的系统；模型也要能理解怎样把这些能力组合起来。系统思维因此越来越重要。

Totally. It's very hard but I um I I yeah it's like it's funny we've had these conversations where I'm like just do less [laughter] like my encouragement has been do less there like don't design it if you don't have to. Maybe there's already an existing system or component or something that we can build on top of or maybe we don't even need this feature. We actually just need to kind of uh uh like you know extend an an existing feature. Um I think that's an important thing and and part of that is like thinking outside of the bounds of what you're working on, right? and thinking across everything I think is becoming much more important and the speed for sure I think is is a reason why that's so important right now

中文：关于这一点，我们会开玩笑说：「少做一点。」我的建议是，不必设计就别设计：也许已经有现成的系统或组件可以复用，也许根本不需要这个功能，也许只需要扩展现有功能。关键是跳出眼前工作的边界，从整体看问题。速度越来越快，所以这件事尤其重要。

just to follow that thread because that feels like a pretty big change in the design world there used to be this we had a podcast with u she was head of design club code Jenny Wen and she talked about this and I think it blew a lot of people's minds just there's been this traditional design process prototype mock test research iterate okay cool ready for engineering build it iterate ship it and now there's just no time for that. And so the role in her eyes has just moved to big picture planning and just like steering people in a good direction. Does that resonate? How much is that has changed in in the world of a designer?

中文：这对设计领域来说是一个很大的变化。过去的流程是做原型、出视觉稿、测试、研究、迭代，交给工程师实现，再迭代、发布。Jenny Wen 认为，现在设计师的角色转向更宏观的规划，以及把团队引向正确方向。这和你的经验一致吗？

I think that 100% we we do work that way. It it's it depends. I think for us it depends on like what sort of what stage you're at in the in the uh sort of process or um you know uh how uh maybe how far along the product is. There are certain features for chatbt where we really obsess and we really spend a lot of time. We try a million things and we throw out you know uh we try 100 things we throw out 99. We finally ship one. um you know uh the like uh the or like the composer is like changing every single day and we try many things we throw them out but or like and you could take that for many different things within chbt um and then there are other things like codecs where um you know I don't know I mean the super app is a good example where we definitely are just like trying stuff really quick I think that we really embrace building in public [laughter] which is a different way of working. But I think that like when you get comfortable with it is actually really gratifying or satisfying because you can try stuff and get instant feedback both internally and externally. Um but yeah, I mean it is uh moving really fast and I think it just depends right like some like like I said certain things we really sweat the details and we try um you know and and we do test we AB test we'll do user research um and we kind of iterate and evolve a lot and then other things we uh we take big swings and then we learn quickly um but yeah I don't know I think you have to like I think the biggest thing is like embracing that the technology might change in like a a month or you know and maybe a certain interaction or or setting or or whatever that you needed doesn't need to exist or now a new one does need to exist or a new capability is there or the latency profile has changed such that you can like rethink this or whatever all these capabilities are changing or the the intelligence has changed or and so you have to be just really quick on your feet and and maybe not be so precious about it until it's at the point where okay this is kind of hardened like we don't think that this is necessarily going to change tomorrow because of the technology so let's make this the best it can possibly be you know like we're we're thinking a lot about how we should evolve sort of really think about chatbt becoming like deeply embedded in a per like your personal life and how how should the how should the app feel that's something that we're not going necessarily design and ship overnight and just like put it out there. We're spending we're really thinking about that and we're trying a bunch of different ideas and we're putting it up on you know uh you know a whiteboard or you know we're doing some design in Figma. We're prototyping it. We're probably going to dog food a bunch of different ideas long before we ever ship something. Um that but that's a bigger project, right? And then there's other things where we're like idea to ship in like, you know, 4 hours.

中文：完全一致，但取决于产品所处的阶段。ChatGPT 有些功能我们会反复打磨、投入大量时间，尝试 100 个方案、丢掉 99 个；比如 composer 几乎每天都在变化。另一些功能，比如 Codex，我们会很快尝试，拥抱公开构建，直接从内部和外部获得反馈。设计师需要根据情况选择：有的东西要做用户研究、A/B 测试、反复迭代；有的东西则应该大胆迈步、快速学习。最重要的是接受技术可能一个月后就变了：交互、设置、能力、延迟和模型智能都在变化，设计师必须反应快，别在它还没稳定前把方案看得过于珍贵。等到产品或能力变得稳定，再把它打磨到最好。我们正在思考 ChatGPT 怎样深度进入个人生活，这种超级应用级别的项目不会四小时内设计发布；我们会在白板和 Figma 里尝试许多想法，做原型、内部试用，再考虑正式发布。与此同时，也有些东西可以在四小时内从想法做到发布。关键是分清哪些值得投入。

This all makes sense. Essentially, what I'm hearing is you pick your battles and you focus the design effort on the things that will be durable and not change.

中文：你的意思是，设计团队需要自己选择战场，把精力集中到那些更可能持久、不会马上变化的部分。

Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And it's hard to know what that is. [laughter]

中文：没错。问题在于，很难知道哪些部分会持久。

Yeah.

中文：对。

Yeah. This episode is brought to you by Mercury. Radically different banking loved by over 300,000 entrepreneurs. And now with command. I've been a customer of Mercury's for over six years. I have never once thought about leaving. Mercury is basically what happens when banking is built by product people, not by bankers. They make it so easy, dare I say fun, to send invoices, move money around, set up virtual cards for folks on my team. Does your bank have an API, [music] a terminal native CLI, or an AI ready MCP server? I don't think so. And just recently, they launched Command, a conversational interface built directly into Mercury, [music] which acts as your financial operator. I've been using Command to transfer money around, to figure out what categories I've been spending the most money in, analyze my cash flows, [music] and just today, I used it to find out how much I've made from a specific sponsor over the past year. I just [music] asked, "How much have I made from X over the past year?" 10 seconds later, I have an answer. It is so freaking cool. Visit mercury.com to learn more and apply online in minutes. Mercury is a fintech company, not an FDIC insured bank. Banking services provided through Choice Financial Group and column NA members FDIC. So, I asked uh a bunch of people that know you well what to talk to you about. And uh Joel uh Loenstein, who happens to be the head of design at Anthropic, is a good friend of yours, which I love. and he said what he imagines the hardest part of your job is is balancing the needs of the existing billion monthly active users of chat GPT with the need to innovate and push and iterate and invent. And so I'm just curious how you just think about that, how you find that balance knowing you have to cater to both sides.

中文：本期节目由 Mercury 赞助。Mercury 是一家为创业者提供银行服务的金融科技公司，已有超过 30 万名创业者使用，现在还推出了 Command。我用了 Mercury 六年，从没想过离开。它让开票、转账、设置团队虚拟卡等事情变得很容易。Command 是直接嵌入 Mercury 的对话式界面，可以充当你的财务操作员：我用它转账、查看消费类别、分析现金流，甚至查询某个赞助商过去一年带来的收入。访问 mercury.com 了解更多。接下来我想问的是：Anthropic 设计负责人 Joel Lowenstein 说，你最难的工作可能是在 ChatGPT 每月十亿活跃用户的需求与持续创新、迭代、发明之间保持平衡。你怎么处理这种平衡？

That's a great question and it's a really fun part of the way we work. Um, I think that we have we have vastly different audiences, like really really different. I've never worked in this kind of quite quite a spread. Um, you know, like at Instagram, uh, I I I spent eight years working at Instagram, we had a billion user or billions of users, maybe. I don't actually know what they're at now, but it was a lot of people. Um, but the product was pretty simple and it was sort of, you know, a couple ways you could use it. We did think about like creators and, you know, larger accounts that had special needs, but this is like vastly different where you have someone who's, you know, using this to help them come up with the recipe to eat tonight. Um, or, you know, brainstorm their next haircut or something like that. And then there's uh somebody who's like transforming the way they're doing farming for their you know um their like you know helping to automate their farm in Japan or something right and uh it's just like the broadest spectrum ever. Um generally what we've seen is that um we we believe in this idea of this sort of capability overhang where the the product um you know like vast majority of the people are getting a sliver of the the true value that they could out of the bottle. Um that's not necessarily a bad thing. Many you know they're still getting tons of value. Um but we found that like we you know make sure to focus on creating a extremely simple, streamlined experience for for many many people. Um, and then we put like uh all of the, you know, cutting edge stuff. We also make make sure to give that and and make sure that's like really accessible for the people that care. The challenge of course is like not necessarily overindexing and and sort of like putting that putting uh something that um people might not understand in front of a billion users. So, but generally what we've seen is we can experiment early with the the people that really care and that's where we have like our desktop app and we have codecs and now chat work is kind of stepping into a much broader audience which we're really excited about and eventually what we want what we what we know and we think about this a lot in design is like it will tr like things will truly become like for billions of users when they don't have to like think about a switch or a mode or anything like that. And so we know that like eventually it has to kind of get distilled into that main experience. Um but it is like a really fun thing to balance and um we have to think about like people that are using this for free every day to people that are paying us hundreds of dollars and lots of different needs. It's just a matter of sort of balancing and as a designer it does add a lot of complexity for sure to think to you really have to have empathy for every sort of different type of user. Um, but this it it makes it fun for sure.

中文：这是工作方式里很有趣的一部分。我们的用户差异非常大，我从未在跨度如此广的产品上工作过。在 Instagram，我工作了八年，那里有大量用户，但产品相对简单，使用方式也有限。ChatGPT 则完全不同：有人用它想今晚吃什么、规划下一次发型；也有人用它改变日本农场的工作方式，自动化整个农场。它的用户范围可能是最广的。我们相信「能力过剩」：大多数人只使用模型真正能力的一小部分，这不一定是坏事，因为他们仍然获得了大量价值。我们会为绝大多数人提供简单、顺畅的体验，同时把前沿能力提供给真正需要的人。难点是，不能把普通人看不懂的东西直接放到十亿用户面前。所以我们会先让真正关心的人试用；桌面应用、Codex、ChatGPT Work 都是这样的实验场。最终，面向十亿人的能力必须沉淀进主体验里，让用户不用思考开关或模式。我们要同时服务每天免费使用的人，以及每月支付数百美元的人；这给设计带来很高的复杂度，但也很有趣。

That is such a mind-blowing point you're making about the spectrum of usage of chat GBT and CEX. I I didn't think about it that way. Like is there has there been a product that has such a wide spectrum from just like what's this rash on my finger to building Salesforce, you know?

中文：你讲到的 ChatGPT 使用跨度非常令人震撼。我之前没这样想过：它既可能帮人判断手指上的皮疹，也可能帮人构建 Salesforce。

Yeah. And it and it makes it really hard to you know because I a lot of uh it's so funny like one of the big challenges we're always thinking about is this like blank box problem, right? And people talk about this all the time. It's like is chat really the final frontier? It's a terminal bas it's you know glorified terminal is like some critique that that I think these chatbots get. And then it's like okay so how do you design something that can kind of shapeshift into anything? um you know it's like maybe someone is coming here for image generation for fun or you know they're trying to generate a PowerPoint or you know so having this adaptable interface is like a really interesting uh design challenge and um it's like sort of uncharted territory because it can really like shape shift into many different tools um and it's this like um incredible at so many different things and trying to figure out how to present that. And then thinking about, you know, we think a lot about like a novice user, someone who's sort of brand new to this experience that we want to help them understand how this can add value uh to their lives or to their sort of professional uh work or what whatever whatever capacity they're using this in. And then we also want to like get out of the way of people that, you know, use this every single day and they use this as like a real workhorse tool. And so designing for that spectrum is something we have to think about a lot. Um but yeah, it's all a world of spectrums I guess.

中文：这也让设计变得很难。我们经常思考「空白输入框问题」：聊天真的是终点吗？有人批评聊天机器人只是一个被美化的终端。但如果一个界面要变形成任何东西，应该怎样设计？用户可能是来生成图片、娱乐，或做一份 PowerPoint；它可以变成许多不同的工具。我们既要帮助新手理解它能为生活和工作带来什么，也要让每天使用它的人快速进入状态。为这种跨度设计，是我们经常面对的挑战。

There's a comment that Kevin Wheel, your former chief product officer, made on the podcast that has really stuck with me, which is uh to your point, people always diss this idea of just like it's just like a chat box. Why hasn't it ever changed from that? Even though it has, but still it's kind of this chat chatbot. and he made this really good point that what is an interface that is very good at uh spanning a wide spectrum of intelligence. Uh it's actually just talking. If you think about humans, we talk to people of low IQ to very high IQ. We can all just talk to each other and it's actually a really good interface for uh packaging something that is increasingly smarter and smarter and smarter.

中文：Kevin Weil，你的前任首席产品官，在节目里说过一句我一直记得的话：人们总说 ChatGPT 只是一个聊天框，为什么一直没有变化；但如果要覆盖从低到高的广泛智能水平，聊天其实是非常好的界面。人类可以和智力水平差异很大的人交谈，这种方式很适合承载越来越强的智能。

Yeah. And and I think we're seeing what's what's been really fun design space for us is you know there's two things we think about. One is like how do we how can we help you express your intent better, right? Like uh we don't want you have to think about being a perfect prompt engineer, but like how do we even one teach you that oh this is something that the model can help me with and then how do we make sure that we get we we sort of best understand what you want. And so like, you know, we recently shipped some features where if you ask sort of an open-ended question, it can follow up with, you know, some follow-up questions that you can like just tap through um an answer versus having to type everything out, right? Um or another good example is, you know, so then then once you actually ask it to do something, there's the chat transcript doesn't need to be purely text, right? We've seen these now evolve so far from what it was with when chat just launched. you know, it's no longer just a pure chatbot. It actually has many features within that, right? So, a good example is what we call writing blocks. You ask it to um you know, write you a letter or an email uh and it now contains that um that email in sort of a block that you can directly manipulate and you can type with it and you can brainstorm and you can edit little bits and parts of it. You can copy just that and that has made that interaction much better. And we're seeing the same thing with like image generation and creating special tools for that kind of mode. And I think that's where the UI is going to start to really continue to evolve is how do we make if you're if you come at this and you're a designer, maybe chatbt should actually really look differently uh look different or have different affordances. um or you're you know a a data scientist or you know you're using this for to run your home you know like your your personal life maybe it should really kind of work or look differently so like understanding the context and giving you different affordances based on that is something that you know we're thinking a lot about

中文：我们现在面对的一个有趣设计空间，是怎样帮助用户更好地表达意图。我们不想要求每个人都成为完美的 prompt 工程师，所以当用户提出开放问题时，系统可以追问，让用户点选后续问题，而不必一次把所有内容打出来。用户提出任务后，聊天记录也不必只有文字：比如 Writing Blocks 会把信件或邮件放进一个可以直接编辑的区块，用户可以在里面输入、头脑风暴、修改并复制；图像生成也有专门的工具。未来的界面会继续变化：设计师、数据科学家，或把 AI 用来管理家庭生活的人，可能需要不同的界面和操作方式。系统理解上下文后，应该给不同的人不同的能力入口。

in terms of the vision and future of where all this goes I know this is always evolving but is there kind of a sense of what the future of chat gpt codeex is I know there's this idea of a super app. You talked about voice, this personal assistant idea. What's like a way you think about where this goes long term?

中文：说到 ChatGPT 和 Codex 的长远愿景，我知道一切都还在变化，但你怎样想象它们最终会走向哪里？包括超级应用和个人助理的想法。

I think that it will start to become more and more adaptive to, you know, all of the context of your life. Um, I think proactivity is a big untapped kind of part of the experience that we're really excited to think about. Um, you know, we're starting to see this with chatd work now where it actually has pretty good suggestions based on, you know, your calendar or your slack or these different sort of inputs and um external kind of context. I think that's going to become more and more important um or kind of shift the way you know you use it. I think voice as you know we we we just had a step change in the model that just feels much more natural and again like you know I can only imagine how that's going to feel in 2 3 years as it just gets better and better. I think people I I do love interacting with chatbt especially voice in like just I want to just kind of like really quickly say something and and then I think like its ability to kind of go sort of like not just from asking questions but actually doing things for you. Um that's all going to change and hopefully all of this gets simpler as we do it too right you know when we think of the super app I think eventually we really think of the idea of especially for our broad consumer base we do think that there should be sort of this one universal input that you can ask that knows when it needs to answer like really quickly or it should be chatty or whether it should go and like go off and do work for you. And so that's a big like excitement that we can get to is how can we continue to simplify the experience such that you shouldn't have to think about how this works. You shouldn't have to think about what model you're on or what sort of speed you're using. You know that like that's like goes back to the balancing the different kind of you know personas and user needs like right of course we want to expose that for the right people but then we want to make sure that we can get a default experience that works great for for most people. Um, but yeah, I think it's going to be really proactive. I do think that we're going to like get much uh richer sort of input through voice and like richer visual outputs that are more interactive. I think that you'll start to build more durable kind of workflows with attribut that you can kind of use over and over. Right now, you know, it a lot of times it feels like you're coming and starting from scratch each time. and we want to really make this kind of the tool that you can use to to help you uh with whatever sort of task you have.

中文：它会越来越适应你生活中的全部上下文。主动性是一个尚未充分开发的方向，我们很期待继续探索。现在 ChatGPT Work 已经能结合日历、Slack 等输入，给出不错的建议；这种外部上下文会越来越重要。语音交互也刚刚出现了一次明显跃迁，未来两三年还会自然得多。更重要的是，它将从回答问题走向替你做事。对广泛的消费者来说，我们希望最终有一个统一入口：它知道什么时候应该快速回答，什么时候应该聊天，什么时候应该离开去完成任务。用户不必思考自己用的是什么模型、速度设置或工作模式。对需要的人，我们仍然会暴露更多控制项；但默认体验必须对大多数人都有效。未来会有更丰富的语音输入、更有互动性的视觉输出，以及可以反复使用的持久工作流。现在用户常常每次都从头开始，我们希望它变成能帮助你完成各种任务的工具。

This all sounds wonderful. I can't wait. [laughter]

中文：听起来太棒了。我等不及了。

Uh just kind of zooming out a little bit and then I want to talk a little bit to designers again, but you're in this uh epic role right now. I imagine there's a lot of surprises as you entered OpenAI and took on this role. What's something you wish you'd known? What's something you wish you could whisper into Ian of of day one and to give you some advice? I mean so many things. I think you know the first one is like recognizing that we're really early and instead like I actually was pretty intimidated coming to OpenAI if I'm being honest. Um, you know, uh, I remember like, okay, interviewing. Oh, no, I got to like, you know, G GPT4 had kind of recently come out and what GPT, like I, you know, I was like, what is all this stuff? Like, I I was using it and I was using the the stuff, but I I didn't feel like I had a true understanding of of it. And to be honest, I, you know, there's I still have so much to learn. So that idea of like you are early, we're we're figuring this out like that I think I would I would want to hear. And the other thing like that I found uh you know and for me this is more of like a personal thing. It's less about AI or anything but I stepped into a really different role. um you know most of my career I I've managed uh I definitely managed before but never like at a scale that's growing so fast and and then at a company that is like so different you know that it the role was just every day was something new uh and for a long time I felt like I'm kind of like bad at this or you know I don't know what I'm doing um and then I went and like talked to friends that had led like really large design teams dreams or um or or were in a similar transition as me and they all felt exactly the same or the problems that I had were not unique. Um and so you know this is I guess yeah more personal advice that it's like I think at any stage of your career there's that feeling of like imposttor syndrome and like what am I doing? I don't I don't know how to do this. Finding people you can talk to that are going through the similar things. you'll find that there's usually a lot of shared kind of uh challenges and struggles and having that like sort of whether it's a mentor or just like a a buddy that is like impartial and out of it has was really helpful to me. Um and you know finding that community I think has been has been helpful. Um so yeah so like that and then understanding that this is all so new and evolving really quickly.

中文：往回看一点，你现在承担着一个史诗般的角色。进入 OpenAI 并接手这份工作时，肯定有很多意外。你希望当时的自己提前知道什么？如果能对第一天的 Ian 说一句话，会是什么？ 我有很多话想说。第一件事是要认识到我们真的还处在早期，而不是被它吓住。我加入 OpenAI 时其实相当 intimidated。GPT-4 刚出来，我会想：「这些东西到底是什么？」我虽然在用，却觉得自己并没有真正理解。到现在我仍然有很多要学。所以我希望当时听到的是：你还处在早期，大家都在一起摸索。另一件事更个人一些：我进入了一个完全不同的管理岗位。过去我也管理过人，但从没管理过增长如此快的团队，也没在这样一家公司工作。每一天都有新事情，很长一段时间我觉得自己很糟、不知道自己在做什么。后来我去找那些带过大型设计团队、经历过类似转变的朋友，发现他们的感觉完全一样；我遇到的问题并不独特。职业生涯任何阶段都可能有冒牌者综合征：觉得「我在干什么？我不会做这个」。找一些经历相似的人聊聊，无论是导师还是置身事外的朋友，都会很有帮助。理解这一切都很新、变化很快，也同样重要。

That is extremely helpful to hear. Elena Vera had this really great post. I don't know if you know her. She's how to grow to lovable right now. uh she had this great post called stop the AI confidence theater where she just kind of like all these people just keep posting all these things they've done with AI and all the ways it's changes their life and it's just they're killing it figured all out and really it's like very few people like very few of these things are actually that great and working and and it's just like stop stop pretending like this is actually you figured it all out.

中文：Elena Verna 有一篇很棒的文章，叫「停止 AI 自信表演」。很多人不断发布自己用 AI 做成了什么、生活被改变了多少，好像一切都已经搞定；但其实这些事情很少真的那么好用。别再假装自己已经把一切都弄明白了。

I think it's much better to be humble about it and be like wow yeah I don't know this is like changing quickly and like I'm just going to embrace it and see where it goes. Yeah, and that connects to what you said was a core component of people that are doing well right now, people that are curious and just kind of poking around and trying to trying these things and try them again because maybe it didn't work now. It didn't work before, now it works now.

中文：我认为，坦诚一点、承认「这变化太快了，我也不知道，只是想看看它会走到哪里」会更好。这也对应你刚才说的：现在过得好的人通常好奇、不断试探，第一次没用就再试。之前不行的东西，现在可能就行了。

100%. Yeah. It's like being kind of like Yeah. Every every model, every new every new feature, it's like the people that are poking around at those edges, I I found are just having such a blast doing it, you know. And this connects to something else Kevin Wheel, former CPO at OpenAI, said on the podcast, which has always stuck with me, which is the model we have today is the worst the model will ever be.

中文：完全正确。每个模型、每个新功能出来时，那些在边缘不断试探的人，我发现他们玩得最开心。这也让我想起 Kevin Weil 在节目里说的一句话：我们今天拥有的模型，就是未来最差的模型。

Exactly. I mean, that that goes back to like when, you know, we we Yeah. I mean, a new model comes out what, every week? I don't know, every day. Like,

中文：没错。如果把所有实验室都算上，可能每天、每周都有新模型；它们变化得太快，而且越来越好。我会提醒自己，这有点像计算机早期：元件技术快速演进，能力突然跃迁；昨天完全不可能的限制，今天可能已经消失了。AI 也是这样，昨天彻底坏掉的东西，今天可能突然能用了。

uh, if you count all the labs and and everything, it's like it's changing so quickly and and everyone gets better. Um and I don't know it's like yeah I I always try to remind myself it's like you know you you know it must be like what like I don't know building or designing and like early days of computers when like componentry was like really evolving really quickly and there were these drastic step changes and um you know like you would hit these limitations and all of a sudden those limitations were gone. You know, I think it's the same, right? It's like these things just change and they're what was totally broken yesterday now actually just kind of works.

中文：我觉得这就像早期的计算机或建筑、设计行业：基础设施快速演进，限制不断消失。今天坏掉的功能明天可能就能用。

So maybe to start to close out the conversation, say a designer is listening to this and they're in that bucket of overwhelmed, anxious, struggling, stressed, uh feeling uncertain about their future. What's one suggestion you have for them to help them move out of that state and into a better place? just recognizing that it's it's a it's a totally rational feeling and it's a great time to just try to explore and see what if I tried working what if I tried you know think rethinking about the the tooling or what if I just embraced like oh maybe I should prototype more let me try you know um try using these tools but again like recognizing that I maybe it helps to hear that I think that we're all still so early and it's and it's still changing and and just kind of embracing that like just have fun with it and and see where it goes. And and I think maybe another thing I would say is really try to focus on the output the outcome, right? At the end of the day, we're not here to build tools like processes. We're not here to like build uh or token max or something like that. we're here to make great software that people love or great products or whatever it is you do. Um, but that's the thing that really matters and if you focus on that, you know, I think that you'll hopefully find that, you know, these tools can help you do that, but you still have a huge role in that as as the person that's kind of steering and directing it.

中文：如果要开始收束了，假设有个设计师正在听，处在焦虑、疲惫、压力大、对未来不确定的状态，你会给他什么建议，帮助他走出来？

So, along those lines, I'm going to take us to a couple recurring corners of the podcast. The first corner is AI corner. The question is just what's one way that you have found AI to be really useful in your job that maybe might inspire someone to use say uh JGBT or Codex

中文：先承认这种感觉完全合理，而且现在正是探索的好时机：试试换一种工作方式，重新想想工具，或者多做原型。可以尝试使用这些工具，但也要记住，我们都还处在很早、仍在变化的阶段。接受这一点，享受过程，看看它会把你带到哪里。还有一点是要把注意力放在产出和结果上：我们最终不是为了构建工具、流程或 token maxing，而是为了做出人们喜欢的好软件、好产品。工具可以帮你做到这一点，但真正负责掌舵和指引方向的人仍然是你。

as like a designer designer. I mean nowadays I spend less time in the pixels. Um but I really do use it to kind of help me think through broader ideas. Um or may like, you know, I'll have an idea at night or something and then I'll just like quickly, you know, type it in and have it like prototype something and it'll give me like an idea that I can go and talk to the team about and it help visualize something. And so there that's like a part of the design process. It's like early ideas or we're riffing through something and and I can I found that chatbt whether it's CHP work or Codex can like really kind of help me visualize that. That's been something that's been really fun. And then like there's there's more of the operation side, you know, it's like I have it now like checking and making sure that like important Slack uh messages that I need to follow up with are summarized and giving me context before um sort of like uh you know important meetings or for recruiting or for all like every pro every part of my process I I I use this to kind of augment u uh the work that I do.

中文：进入 AI corner：有没有一种你在工作中发现特别有用的 AI 用法，能启发那些想用 ChatGPT 或 Codex 的人？

It makes sense. on the prototyping piece, just to give someone a tip on how to do this. Are you opening up on your phone and firing off just like a codeex thread? What's like the mechanic of doing this? At

中文：作为设计师，我现在花在像素上的时间少了，但会用 AI 帮我思考更大的想法。晚上突然有一个点子，我会快速输入，让它做一个原型，给我一个可以带去和团队讨论的想法或视觉化版本。这已经成为设计过程的一部分：在早期想法阶段或反复讨论时，ChatGPT、ChatGPT Work 或 Codex 能帮我把东西可视化。运营层面也是如此：它会帮我总结需要跟进的重要 Slack 消息，在重要会议前提供上下文；招聘和其他工作流程，我也会用它增强自己的工作。

CHP work has been incredible because um it now runs fully in the cloud, right? And so the idea is you can kind of just be anywhere and sort of like talk to chat and have it like really spend the time and and come back with like a really great artifact. So, I found that it's been really fun to just be like, "Hey, you know, we're working on I don't know whatever um this thing is like whether it's helped me think through it or um you know, yeah, sometimes I will just have like some ideas that I would love to see like quickly visualize before I even like take it further and it will just like kind of help me like play with it and try it and stuff." And so that's been really fun. The fact that it's so accessible, right? um like I might not even be near a computer or I can you know um I don't know just kind of like have that that flexibility I think is really fun.

中文：ChatGPT Work 很厉害，因为它现在完全在云端运行。你可以在任何地方和 ChatGPT 对话，让它花时间回来交付一个很好的产物。我可能不在电脑旁，但仍然能让它帮我思考某个问题，或者在继续推进之前快速把一个想法可视化。它很容易使用，这种灵活性很有意思。

Awesome. Okay, I'm going to take us to another corner uh fail corner.

中文：好。接下来是另一个固定环节：失败角。

Yeah.

中文：好。

So the reason I do this a lot of people awesome awesome people like yourself come on the podcast and all people hear is all the amazing things they've done all the ways they've been really successful and they don't hear all the times things didn't work out. And I feel like that's very important for people to hear. It's not always up until the right and success. What's a story of a time you failed in your career and and what did you learn from that?

中文：很多优秀的人上节目后，听众只会听到他们做成了什么、怎样成功，却听不到那些没有奏效的时刻。我觉得这对大家很重要：职业道路并不是一直向上。你职业生涯里有过什么失败？从中学到了什么？

I mean there are so many times um I think that I mean even at OpenAI it's like I I think that I found that I've had to learn every step of the way, right? Um, you know, when I first uh joined, I remember, you know, not really even like fully understanding like how I wanted to build a design team and, you know, um, not understanding how to hire or whatever. Um, I mean, just I I sort of felt like I was kind of failing every day, but just kind of like quickly trying to adjust and learn. Um, I think that that uh I I don't know. I mean, that's like maybe kind of a copout answer, but like really just feeling like every day I'm kind of like learning on the go. [laughter] I I feel that my whole career has sort of been that way and that I have never really kind of like planned like any any one step and I've in and sort of like quickly learning from your mistakes. I've shipped plenty of things that did not work out. Um and uh I've also shipped things that you know you know have worked out but like the most many times I I've shipped or you know you try something and it's kind of a failure and uh you know at Instagram we had flops and then we you know we'd like quickly move on. I mean, I worked on IGTV which was like a huge flop and then we shipped reals uh and reals was like we and and I mean that's a good example cuz like we had we we just like kind of baked in some wrong assumptions and we held on to a few constraints but then we learned from that quickly and we were like okay actually let's change that and then we sort of redid it and then it became a really successful product. Um and uh you know I I've seen that many cases many cases of like and that's helped I think that's helped harden me to the sort of critique and feedback of things because you know sometimes you get it wrong sometimes you try something and sometimes it is just about having to like put it out in the world and work through it and um and get the feedback and and iterate and I think that that's like the mo more importantly is not sort of what you shipped one time but how you react and how you um you know how you kind of like fix forward and how you continue to iterate and listen to listen to your users.

中文：这样的时刻太多了。即使在 OpenAI，我也一直是边走边学。刚加入时，我甚至不完全知道该怎样组建设计团队、怎样招聘。我常常觉得自己每天都在失败，只能快速调整、继续学习。我的职业生涯大概一直如此：没有提前规划好每一步，而是从错误中快速学习。我发布过很多没有奏效的产品；在 Instagram 时，我们有过失败，也会快速转向。比如 IGTV 是一次巨大的失败，后来我们发布 Reels；一开始我们带着错误假设，也坚持了一些不该坚持的约束，但很快学到教训，改变方向，重新做了一遍，最终 Reels 成为成功的产品。一次次尝试失败，让我更能承受批评和反馈。有时你就是做错了，有时必须把东西放到真实世界里，通过反馈继续推进。重要的不只是某一次发布了什么，而是你如何回应、怎样向前修正、怎样继续迭代并倾听用户。

This is a very common theme in this corner is just people's careers are like it's mostly failure along the way. [laughter]

中文：这个环节经常会出现一个主题：人们的职业生涯大部分时间，其实都是在失败中走过来的。

Yeah, definitely.

中文：确实如此。

And so I think that's helpful for people to hear.

中文：所以我觉得这对大家很有帮助。

Yeah.

中文：是的。

Uh okay, before we get to a very exciting lightning round, is there anything else you wanted to share that we haven't covered? If I could distill it, it's like I hope that this is just like a really fun time to build build stuff. And I hope that we, you know, as designers can be really adaptive and focus on making really fun, making really great stuff. And I and I and that I think that designers are just like hope, you know, I think I think great companies are are seeking designers and seeking great great design. And I found that to be really true. There probably going to be a bunch of companies that will be left behind because they haven't shifted, but I think that that there's plenty of room for amazing, great design, and that's going to be more true than ever.

中文：在进入很精彩的闪电问答前，还有什么没谈到、但你想补充的吗？如果要把它浓缩成一句话，我希望这是一个很适合做东西的有趣时代。作为设计师，我们应该保持适应性，专注于做出有趣、出色的东西。我相信优秀公司正在寻找设计师，也需要优秀设计；这一点我亲自感受过。可能会有一些公司因为没有转型而掉队，但优秀设计的空间非常大，而且只会比过去更大。

I completely agree. I'm very bullish on design.

中文：我完全同意。我对设计非常乐观。

Yes.

中文：是的。

Well, Ian, with that, we've reached our very exciting lightning round. I've got five questions for you. Are you ready?

中文：好，我们进入非常精彩的闪电问答。我有五个问题，准备好了吗？

Okay. Yes.

中文：好，准备好了。

All right. Here we go. What are two or three books that you find yourself recommending most to other people?

中文：你最常推荐给别人的两三本书是什么？

I'm not like, you know, it's funny. I'm not like a big big book recommener. Um I think like when people ask me uh I do get asked about like books for design and I'm not I haven't found that many that really have stuck with me like purely design. Although I will say I have I do love the design of everyday things. I think that's like such a classic.

中文：我不算特别爱给人推荐书。有人问设计书时，我也没发现很多纯设计书真正留在我心里。不过我很喜欢《设计心理学》，它是一本经典。

That's the one that's the one that you know it's not like yeah it's not a unique recommendation. Um, but it it is just kind of a classic of thinking about how you how we think how I think about design. Yeah,

中文：这本确实经典。不是一个独特的推荐，但它确实是一本思考设计、也思考我自己怎样做设计的经典。

you have to read it if you're in tech or not in tech.

中文：无论你是否从事科技行业，都应该读一读。

Yeah.

中文：好。还有别的吗？还是我们继续？

Awesome. Uh, anything else there or should we keep moving?

中文：太棒了。还有别的吗？还是我们继续？

We can keep moving. Yeah,

中文：继续吧。

let's do it. Favorite recent movie or TV show that you have really enjoyed?

中文：最近最喜欢的电影或电视剧是什么？

Okay, so I have one that actually is not a movie or TV show, but it's a I I'm in New York. I just saw a Broadway show

中文：我有一个答案其实不是电影或电视剧。我在纽约，刚看了一场百老汇演出。

um called Maybe Happy Ending.

中文：叫《Maybe Happy Ending》。

Yes. I've seen it. Love it so much. Yes.

中文：我看过，太喜欢了。

Oh, you saw it? Okay. Yeah. It was so unique, right? Um and of course it kind of hit home a little bit because it's about these like super intelligent humanoid uh robots and like you know um but um but the the production was incredible. the set uh design, everything about it I thought was like so unique. Um which was um I thought Yeah. So if you have the chance to see it, I thought it was really really good. Um I also just saw the invite which was I thought and [laughter] have you seen it?

中文：你也看过？它很独特，对吧？它讲的是非常智能的人形机器人，所以有一点打中我。但制作非常出色：舞台、布景和所有设计都很独特。如果有机会，我很推荐去看。我还看了《The Invite》，你看过吗？

Yes. Also love it. So simple but so good.

中文：看过，也很喜欢。它非常简单，但好得惊人。

It that's what I loved about it is it's like so simple. It's like it actually is a like a play, you know, and it's just four people in one kind of beautiful apartment and the set design is amazing. Um, but like the writing, act, everything about it was like incredible and it's just kind of a wild ride [laughter] and I went in knowing nothing about it. I thought it was incredible.

中文：我喜欢的正是它的简单：本质上是一出戏，四个人待在一间漂亮公寓里，布景设计很棒。写作、表演，一切都很出色，整个过程像一场疯狂旅程。我完全不知道剧情，结果觉得太精彩了。

Excellent taste, sir. I love both those so much. Uh, and the invite just came out. It's in theaters right now.

中文：品味真好。这两部我都很喜欢。《The Invite》刚上映，目前还在影院里。

Yeah. Next question. Favorite product you've recently discovered that you really love. I I feel kind of like a typical Silicon Valley person recommending this one or something. But um I did finally switch to an EV after having uh many cars for a long time and I got a Rivian and um I don't know they just I do respect the design a lot of just kind of how they've really made it just all of the they like I think if you know probably Tesla's similar but like there's a lot of assumptions that how get operating a car should work have gone away. You just walk up to it, it unlocks, you know? It's like you just like you don't have to like turn on and off the car. And it's cool to see like that evolving. Of course, I love, you know, at Whimos are probably if if I could like own a Whimo right now that that is the most magical experience in the world. Um, and uh I I'm waiting on baited breath for that to to be broadly accessible for everybody. Do you have a favorite life motto you find yourself coming back to in work or in life?

中文：下一个问题：最近发现、很喜欢的产品是什么？我觉得自己像个典型的硅谷人，但我终于换了电动车。我买了一辆 Rivian。我很欣赏它的设计：许多关于汽车怎样操作的假设都被拿掉了。你走近它就会解锁，不需要费心打开或关闭汽车。看到这种体验如何变化很有意思。当然，Waymo 如果现在能买到，我可能会选它；那是世界上最神奇的体验。我正等着它向所有人普及。你有没有在工作或生活中反复想起的格言？

Not necessarily other than I think it like kind of trying to sum up like how I felt about all of this is like have fun with it and like just try stuff. Um and you know I think don't feel like I've never felt like you have to fit into a specific box. Um, and know that it's perfectly all right to be very fluid about the way you work or the way you think about things and um, I don't know, be flexible and adaptable. But yeah, it's not quite a life motto. More of a vibe of just trying to like have fun with it and and build great stuff.

中文：没有特别固定的格言。概括我对这一切的感受，大概就是：享受过程，去试东西。你不需要把自己塞进某个固定框里；工作和思考方式完全可以流动。保持灵活、保持适应性。与其说这是格言，不如说是一种做东西时要玩得开心、做出好东西的状态。

I I I should shift this question to what's just like the vibe. What's [laughter] the vibe that's been helpful to you? Because I love that. It's very a Sam Alman in terms of just you can just build stuff.

中文：我应该把这个问题改成：最近对你有帮助的到底是什么状态？因为我很喜欢这个答案，有点像 Sam Altman 的风格：你就是可以直接做东西。

Exactly. Yeah.

中文：完全正确。

Okay. Last question. Something I love about your career history. If you look at your LinkedIn, you were a designer at Groupon. I love that you are at Groupon and now you're heading design for essentially super intelligence. [laughter] Uh what's something you learned at Groupon that is is being is maybe helpful these days building

中文：最后一个问题。我很喜欢你的职业经历：如果看你的 LinkedIn，你曾经在 Groupon 做设计师；现在却在为超级智能做设计。你在 Groupon 学到的什么，对今天构建超级智能 AI 还有帮助？

super intelligent AI?

中文：对，构建超级智能 AI。

I love that. Groupon was a really fun company. Um, Andrew Mason was like a really incredible CEO and just that he brought such character uh to the product, you know, it was like kind of a brandled product. Um, and um, you know, like we we had a there was like a a comedy team. Uh there was like a writer team at at at but they were like all comedians basically and the product really did not take itself seriously at least in its early early couple years. It was like it was it didn't take itself seriously and I think that the brand really stuck out, right? You weren't signing up for Groupon because NEC I mean of course the daily deal was great. You were getting like 50% off something but people loved that email because it was like really well written and it was funny and it was and it had character and I thought that like the early on the company did a really good job with with brand and sort of embracing uh that side of things. Um and and I think the other thing if I were to carry that forward is I found that every company that I've worked for has such unique DNA and the way you have to work kind of maybe changes a little bit based on that right. So I you know Groupon was run one way you know then I went to Instagram which was like this very design and and creativity focused and Kevin's you know Kevin Cyrum was you know really like an incredible designer and he he sort of saw himself or like worked in that way with us which was really cool and it just created a different way of working and then you have like Sam Alman who's like a completely different way of operating and he's like uh you know I you know, and then and open being a research lab. And so learning that companies have these really different DNAs and understanding how to sort of embrace them and kind of leverage that to your uh like or help kind of like empower that or like I guess lean into that um has been something that I've learned a lot um from moving around and getting the opportunity to work at very very different companies.

中文：Groupon 是一家很有意思的公司。Andrew Mason 是一位非常出色的 CEO，他给产品带来了很强的个性。早期公司里甚至有一支喜剧团队和一支写作者团队，成员基本都是喜剧演员；产品完全不把自己当回事，至少最初几年是这样。品牌因此非常突出：人们打开 Groupon 的邮件，不只是因为每日优惠，也因为邮件写得好、很有趣、有性格。公司早期在品牌上做得很好。如果要把这点带到今天，我会说，每家公司都有独特的 DNA，工作方式也要随之改变。Groupon 有自己的方式，Instagram 更强调设计和创造力，Kevin Systrom 也以设计者的方式和团队工作，形成了另一种文化；Sam Altman 的管理方式又完全不同，而 OpenAI 把自己当作研究实验室。换过几家公司后，我学到的是理解这些不同 DNA，顺势发挥它们的力量，而不是强行用同一种方式工作。

And also just to add to that, it's also important to realize you're not going to change that. you're not gonna like come in and change that culture because that's just that's very hard especially if it's very founder oriented.

中文：还要意识到，你不可能轻易改变公司的文化。尤其当文化很受创始人影响时，改变它非常难。

I think it's about finding like oh wow like at OpenAI you know yeah sure like we spent more time at Instagram we definitely moved slower and I would say that we um we changed the product less and that actually worked really well for most stages uh of of Instagram. uh but I don't think that that would work in in the current stage of where we're at with open AI and that way of working. Of course, I bring a lot to that and I think like you know at at um at Instagram we have this motto like do the simple thing first and we always use that and we really embrace that. I've tried to carry that through to the way I think about building product at at OpenAI. Um but that's not the only way I think of working. You know, sometimes it's actually not necessarily the right way to think about. Sometimes we actually do throw some things out that we're still experimenting with. And so just being really I found that having to yeah be flexible and yeah, not necessarily trying to change it, but try trying to kind of like help round it out. Maybe.

中文：我认为应该先找到这样的事实：在 Instagram，我们花更多时间，推进得更慢，改变产品的频率也更低，这在 Instagram 的大部分阶段都很有效；但在 OpenAI 现在所处的阶段，这种工作方式可能就不适用。Instagram 有「先做简单的事情」这条经验，我尽量带到 OpenAI 的产品工作里，但它不是唯一的工作方式。有时我们确实应该把仍在实验中的东西丢掉。因此我学到的是保持灵活：别试图改造公司，试着补充它、顺着它的特点工作。

Ian, what a what an incredible uh place you have in the world right now. Just being on the inside of such cool technology, such cutting edge stuff that's happening. Uh, and I feel very fortunate that you found time to chat with us and share what you're seeing, where things are heading. Two final questions. Where do you want to point people? If you want to plug anything and how can listeners be useful to you?

中文：Ian，你现在处在一个很不可思议的位置，身处如此前沿的技术之中。谢谢你抽时间来聊这些，分享你看到的变化和未来方向。最后两个问题：你希望大家去哪里找到你？听众怎样能对你有帮助？

Where do I want to point people? I mean, I think that um please, you know, I guess use, you know, have fun with with the stuff we're making with JBT and Codex and fire away feedback and thoughts. I'm on Twitter. Uh I love to talk with designers uh at all sort of stages. Um or not just designers, engineers, PMs, whatever. Um, that's probably where I'm most uh sort of reachable and accessible. Um, and you know, how can you? Yeah, I think to be useful. Again, it's like I love when when people do show off the way they are kind of working and how that's kind of shifting and that's like a great way for us to learn how we can we can build better products both like internally at OpenAI but just as a as a design community like maybe showcasing a little bit more of our process because it is becoming a little bit more opaque like well how is it working just um I think sharing that is is like such a gift to the community so doing more of that

中文：大家可以使用我们正在做的 ChatGPT 和 Codex，尽情尝试，也请把反馈和想法告诉我们。我在 Twitter 上，也很愿意和不同阶段的设计师、工程师、产品经理交流。怎样帮到我？我很喜欢看到人们展示自己的工作方式正在怎样变化；这能帮助 OpenAI 内部，也能让整个设计社区学到怎样构建更好的产品。现在工作过程变得更不透明，分享自己的流程本身就是一种礼物，所以希望大家多做这件事。

also point people to your website which I have here now. And I think my face is probably changing colors because the site [laughter] has all these crazy colors.

中文：我还要把大家指向你的网站。我现在打开了，感觉我的脸都快被网站上的各种颜色染了。

So, if you go to Iansber.com, you could see this uh insane website. That's [laughter] your personal website and there's a

中文：如果你去 Iansber.com，就能看到这个色彩疯狂的网站。那是你的个人网站，而且还有一个——

Yeah, that's a deep dive into all of my past work. You can see there. Yeah. [laughter]

中文：它是对我过去工作的一次深入展示，你可以在那里看到。

And the trick is you Yeah. You'll have to discover the Easter egg where there's a game in involved.

中文：你还得自己发现彩蛋：网站里藏着一个游戏。

That's right.

中文：没错。

Uh

中文：呃。

see if you can set the high score.

中文：看看你能不能打出最高分。

Yeah. This high scores are out of control. I don't know what's happening. [laughter] Someone's found a cheat code. Uh, Ian, thank you so much for being here. Thank you so much for doing this.

中文：现在的最高分高得离谱，我也不知道怎么回事。好像有人找到了作弊码。Ian，谢谢你来这里，也谢谢你做这期节目。

Buddy, this was awesome. Super fun.

中文：朋友，这次太棒了，特别开心。

Same. Bye everyone. Thank you so much for listening. If you found this valuable, you can subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. Also, please consider giving us a rating or leaving a review as that really helps other listeners find the podcast. You can find all past episodes or learn more about the show at lennispodcast.com. See you in the next episode.

中文：我也是。大家再见，谢谢收听。如果你觉得节目有价值，可以在 Apple Podcasts、Spotify 或常用播客应用订阅。也欢迎评分或留下评论，这会帮助更多听众找到节目。过去的节目和更多信息可以在 lennispodcast.com 找到。我们下一期再见。