Neil Renicker

Design & product strategy ⁕ Product design partner for ambitious founders @staffdigitalco ⁕ Labor of love @tryinstrument

[Neil Renicker @neilrenicker]

Dear designer, don’t panic

Use a barbell strategy for designing with AI

Zoom way out. Work hard by hand to understand and architect systems / stories / the big idea

Zoom way in. Pick moments to obsess unreasonably and invent clever twists in corners of the work where the human touch is irreplaceable: microinteractions / prose / animation / visuals / brand

In the expansive middle, welcome the company of your obsequious robot underlings, and orchestrate them broadly with your exquisite taste and considerable suspicion

[Neil Renicker @neilrenicker]

@brian_lovin one-shot side projects are the new tweets: lil passing thoughts you can dash off but express as working software. no shame in that!

[Neil Renicker @neilrenicker]

Rodrigo - one very small, very specific piece of feedback: I've found this "agent completed" state really unwelcome.

The blue outline around the edited frame and the checkmark badge (plus its hover pill) stick around much longer than I'd expect. I've never once interacted with them, they read like a selection when nothing's selected, and I actually don't know how to reliably get them to disappear.

Would love it if that affordance faded on its own after a few seconds, or as soon as I click back into the canvas.

[Neil Renicker @neilrenicker]

The @figma agent has gotten really good at doing Figma-specific stuff:

- turning things into components and then deploying the component across a bunch of artboards
- moving artboards around, renaming and numbering artboards for human consumption
- applying tokens and text styles across dozens of artboards and hundreds of layers
- has gotten noticeably quicker and more successful over past couple months

Really enjoying, terrific work team. Allows me to focus at exactly the right level of abstraction.

[Neil Renicker @neilrenicker]

@rodrigodavies will keep you posted as I explore! thank you Rodrigo!

[Neil Renicker @neilrenicker]

@nickbytes sorry man, so sad. what a sweetheart.

[Ryan Singer @rjs]

UX is becoming interesting again.

[Neil Renicker @neilrenicker]

@saniaio thank you for blessing my feed with this gift

[Neil Renicker @neilrenicker]

track my workouts and watch streaks compound
see my friends' runs on a map
save and organize inspiring images
look at restaurant photos to get excited about going
play cute little games
scroll listings for a house I can't afford yet
pick a hotel from the pool photos
watch the wiggly little car on the map when my ride is on the way
flip through old photos from a trip
stare at the album art while it plays
zoom in on a trail map before a hike
watch my brokerage chart climb (or slide)
pick a font for the birthday invite
browse a lovely little brand's catalog and add everything to cart for when I win the lottery
watch the radar before a storm

I still like user interfaces ;)

[Eddie Lobanovskiy @lobanovskiy]

thought: what if the future of design isn't visual at all?

real talk, I barely visit new websites or download new apps anymore, there's really no need. I have bots that know me super well and cover different aspects of my life. So when I need things I simply send a voice message or hop on a quick call with Mono (my main agent) and he assigns tasks to different bots, who have all my services and connections and able to scan through sites and apps on my behalf to just get me results. Sure they can shoot me an image of a product or what not, but I don't really care what the brand looks like at that point. I just want to be away from the screen. 🤷‍♂️

we're obsessing over pixels while the interface quietly turns into a conversation. maybe even a thought in a near future.

soooo what are we actually designing next?... or should I say building? 😉

[Jeremy Mack @mutewinter]

Bullish on ai that doesn’t invade human spaces

[Neil Renicker @neilrenicker]

my favorite trait in great designers is sort of a naive optimism

they can squint at a nascent idea, overlook all the rough edges, and keep yes-anding until the thing fits

[Neil Renicker @neilrenicker]

@kevintwohy bullish on https://t.co/S4Qbi4Epm5

[Neil Renicker @neilrenicker]

corollary: we may be on the cusp of a golden age of small studios and independent work

[signüll @signulll]

at a $2t valuation & ~5,300 employees (per sept filing), anthropic effectively creates ~$377m in value per employee.

so it’s now safe to say that we are entering an era where the scale of economic output will likely become pretty radically decoupled from the scale of human orgs.

this also likely means legacy companies will need to trim to not only compete but also to avoid the pain of running a large org (sheer costs, inefficiency, bureaucracy, etc).

this is basically what dario & team have pointed out as a potential catalyst for employment destabilization.

[Neil Renicker @neilrenicker]

@raunofreiberg -

[Neil Renicker @neilrenicker]

– Ogilvy on Advertising, 1985

[Neil Renicker @neilrenicker]

ogilvy on alcoholism in the ranks. my man did not play. to the fortune of the firm!

[Neil Renicker @neilrenicker]

@lukeSVG @paper no components is a big deficiency

but coming soon it appears
https://t.co/W8L0Fz9uJE

[Stephen Haney @stephenhaney]

I wanted to share more about Components in @paper to help everyone plan for the upcoming launch. We've been hard at work and we have something truly next level to ship soon.

1. Components dev is going very well. We don't set hard deadlines, we're a "release it when it's good" kind of product, but I'd estimate ~1 month or so. Certainly before EOY.

2. Creating one shared world from your codebase to the canvas and back is the priority.

We don't want to just repeat the abstractions from existing design tools; we want to fix the fragmented workflow between developers and designers. But we also don't want to add cognitive load or engineering concept while you're designing.

Principle: designing with components should feel familiar, designer-first, and then also happen to align to your codebase effortlessly. No tool has ever pulled this off yet.

3. The initial components release will be mature and include: slots, variants with props, React in, React out, and full agent support. Components from your codebase can also run real code, so components can have logic, dates, and math.

4. Agents can read and write components quickly, accurately, and with low token usage. To your agent, components in Paper just look like React, which means they already know exactly how to use them.

I'm so excited to share Paper components with the Paper community. Thanks for your patience as we do the R&D necessary to ship something next level 🙏

[Neil Renicker @neilrenicker]

@dmcgco I think that's some of the loss I feel if I skip the canvas or drawing and jump straight to building. something about a spatial canvas that has just enough friction where I can trip a bit while moving things around and make a lovely little mess

[Neil Renicker @neilrenicker]

@mds disagree that good design must always be long-lasting (unless that includes our fond memory of it).

thinking of things like a beautifully designed event, a transient campaign, design that makes a big impact for a moment in time then dissolves

good can still be brief!

[Neil Renicker @neilrenicker]

weekend plans

[Will Manidis @WillManidis]

The benefits of abundant intelligence will accrue far outside of San Fransisco.

Spent the last year writing about capital, sovereignty, and the coming reordering of economic power.

THE COMMANDING HEIGHTS
https://t.co/d048KdAkbv

[Neil Renicker @neilrenicker]

@graceongrid beautiful