11: Designing AI video tools you can't prototype in Figma (w/ Lewis Dingley)

Jim Zarkadas (00:00) Hey, I'm Jim, and this is the Love at First Try podcast, a podcast for SaaS CEOs and developers that truly want to learn more about design and care about it, but there are no designers that find it too complex. In every episode, we discuss how to design products that become sticky and unforgettable. We dive into the topics of taste, UX, growth, and conversions, and we share practical tips and frameworks you can add into your development process. Enough with the intro, so let's dive into today's episode. Jim Zarkadas (00:27) Thank So yeah, welcome to the podcast and thanks for joining me and making the time to discuss today. As I said, we always start with a brief intro. So my first question would be who you are. I mean, I know who you are, but for the people that are going to watch the episode to a brief intro of like who you are, what's your story and what you're working on right now. And it'll be interesting. We discussed on our first call a bit of your story in the background. I've seen your website, but I'm curious to hear your story from you as well. Like how you started, how you Lewis (00:54) Yeah, so... Jim Zarkadas (00:55) got into design and so on. Lewis (00:57) Cool, fun start. My name's Lewis. I'm product designer. Start, I would say, from the very beginning. As you can see, it sounds like I sound British, but I'm actually born in Yorkshire up north. And my dad, owned his own company in the UK and he sold it and he decided to just leave the country and go abroad in France. So I actually grew up from the age of seven years old to about 20, early 20s in France. most of my education carried out in France. Jim Zarkadas (01:28) Wow. Lewis (01:32) I went to L'École de Design, not Atlantique, which is a mouthful, but it's a very reputated design school in Europe. Brazil, China, they've got this school based everywhere. It was really good going to that school because it had so many different backgrounds and design. When I say so many different backgrounds, for example, in the first year, people would come and pose in the classroom and we'll all be around and we'll have to draw the person who's posing in the middle, things that have nothing to do with me that want to do different designs. Jim Zarkadas (02:04) Mmm. Lewis (02:06) We of like explored all these different backgrounds. did like vehicle design, transport design, industrial design. So really cool stuff. So yeah, I decided to go into digital design because it just for me, like I've always played around with computers. I always ⁓ enjoyed like video games and things like that. And also like when you see the rise of like Instagram, Facebook, apps, I just saw digital design is like, it's kind of the future. So I wanted to be part of that. Jim Zarkadas (02:12) wow, nice man. Lewis (02:34) and I did two master's degrees. So one is human computer interactions and the other one is UX design. And that was really interesting because we did like quite a lot of partnerships. We did a partnership with like the Ministry of Defense in France. did like this survival mask and things like that that they got interested in. went, we did expeditions for that mask, we went on the news and everything, so that was pretty cool. And I also did a partnership with Citroen, the car brand. in how we can do connected transports and connected vehicles. So yeah, and through my career then I kind of diverted into lots of different backgrounds. started then my career working for Reynolds. That was difficult times, it was COVID times, but that was kind of designing the vehicle dashboards of the future, which was really interesting because you have to kind of think five years ahead when you're designing for car manufacturers where they kind of design the car and the interior and everything a lot before it's going to be in production and even launch. So you've to really think ahead and what the technology is going to look like in the upcoming years. That's why most of the cars these days are quite outdated, even the ones that come out recently. It's like they don't have any AI. Like they have like all these modern screens, but technology is going so fast that you have to kind of keep up. So yeah, and after that I went and got a job for Sky because I had a vision to like move back to the UK. So I got a job at Sky, which is the TV company, like the broadcast, I know for a lot of things. At that time was working on Now TV, so it's like the equivalent of Netflix in the evening. And working on Skyglass, which is also like their TV that they brought out. And then I got a job at Dyson, which is even a different kind of environment, because I working on physical products and not the digital, as much like TVs and cards. So it was quite interesting to go into that environment, because they Jim Zarkadas (04:21) Yeah. Nice. Lewis (04:46) work on so much different products. They have like the floor care, the hair care and they have like wearables now which is really interesting. Jim Zarkadas (04:55) Hmm. Lewis (04:56) ⁓ I think the biggest thing in the beginning of my career is like, wanted to build like a reputation. Like I wanted to build my CV by working in companies with big names, big brands and things like that. So that's why I in from like Reynolds to Skye to Dyson. It's like, really kind of uplifted the beginning of my career, but I got to a point where I was thinking like, I want to, in these big businesses, you kind of want designer amongst 40, 50 other designers. And sometimes, especially myself, I really Jim Zarkadas (05:07) Hmm. Lewis (05:25) like standing out. I then got an offer from Thresher, which I was like, who's Thresher? I don't know who Thresher is. Small little business. They just got a series C round of, think, 150 million of investment. So they had loads of money in the bank ready to burn. And that's when I thought, well, I'm going to take the step and go into ⁓ startup scale up businesses. so when I started working for Thresher, that's when it got really interesting because it shows like their like how fast to pace Startups are in terms of making decision delivering compared to like my experience I used to have so that was quite a big step Jim Zarkadas (05:57) Hmm. Lewis (06:02) And yeah, I worked there for two years, became product design lead there. then, let's say recently, it's been about a year now, I decided to go into AI. And AI is like, obviously the biggest topic at the moment. So going to a business that focuses on AI, it was a really big leap for me. ⁓ And so I'm currently product designer at Veed. Jim Zarkadas (06:21) Hmm. Lewis (06:27) Sorry for that really long intro. Jim Zarkadas (06:27) Nice man. No, no, that's a really great intro, not too long at all. Yeah, that's a cool story, I have to say. What I really like about your background is how you've been exposed on different types of design. That's something I'm almost jealous about because for me, I started as a software engineer. So my story on this is, also by the way that you mentioned France, I went to a Franco-Ellenic school back in Greece. So I started friends. I think until 16 years old, I even had to studying Molière and like all kinds of crazy stuff. It was a bit too much, I would say. But yeah, I've been exposed into the French culture and education as well. on the design part, like I started as an engineer, as a full stack developer, later on became front end and finally designer, which was my dream. But for some reason, I used to believe that to be a designer, you need to be born with the talent. I'm not sure why I was thinking about this back then, but I really felt that... Lewis (06:56) Yeah. Jim Zarkadas (07:24) you really need to be charismatic to be a designer. That's how I would see it. But in reality, you just have to practice and just build the skills. And yeah, I've been always more into B2B. I work a bit on B2C products, but yeah, I've been into startups from day one, actually. And yeah, with you, it's cool that you've been into automotive, also like Dyson. For me, it's like the apple of like house appliances in a way. That's how I see that company. I'm a... Lewis (07:40) Yeah. Yeah. Jim Zarkadas (07:52) proud owner of a Dyson fucking cleaner as well. So yeah, it's really cool. And I totally get your point on like large corporations versus startups where you have like small teams, quick decisions and more ownership. Like the vibe that I get from your story and like from... the time we've discussed together in the previous courses was that you're more entrepreneurial in terms of the spirit and you love the ownership. That's what I can assume, which is like a very special feeling to be able to have an impact, lead kind of the experience and kind of bring the vision you have into reality and not have to convince like four different layers of people in order to get an idea out there. Lewis (08:31) Yeah, yeah. It's been the hardest thing because I definitely see myself at some point in my career trying to create my own business. because of that, because I'm really bad at listening to people. It's always been a thing is like, the less like, sign offs, like we have like in smaller businesses compared to big businesses, it was benefit to me, but also being able to like, go straight to the CEO and like get like approvals like that. Sometimes good, sometimes bad because you skip a lot of processes. But yeah, I hate sometimes like too many opinions and things like that. So sometimes I think, well, why don't I just Jim Zarkadas (08:45) Hahaha Lewis (09:08) placed myself at the top of the company. But yeah, it's not as easy as that. Jim Zarkadas (09:11) I feel you, yeah, yeah, I feel you. Yeah, yeah. My personal take, my personal opinion is like this is more of kind of the lead attitude as well is that you have like this not urgency, like this kind of a genuine interest and gut reaction to go towards the leadership part. That's something I totally serve as a feeling, as an attitude. Because I always like to be next to the leadership team, not in terms of seeing myself as a leader, as a kind of a... egocentric thing, but more like an impact thing that I feel like I have the knowledge and the expertise to talk to the founder. And I don't want to be hidden behind like three monitors. I want to have access to the good stuff, to the where we can have an impact. So yeah, I feel you. Lewis (09:57) Yeah. And sometimes can hear like decisions are made and you're like, why was that decision made? And sometimes the more brains that you collect, know, you know, like, cause if not, you can come back on a decision based on like a design. ⁓ I, I've experienced in my career, just putting a prototype together fast, put design, imprint of the prototype in like 30 minutes showing it. it's like, this is what I meant. It's not possible or something like that. And it's, it's, it's hard when you've got so many brains around the table in the boardroom, for example. Jim Zarkadas (10:04) Hmm. Hmm. Lewis (10:29) where you've got like CPO, CEO and all those heads but like there's not a lot of creatives like the Chief Product Officer isn't generally, from my knowledge, very product but very engineering background. Jim Zarkadas (10:42) Mm-hmm. Lewis (10:43) But the actually creative side of it, there's not like a big, big creative head in the room to be able to say, oh, that wouldn't be possible because of the user perspective. So lot of the product designers sometimes can be frustrated by some of the decisions that are made because they think user first. And a lot of the boardroom members think like business first a lot of the time. So yeah, that's why sometimes being part of and closer to leadership is a benefit Jim Zarkadas (10:48) Hmm. Hmm. Yeah. That's very good point. Lewis (11:13) we think like not only what's going to be best for the business, but what's going to be best for the users. they both come together at the end of the day, because even if we make a strategic business idea, like, like, yeah, move, it's, still not gonna like generate as much impact than bringing a lot of users creating a good experience and things like that. Which is why the term product designer is, is kind of really wised up today, as before it was a UI designer. Jim Zarkadas (11:33) Mmm. Lewis (11:42) UX designer, digital designer. I keep seeing these like posts on like Twitter and things like that. What do call these guys? Jim Zarkadas (11:43) Right, yeah. Okay. Yeah, it's always tough, right? Because I'm also looking for like people to join our team. And I was thinking like, what would be the right term? Like UIUX feels like so old school and like now, like somebody thinks this way, probably they're not a good fit, let's say. Yeah, product design, a term that I really like is also software interaction designer. Like it really explains what you do, but I'm not sure if anybody calls themselves like that nowadays. But I really like it as a terminology, especially with the interaction part in it. But yeah. Lewis (12:10) Yeah. Yeah, people are starting to use AI design. I've seen on LinkedIn so much now. AI product designer. Yeah, specializing. Like for example, I put product like product designer growth because I'm... Jim Zarkadas (12:21) Really. yeah, specialized, yeah. Hmm. Lewis (12:32) I was in growth last year, now I'm gonna go into core. I think, it's specializing a lot because product design is such a board. I've worked with certain product designers and you can always see some are good at some things, good at another. For example, my strong side is craft. I'm good at making things look good. I mean, I've got a master's in UX and... Jim Zarkadas (12:42) Mm-hmm. Lewis (12:56) things like that. yeah, I would say like, that's where my my strongest skill is. And the others, their strongest skill is in UX and research. But that's why sometimes having a team of product design and the person responsible for building that team is really important to bring in the right members so they kind of all, yeah, all work in right way. Jim Zarkadas (13:02) Mmm. Mmm. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, I love that and I fully, fully agree. That's something that I slowly realizing once I started looking into like being in a position of hiring other people that there are different specialties actually, like you have like growth designers, more visual oriented designers and so on. Yeah, I think it's, they call it like the T-shirt where you know a bit of everything, but then you specialize in something, something specific. ⁓ Lewis (13:39) Yeah. Yeah, I've definitely tried that during my career and even education. Just looking at my career and how it's kind of diverted into lots of different kind of businesses. Because I could have gone down the path of working just for automotive, for car brands, because I had experience for Citroen and then for Renault. But then I kind of wanted to expand my knowledge. Like I said, with the optic one day of like building my brain to then possibly create my own business, I wanted to expand my knowledge. Jim Zarkadas (13:55) Hmm, yep. Lewis (14:09) And that's why I've worked for so many different businesses in a short amount of time. because I like jumping around, but I like understanding, ⁓ I've not got much knowledge in that area. I want to learn more there. So I'll go and learn more there. And I'm quite a fast learner in that way. So, so yeah, I think as product designers, it's almost natural for us to want to expand our knowledges into lots of different areas, whether it's in the, like the company, like the market they're in. Jim Zarkadas (14:33) Hmm. Lewis (14:38) or whether it's soft skills, like a lot of designers now are going into code because we were like, shit, AI, we don't have the choice. Like, ⁓ better get coding just in case my job is gonna get ruined by AI. So I was actually vibe-coding yesterday. Jim Zarkadas (14:43) Hmm Right? Yeah. Yeah. Lewis (14:57) present like a demo today of what I've done on a V, but I was just shocked like we have a product called Gen.i Studio, which is like you type your video idea and it just generates scenes with like a script and it generates like a full length video for social media. And I was just playing around with Google AI Studio like vibe coding. And I basically rebuilt the whole product in a day, just vibe coding. And that integrates like NanoBanana and Google AI APIs. So it's got that intelligence with it, which the engineers didn't have when they were coding it from scratch. But it's just amazing how fast you can do things these days. Jim Zarkadas (15:37) Hmm. Okay, now you open one of the topics that I for sure wanna dive into. maybe we can, I mean, we go with the flow. So let's go deeper into that. Two questions actually. The first one would be, let's go with the first one. AI and design. So in this case, you mentioned this project, right? So if I understood correctly, you give it a description of what's the video, the script, and what you want it to be, like a bit of creative direction plus the script, and then it goes from text to video. And it's specialized for social media, so short videos. So this is the project you mentioned, right? Okay, super. Lewis (16:14) Yeah, yeah. Jim Zarkadas (16:16) You said you did a lot of vibe coding and there was something there already. So you were kind of a rebuilding and improving from what I understood. So what does the design process look like on this one? I'm also like generally curious because it's something I'm researching right now and I'm trying to find a way to use AI more into design as a way to prototype. Like just a quick comment from my side. I've been always a believer of prototype don't design. And what I mean don't design is that figma static. We design interaction software. Like the fact that I've been designing in statics Lewis (16:33) Mm. Jim Zarkadas (16:46) screens, I can always see the paint when it goes... when we have the development, the demo from the devs where I'm like, I missed this and I missed that because it's really hard to envision every single interaction and if it's going to feel right or all the different states of the thing. And prototyping Figma, yeah, you can spend like months pulling kind of screens together and connecting them. So I've been always a believer and I'm really excited about AI now that can actually create interactive stuff instead of like static screens. But I haven't, I'm still trying to figure out that Lewis (17:08) Yeah. Jim Zarkadas (17:18) So my question is how did you do it like for this project specifically and then we can also discuss about in general like what are some other workflows but for this one specifically you said vibe coded so did you create something from scratch like using let's say lovable or are you using cursor and working on the production thing like what is the what is the process? Lewis (17:38) So this one I actually did it from scratch. A lot of people, well, I just wanted to design something from scratch, not using our design system and what we have already, but in reality, we can plug in our... Jim Zarkadas (17:46) Okay Lewis (17:50) like infrastructure like our app, fresh, sorry, and we can plug Veed into Cursor and then vibe code from Cursor and create a PR. So we will create like a separate environment and you can then vibe code. So you can change whatever you want, the editor, the GNI studio, which is this product specifically, and you can just vibe code and change things and ask it to add things and things like that just by texting, like by typing what you want basically. And that's only possible for me because I don't know I've got like knowledge in code but I don't know like specifically like what this cursor is doing is crazy. And there's other things that like Google AI Playground, that's what I used yesterday. And Google AI Studio is kind of one of those apps where it's more of a playground. can like start from scratch, but you can integrate things like Google's intelligence, is you can integrate Nano Banana. So you can create an app that will then generate an image. or you can then generate a, you can create like a image editing software. You can then say, want that image to become a video because it integrates VO3, which is also created by Google. Google have this like ecosystem of not only they've got Google Gemini, they've got Nano Banana, which is an image model. They've got VO3, which is a video model. And because they have all of that in one, using Google AI Studio, you can integrate all this intelligence together a fully functional app which integrates AI. And that's a thing that you can't do on Figma because I think the whole time last year... I wasn't a big believer in vibe coding because I use lovable. was like, it's cool. You can create like a website looking thing, but I can net as a designer. I'm very like attention to detail. when I want button is just quite right. And I'm taking like five, 10 times to find type to get it perfect. I'm like that. Jim Zarkadas (19:38) Hmm Lewis (19:47) Figma is more precision and it doesn't take me long to put a prototype in Figma. I can do like a very like realistic looking prototype with animation and everything quite quickly. So I didn't see like spending a whole day trying to vibe code in Portland back then. I would still go into meetings with leadership and present a prototype in Figma. But I always do a prototype. I completely agree with you on your point. Like I would never present Jim Zarkadas (19:52) Thank Lewis (20:14) like a whole workflow or a new product static because you don't see the interactions you don't see like and things like that. The other good thing about prototypes is gaining action through leadership. I've seen it in the past in being in in boardroom meetings with leadership and if they want to if you want them to say yes you put together something that looks good that feels good and Jim Zarkadas (20:21) Hmm. Hmm. Lewis (20:44) generally has like fractions and they'll be like wow like it's that wow fact they want and you can't get that in the static screen or you can't get that with wireframes yeah I don't wireframe anymore Jim Zarkadas (20:44) Mm-hmm. Right. Yeah, yeah. That's a great point. Like seeing is believing, right? It's what they always say. On this one, just a quick comment from another podcast episode. have Maylene from the Wise, she was a design lead at wise.com, the bank, the online bank. And she explained how they use AI for prototyping. She said the same thing, that when you have... Like when you do branding, you may have like a crazy idea about a specific vibe you want to create, like with photography or like some visual concept. And she said that AI is really amazing to prototype these ideas, to get buy-in from other people because it's hard, like as a designer, you're trained and you've been building these skills for years to visualize something in your head and to be able to see. Lewis (21:37) Yeah. Jim Zarkadas (21:37) like the idea, but other people are not doing this thing. And when you tell them the idea, they don't have the skills to visualize into their heads, even if you try so hard to explain it. And that's where AI can really sign that it just makes it clear. like, okay, here's the thing. And it can happen in the real life world constraints where you don't have like an extra week or three weeks to just prototype a fancy idea you've no idea if they're gonna invest into. Lewis (21:46) Yeah. Jim Zarkadas (21:59) So yeah, I totally hear you on this and it's interesting to hear like the same also on the branding side and how it actually applies into different areas of design. Also, yeah, go for it, sorry. Lewis (22:11) I was saying that happened a lot fresher because yeah, like when you're in a boardroom and you present a feature and then they ask a question, you're like, you try and describe it and then you try and describe it again and again, you get frustrated. Like sometimes, like I say, just going away, prototyping it, putting it together and showing it. It's like, then you get the yes that you really want. It's different at Vee now because like the Saba, the CEO, he used to be a product designer. So he's from a design background, yeah. And Sam, our CPA, is also very good with design. So they've got the eye for the design, which makes it a lot easier for us as a design team. But yeah, they've come from a very creative background, which makes a big difference. Jim Zarkadas (22:41) Really? Mmm. Mm-hmm. that's cool. I've been also DMing with Sam because I'm planning, I'm organizing an offline event in Amsterdam, like a dinner for SaaS product people. So we've been exchanging some DMs. Now that he has a design program, it would be cool maybe to bring him also on the podcast and get like his perspective on different kind of stuff. I've been following his videos. Like he's making a lot of content on LinkedIn lately and he started, think a challenge like 30 videos in 30 days or something like that. So yeah, that's cool. Cool to hear. And Sam, yeah, I've been following him also. since the early days and he's really a product guy. That's what I, and I think that's why Veed, one of the reasons that Veed is very successful is that the leadership is really product people, not like CEOs in the kind of a typical, stereotypical kind of definition of a CEO, let's say. ⁓ On this one, what I wanted to comment on before is that, yeah, big thanks on mentioning AI Google Studio, the Google AI Studio, because... Lewis (23:45) Yeah. Jim Zarkadas (23:54) What you described is really my experience. Like I was playing with Lovable and I was like, okay, it's cool. I can make some random prototypes. it didn't really, also like it felt very, I don't know, like the end output was so far from what I had in mind, also in terms of UI, that it just didn't click. Like if I want to visualize how a model is going to show up, okay, I can do it. But I don't know, didn't really, it didn't really click with me. And also like what you said with Google AI Studio that you can connect all these technologies, all this intelligence and actually make cool stuff. And it's not just about a sequence of screens, but actually something with powerful functionality like the VO3 nano banana and so on. So I think I'm going to give it a try. So if I understand correctly, like Google AI Studio is pretty much like the replacement for lovable bolt and so on. If you want to create a realistic product from, from scrats, if you want to prototype, right. Lewis (24:45) Yeah. Yeah, it's the same as like Loverball and things like that. I like it because it's simple and it integrates a lot more intelligence in a way. But I do feel like at the same point, like if I design in Figman and like a lot of these products you can link like a screenshot of your design and say I want it to look like this or add this panel. And I've realized that it's not good at just like Jim Zarkadas (24:47) Hmm. Got it. Mm-hmm. Lewis (25:17) at your screenshot and like creating that UI like in Google AI studio. It takes a lot to build the design system. It has to understand what a button's gonna look like, what the general theme is. So you have to kind of upload a screenshot but describe the UI as well. Like it's a minimally designed with these kinds of buttons, the iconography is kind of like this. You have to kind of describe a lot the app. Jim Zarkadas (25:20) Hmm. wow. Hmm. Lewis (25:44) And then from there, if I ask it to add like a colour picker or a drop down, it already knows the kind of style that I want. And I don't really have to then add more screenshots of what the drop down is going to look like. So it takes a lot of kind of building at the start. But yeah, it can be frustration sometimes. Yeah. Jim Zarkadas (25:57) Nice, yeah. I see. Got it. Yeah, this one I lately like the product I was working on last week, I used Figma Make to prototype something because it was more of a UI prototype unless ⁓ it was actually the form to create a new contact and generate where we're this page. how to add a new customer into the platform and it will not come out with like a new UI that is way less cluttered, super clean, like also more delightful and so on. So was very visual focused and from my research, tried all the tools. Figma make was the one that was closest to what I actually had designed because the other tools you give them the reference and like don't ask me for a reference if you don't care about it. Like if you're not going to pay attention to any detail, I feel stupid uploading that reference and I wasted my time. Lewis (26:43) Yeah, that's so bad of it. I've learned that like starting from scratch, functionality first and then UI. Some is like build the product to make it functional, to make it work. And then I'll be like, right, then let's change this and change the flow. Like I find that working a lot more because if you start by making it want to look nice, it tries to focus too much on the UI and then it like the functionality and everything, it just gets lost. Jim Zarkadas (26:45) Yeah. Hmm. Yeah, Lewis (27:12) So yeah. Jim Zarkadas (27:13) 100%. And on this one, are you also like, I'm very curious as a designer, designing a video editor is super interactive, right? Like we're not discussing about the CRM where it's like a tables, buttons, forms, like more kind of a traditional SAS, like a... UI elements, you are something that is really interactive and it's really hard to design in a static way. Like you have the cropping, a lot of different states when it to editing a video. So is this an area of the product that you've been working on as well or have you been working more like on new features outside of the editor, like the text to video that you mentioned? Because I'm curious, how do you prototype a video editor? This sounds pretty complicated. Lewis (27:36) Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, well, I think like the tools are livable are really bad for that like I think livable is the the wicks of Being able to tie the website. It's good for building like websites and things like that Jim Zarkadas (27:57) Hmm. Lewis (28:07) I think we're functional app and software. That's where you just need some smarter models where you can actually, can know and not more like Google AI Studio to do all these interactions and to build a timeline and things like that. It's quite like, it's big functionality. So it needs more than just like just the UI and drop downs and burns. But obviously, yeah, we've got obviously like the video editor. But this year, there's so many new... technology that's just been thrown out there. I'm talking about like image models. At beginning of last year, you would get image models and video models. And when I talk about models, it's being able to like type a text, like a dog chasing a cat or something like that, and it would generate it with AI. So we all kind of know now what that is. But there's a lot of different models, like ChatGVT has their model, Google has their model, we've got Kling. We've got all these kind of, Different companies are building their models and making an API available for people to integrate it into their software and the tricky thing is they're They're iterating a lot on these models that improving a lot. They're getting faster. They're getting cheaper. They're getting more realistic, which is becoming quite scary actually, but it's for us it's understanding their technology and making it available to users because If I use, example, people that thought, oh, video three is out or Sora is out and then go and type like, create me a video of this with a really simple prompt, they'll never get the good result. It requires so much understanding that model to get the right prompts and to feed it the right information to get the perfect result. And so this year when outside of the editor, which is purely like video editing, which integrates some AI features like remove background, clean audio and things like that which are good. On the side we were building AI Playground. An AI Playground is a product that integrates text to image models, text to video models and things like that to be able to generate images and videos and then send them into the editor. So let's say you're building a video. editing a video in Veed and you're missing like a scene or something like that or you want to a scene so you'll go into the AI playground you'll kind of type it and generate it and through there there's like 30 different image models and 30 different video models all do different things some are good for illustration some are good for realistic it is becoming quite confusing because like a good example is Nano Banana, which we all know, Nano Banana and Sedents and things like that. There are image editing, so you can upload an image and say remove that plant from behind and it will do it straight away without having to open Photoshop or change my expressions on my face or improve my hair, things like that. So we saw an opportunity for that for video so we can upload, for example, a character like me or a scene and you can say change the lighting. Instead of having them having to type, we will basically give them a gallery of examples of different lighting and when they click on it, in the back end, we already send a prompt. So they don't have to type, I want the lighting to be sunrise and clear. In the AI Playground on Veed, we'll give them templates, we'll visually show them what the lighting difference is and they'll just apply it to their image. So yeah, very complex kind of technology that's moving fast, but the important thing that I was gonna come back on is we were building this whole image editor with image editing models. And then Kling came up with Kling Omni One, which is you can do exactly the same as editing an image, but with video. You can literally throw a video in and change the weather, change the outfit, change the character, and it will do it like that. Really realistic. and really fast. And it's scary that we were investing so much in building this image editor for a video editing platform and then all of a sudden Kling just came up with this new model. so yeah, it's just going back to the point where technology is moving so fast and as product designers, we have to kind of keep up with these new things that are being launched and making it like available for the users to, to kind of understand and use. So that's one of the biggest challenges but less interesting on this Jim Zarkadas (32:24) Hmm. Yeah, yeah. 100%. Like that's something that I always experience when I'm trying to do something like with AIs, like, okay, which platforms should I use? I wanted the other day to like create a new photo, like a profile photo for LinkedIn, for example, just a very simple example. In the end, I used NanoBanana and it's pretty cool. Like the result you can get, but yeah. What you mentioned before as the feature of like providing different lighting and so on, it brought me a thing that I saw yesterday on Twitter. I'm not sure if you're using Titor, it's like a very simple motion design tool for people that are not motion designers. And you click animation, and instead of asking you to create a new animation, it gives you presets that you can use. And this is so powerful because for somebody that is kind of a know the vibe they're going for, but they're not motion experts to think about all the small details, it's a really nice... start for the project, it can help a lot. And when it to video editing, it's pretty much like the same. For me, for editing the photo, for example, I'm following James, I'm not sure if you know him, he's like a designer. I remember his last name, but he's pretty popular with all the beautiful visuals that he does on such websites. And he posted about the prompts of how he used Dino Banana to generate his new photos and how cool it was. So I copied his prompts and they were really good. Like they would even mention camera models. Like ⁓ it would be like very, very specific on the vibe and the equipment that should be used to take that photo. And it's really wild to see if you get the right prompt, how good the result can actually be. So these presets that you have also really useful because yeah, writing a prompt requires a lot of knowledge. And that's the whole idea of the product is that I'm not the expert, I'm using this tool to become like, to act like an expert without being one per se. Like I feel like especially with video editing, it's pretty much like one of the key values you provide. So yeah, it's pretty cool. Lewis (34:17) Yeah. The barrier for anyone is starting from scratch. That goes anywhere, like give me a piece of paper and a pen and ask me to draw something. Starting from scratch is the biggest barrier. like, what do I do? But if I have an example in front of me or a preset to follow, it's a lot easier. So that goes everywhere. And that's something we've seen a lot now in video editing or video creation. It's like, if someone arrives and you're asking them to build a video, Jim Zarkadas (34:22) Hmm. Lewis (34:48) from nothing it's really hard and that's where tools like like JNI studio where describe what you want and it will give you something it's never perfect it's like these motion presets like maybe you apply a preset but then you change it and tweak it yourself to get it like what you like but at least you're starting from something you're not starting from like having to do the motion yourself so I think that's the biggest thing today starting from something and not from scratch Jim Zarkadas (34:50) Hmm That's a very good one. I fully, fully agree on the point because right now I'm working with two teams on activation, on user onboarding on two such products. And the talent is the same with both. It's like... to take the first actions, means to like they have a wide canvas and they need to create something. And you think that they know what they need to do, yeah, that they have the knowledge, but they don't, they have the goal in mind, but they're kind of lost on this. And sometimes they drop off and it's not about the product, it's because they don't know what to do. So you need to help them overcome this. And I can imagine with Fido, it's like a big thing. On this one, a tool came to... came to my mind that I wanted to mention that I've been using recently. So the tool is called Stanley and it's an AI LinkedIn codes. So I'm pretty, I'm not really like I love AI, but I've seen so much like low quality content, especially online with people using AI for content. And Stanley is the only one that really stood out. And I really like how it works because the whole idea that is a codes trained for LinkedIn content and not for creating click-baity low quality content, right? ⁓ that is always provocative and all this bullshit. And with Stanley, how I use it is that I write for my contest strategy. I have a big prompt for like Mondays, I always make a post about UX, right? Where I saw a design that we made for a client. And I've written this big prompt where I describe what is the goal of this post. what is the definition of success? Who is this post for? What do I want them to feel? So I give it very clear instructions and also what I want in the content. So the content I'm like, the goal is to build trust, is to showcase an amazing design, is to explain the mindset behind it because that's one of the best ways to build trust is by educating and explaining how we did it, why it works. And I also added a part where I say we always need to include social proof. So it could be a testimonial, it could be a number of we moved into their growth metrics and so on. Because when I write post for LinkedIn, it's always easy to forget all these things, like I'm not a marketeer, that's not my full-time job. So I wrote it once and I give it to Stanley. Lewis (37:16) Yeah. Jim Zarkadas (37:21) And then Stanley in that prompt, I also say, you should ask me questions in order to get the data that you need to create that post. So I, I drop it that I paste that prompt and then I have a conversation with Stanley. And after like five, six messages of back and forth, I have a beautiful post. like, man, this is so freaking cool because it's really my coach. It respects my tone of voice. It asked me the right questions and it's there to help me out. So why I'm sharing this story. Lewis (37:28) Bye. Yeah. Jim Zarkadas (37:51) and how I create content for LinkedIn is because I feel like for creative stuff like video, image generation and so on, many times you know what you want to achieve in your head, but you don't know the technicalities. You don't know like the way to get there. And many times you don't want to learn how to get there. I don't want to become a writer or a LinkedIn co-writer. I want to stay a designer and just do my content as easy as possible. And I feel like the same could apply with video with many people that are using it just for marketing, let's say. Marketers trying to add video into their counter strategy, but they don't have the budget to hire a full-time video editor, let's say, or video editors that just want to move faster. So this whole idea of the code, honestly, for me has been the best way to use AI to create creative content. But also like I have a project on Sanjibiti that I call it the business code. So I have a business code, like a real person that I'm meeting every other week. But I also have this Sanjibiti project where I give it very good instructions. to be able to, when I'm like too much in my head or stuck with some ideas and so on, I just drop them there and I ask it to be very critical with me and then just have a conversation. So using AI as a tool to get some coding and to think along with and help you achieve the goal, I feel like can be super powerful. Lewis (39:08) Does Stanley learn from if you say you're having these conversations? Does it start a new conversation for each post or does it kind of learn? Jim Zarkadas (39:11) Mm. It builds a memory. Yeah, it learns like what is my goal? What is the audience? And the first time you open up Stanley, it actually goes through an interview. And the part that I love with Stanley is that it feels like I have before Stanley, I had a marketing team, right? That I stopped at some point. So it was like a content ⁓ creation agency. And what they would do is that they would meet with me every month, every week, and ask me questions to create content. And what I like with standl is that it's pretty much the similar vibe. It knows what to ask me. It asks me the right questions. And it helps me kind of get to the goal. So it really acts as a coach and I can really see how it's being trained for LinkedIn. Another thing that I really love for example is every week it sends me an email where it automatically analyzes the post of last week. And it's like, okay, you posted this on Monday. Team Jim, the time was off. this, this and that was wrong. Like that's why you got low engagement. It gives me engagement metrics that this post performed four times better than your average post, let's say. So it also like the proactiveness is something I love that on a weekly basis is gonna tell me things that I could do. And I honestly feel like I have a team. It's the first time with AI that I feel that it's part of my team. I'm like, man, this is really cool. Lewis (40:24) Yeah. Do you automate your posts as well? is there a system where it's you kind of write them and because I mean Stanley if it gets like if he writes post creation it also could maybe in the future you can imagine generate images or ideas for the post. Jim Zarkadas (40:41) Mm-hmm. Lewis (40:44) suggest a time and automate like so you could literally have someone that works for your social media like social media manager which is AI that generates the content that does anything for you and it just you can become an influencer with thousands of followers but it's actually not you influencing it's the AI bot. Jim Zarkadas (40:52) Yeah, yeah, true. Hmm. Yeah, yeah, it's kind of a yeah, right. Strange times, man. Yeah. For this one, I don't have personally any automations, but I've heard people doing it. Yeah. For me, like with automations that I always want to tweak things and give them like that unique perspective and style that really represents who I am, like the company and the values of the company that I'm building and so on. And that's where with automation many times, I don't have this part. too much of AI, say, but yeah, with, tools like Vita, I can, can see, for example, like, yeah, the generative AI is really cool. Like where you can get like the coaching part and then you have like the operational efficiency of AI where, for example, editing, I don't want to like, for example, this podcast, I don't want to spend hours editing after I just want to have a tool that is trained and what a good podcast looks like. Like just tell it what to do, give it the same prompt and just have it to, have another pilot. Lewis (41:54) Yeah. Yeah. That's what we haven't nailed yet is obviously like. Jim Zarkadas (42:01) See ya. Lewis (42:05) A lot of these models are understanding. Like I have the same for, have loads of different conversations and chat GBT, some for product content. So when writing product design, it understands a type of language and tone of voice for read. I have some from my Slack messages because the tone is different. So I'm like, I've, write something, I throw it in there and it knows exactly how I write a Slack message. Not too formal, not too stupid in between. Make a few jokes. Jim Zarkadas (42:26) Hmm. Lewis (42:34) and some from my email, so I of train them. for video, had kind of the tricky thing there is people are posting video as often as they're posting on LinkedIn or Twitter, right? It's like very, very often because they're trying to drive engagement. And the tricky thing there is creating this kind of template or learning where things can be edited and generated automatically. Jim Zarkadas (42:36) Hmm. Mm. Lewis (42:59) based on their understanding of how they post. what audience they pose, the length of their videos and things like that. And that's a tricky thing to automate, but I think if video editing gets to that point, people will be able to just generate videos and videos and videos, automatically with AI without having to do anything. If then, yeah, Stanley writes the post and another AI bot generates the video and edits it, and then someone else, people can start becoming millionaires by doing absolutely nothing, just setting things up. up and ⁓ it's quite scary. keep seeing this video where it's like someone said AI would create more ⁓ billionaires, like millionaires in a year than internet did in 10 years. Like, they created so many millionaires, but AI, like if people like use it properly, and I've seen so many fake videos on Instagram and fake accounts, like you'll get an account and you look at their content and they'll Jim Zarkadas (43:43) Really? Okay. Hmm. Lewis (43:57) posting five videos a day but you look and it's like AI it will be like this woman that like looks nice but it's like generated by AI and so many people be like adding or following and things like that but you'll also get the other funny dog videos which dog videos are such a genuine thing dog and cat videos were like the most generally genuine video funny video that people watch and now the people are side to AI generate them because they know that like people like watching Jim Zarkadas (44:07) Yeah. Lewis (44:27) them but we're starting to see fake ones now so it's quite scary. Jim Zarkadas (44:28) Yeah. Yeah, like, yeah, with social media, it's pretty wild. Yeah. And with the whole thing with the short videos, like I installed an extension recently on my iPhone and my MacBook where I block the shorts on YouTube because I'm like, man, nine out of 10 things that I see there, like it really damaged my brain. This is not good for my brain. Like it's way too low quality. And like with longer videos, it's harder. Like you still have the AI ones, but you can really tell. Yeah. It's like the quality of Kona has gone so much down. It's really, really crazy. Lewis (44:51) Yeah. Yeah. Jim Zarkadas (45:01) Yeah, the whole house thinks. Yeah, go for it. Sorry. Lewis (45:05) and a lot more businesses because we focus on social media marketing. And obviously with all these new AI things, we're suggesting AI videos and that goes with avatars. I can basically, if I want with V that can duplicate myself as a person, I can duplicate my voice. So I never have to record myself like this. And like in a podcast again, I can let you just have like the AI avatar of me and just type whatever I want. I don't have to type it. Jim Zarkadas (45:22) Hmm. Lewis (45:35) I can ask Chad Gwiti to type something. So you can have your character do like anything. But there's this sense of... Using it for marketing and advertisement. It's like, as soon as I see a video on online now, which is AI, it like, unless it's a funny video, it kind of annoys me. Cause if they make it look realistic, you're like, you're trying to trick me. Um, using AI for advertisement can be quite a tricky thing. Cause people won't don't have that trust of like, I'm not going to trust something that's AI. So we're in this tricky period where we're not sure if people are like, are going to get used to AI or Jim Zarkadas (45:53) Hmm. That's a very interesting one. Lewis (46:13) are really going to go against it because you can see more and more things now like plugins and even some browsers now are suggesting browsing but not getting any AI results so So the tricky thing is like that. It's like, yeah, it's like even I think in Instagram have something now to block out AI content or stuff like that. Cause I've got this, yeah. And, and tick suck as well. can maybe like block out anything with this AI. And so it's funny how they kind of developing this feature where people are getting more scared. You know? Jim Zarkadas (46:33) already. Hmm. Wow. I had no idea. Okay. That's, that's pretty cool. And you open up like a very interesting topics, like how is AI going to be really adulted for this generation and also like how it's going to evolve because the people that grow like I have two babies, for example, but are basically recently and like how these two boys like I'm going to use technology and how are they going to perceive AI? I'm really curious. I really, I'm really curious to see because they're going to grow up with AI. So maybe seeing like a fake fake video like an AI generated, that's what I mean with fake, it's gonna be just kind of a normal to them. yeah, like people that are, that have this like from the beginning and don't have to adapt at the later stage, it's also very interesting to see the dynamics and the adoption and how they're gonna use it as well. Yeah, yeah, it's a very, very interesting topic. Lewis (47:25) Yeah. It's interesting how fast technology is moving and the education isn't moving as fast. I just remember going back to school and you'll read books that have been there for 20 years and the maths books that you'll just follow the book and you'll get to the end and you've learnt maths. I think now, because of technology, AI and things like are moving so fast, there's no proper AI course that you can find at university or things like that yet which focus on Jim Zarkadas (47:36) Hmm. Hmm Lewis (48:00) I don't know, like products and things like that. I think like the education system isn't going as fast as the technology is moving. So in the future to find these jobs, you have to self learn and self teach yourself a lot of these things because otherwise you won't be able to kind of catch up. that's a big, like chat GBT. If I had chat GBT at school right now, I'd be so dumb. Like I wouldn't do any of my exercise. I'll literally like, I'll say, Jim Zarkadas (48:18) Hmm. Yeah. Lewis (48:28) I'll get something, I'll put it in chat.gbt, it'll do it for me. My brain power would be nothing, because I wouldn't use my brain, I would use chat.gbt. So I'm curious to see how like... the generation that are in school already, how are they using chat GBT and how is that really affecting their brain power to be able to think themselves and to solve themselves? That's, yeah, I'm really curious and we won't see that now. We'll see that in the future, but yeah. Jim Zarkadas (48:49) Hmm. Yeah, these are really interesting topics. the brain rotting, they call it that. your brain just kind of, ⁓ like, it does really, really develop as time goes by. And on this, yeah, it's like a bigger even topic, like in society, these are some that I've been thinking a lot about, not that you mentioned, is you have it also like with other stuff, like ⁓ also like with, with gambling, gambling and like many, many things where you have like too many. Lewis (49:03) Yeah. Jim Zarkadas (49:25) What is the word? Too many things that are so easily accessible, but you know they're not good for you. That's kind of the high level description. And that's, feel like something, so that I can even connect this to product design and UX and like behavior psychology where I'm not sure if you've seen, if you read atomic, if you read the atomic habits, the book. So the idea, the core principle is like, if you want to make something a habit, make it obvious and make it insanely easy and. and kind of a low friction to do it. So if you want to eat healthy, let's say every day, make sure like somehow you can have a healthy meal like super easy. And it's like on your table at 1pm every day, let's say. So you don't have to think about it or really try. So reduce the friction. And like with swords, I hate swords, but I found myself scrolling through the swords and like, why am I doing this? I was really trying to observe my brain and understand why the hell am I having this behavior? And honestly, I feel it's the friction that always is the thing and also the triggers because when I scroll on YouTube, it's in front of my face and it's short videos. So I don't have to watch a video for 10 minutes. It's lower friction, even if the quality is wrong. So I can always see how putting something in your face and making it super low friction can really like... Lewis (50:33) Yeah. Jim Zarkadas (50:39) have an influence on you and make you do things that you don't necessarily believe in too. That's why I was like, you know what? I cannot resist this thing. The only solution is to get it out of my way. Like we do, like with unhealthy food. If you don't wanna eat unhealthy food, you're just gonna remove it from the fridge. You're not gonna buy, let's say McDonald's every day and you're gonna have it on the table and be like, okay, now I'm not gonna eat it. It's like, you're just not gonna go and buy McDonald's. And I feel like the same is happening with technologies. Like you just get things that are... Lewis (50:58) Yeah. Jim Zarkadas (51:06) not good for you like in front of your face all the time. And with the current regulations and the system, they say, it's up to you to not use it. Like if you use it, you're just not responsible enough. But I feel like our brains, like in terms of like the part that they have, we're not able as human beings to resist to all these things. We're not as disciplined and I don't think we're gonna ever become. Lewis (51:24) Yeah. Jim Zarkadas (51:28) So it's really part of like regulating the environment saying, no, this is not good for you. You sort of have it. And gambling is like one of the, for me, like one of the best examples. It still blows my mind that I can be on YouTube and see so many ads about like playing poker and all these things. And I'm not even into these platforms. Like I'm not into poker or like, yeah, poker can be fun. Like it's not necessarily gambling depends on how you play, but yeah, it's kind of a wild. And I totally feel that it's about designing behaviors. And you can really see it with books like Hooke and so on, that you can engineer these kind of things, you can foster behaviors and you can push people to do things. Like that's proven. Lewis (52:07) It is an addiction. Yeah, I can, can, I can see where it's an addiction. lot of people are like when you're scrolling through like whether it's TikTok or Instagram, like you said, like sometimes I can be scrolling. I would say like, Oh, I go to bed at 10 o'clock. I'll have a little scroll on my phone. And the next time look at the clock, it's like it's 11 o'clock. It's been an hour. I'm like, that's an hour of my life looking at content, which is absolutely useless to me. And it's just, and it can just become an addiction, but the tricky thing Jim Zarkadas (52:33) click. Lewis (52:37) is like a lot of youths as well these days and I'm guilty for as well where I'd follow like a news channel and things like that but my knowledge is now through these short videos that I'm seeing so it's like I can go and share knowledge through a short video that I've seen on TikTok and say did you know that if you five carrots a day you can actually turn orange but like you learn things from these videos and you share it but you're not the source is not like 100 % true Jim Zarkadas (52:43) Mm-hmm. Lewis (53:06) It could be someone beyond their computer just putting random videos, generating them in AI and that's the tricky thing. There's a lot of click bait we used to call it. We don't click anymore, we watch, but it's interesting how much we can stay focused on to these short videos and how it'll impact it. I've started to use focus. Jim Zarkadas (53:16) Hmm. Yeah. Lewis (53:36) to focus things on on apple i don't know what they're called on android but it's like they do not disturb because Jim Zarkadas (53:40) Screen time and stuff, mean? Yeah. Lewis (53:44) I realised how independent, like how I need to be addicted to my phone so much. And I saw it like in the last year and two years, not only because like as a designer, digital, like constantly on laptops and on my phone, but whether it's emails, social media, any apps, it's like, I felt like I was just so addicted to my phone. I'll get a notification, I'll look at it straight away, but I don't really need to. I've started to put like, do not disturb because then I see myself, I don't look at my phone every 10 seconds. Having do not disturb means I don't need your attention. I'll look at my phone when I have time, when I have 10 minutes to spare throughout the day, throughout my meetings. So yeah, it takes away a lot of the distraction, which I can see apps, there's these apps now doing that. I've got the name of one, but one is doing like, it locks out. Jim Zarkadas (54:17) Mm-hmm. Hmm. Lewis (54:42) certain things in like a time of the day so you can't go on social media during the day and you can't access it. Jim Zarkadas (54:47) Yeah, Opal, Opal or Opal, I'm not sure how to pronounce it. That's one that I'm paying for and I'm using and I really like it's, I've tried different apps. That's one of the products that I'm actually paying for and I'm happy. And the other one is called self-control. It's only for Mac OS. I think it's like an open source tool. And what is really cool about it is that you cannot unlock it. If you say, this for the next three hours. Lewis (54:52) Yeah, yes. Jim Zarkadas (55:09) no matter what you do on your computer, you have to reinstall maybe Mac OS. That's the only way. So I was looking for something that is like really like, okay, Tim, there is no way you're gonna take your emails. Now you have to go into deep focus because like what you're describing, can relate to that. It's like the kind of a... Lewis (55:14) That's crazy. Yeah. Jim Zarkadas (55:26) Yeah, like the whole thing with the notifications that's like the formal that constantly exists. somebody sent me this or that could be Slack or email or WhatsApp or something else. That can be a big distraction from like deep focus for creative work as well. So was looking for a tool, but yeah, it's interesting how all these things like with technology that come to like with technology, which is new problems to solve for like. our and the upcoming generations as well. like going back like to AI and how we use it on products and so on. I feel like from the conversation we're having and also like my personal experience is that it always, it's always great to use it as a critical thinker to think along with you and make you smarter in a way, like find your blind spots. For example, that's a concept that I really like is that what am I missing? Like I would love somebody with experience. Lewis (55:54) Yeah. Jim Zarkadas (56:19) to tell me what I'm missing. And that's like a beautiful usage of AI. Like for videos, could be analyze this video and tell me what do you think that is missing? Ask me questions to describe the goal and give me some blind spots that I have or some things that could make it better. Yeah, I feel like that's where it can get really, really interesting and good in terms of using it, but also for companies. Like if I think about Veed. Lewis (56:21) Yeah. Jim Zarkadas (56:44) you cannot, it's really hard to restrict how people use it. I say, okay, this is the ethical and good and healthy way of using AI. So we're going to restrict you to that because it's so open-ended. It's like, you just write a prompt. People can write whatever they want over there and can go crazy. yeah, it's it's part of the challenge of evolution. I feel like that something has been always happening with new things that come up. They're very chaotic. They're very unregulated. Lewis (56:57) Yeah. Yeah. Jim Zarkadas (57:09) And it's just part of the human kind of a nature and evolution to just regulate them and set the boundaries and be like, okay, this is how these things should be should be used. say. Lewis (57:18) Yeah, I think habits change. There's always a learning curve and habits change when you think of like Netflix, which was around for years before actually people started to think like, I'm going to be lazy and not go to the cinemas and watch it on my sofa. Jim Zarkadas (57:21) Mm. Mmm. Mm. Lewis (57:34) But like we, for example, at Veeb, we tried, we developed this thing called AI agent at the beginning of the year where you upload a video and it was in the editor and it was very visible. Like it was a first tab in the editor. You'll upload your video and with this agent, you'll be able to say, you'll be able to type and you'll have to say, make this video good for TikTok. Add subtitles, change the subtitles to red. So you'd be able to describe your video edits and it will basically edit the video for you. We didn't have any like... It wasn't really used. We didn't continue to invest in it because we didn't really see the value because no one was using it. We were tracking the usage, we were tracking the adoption of this and it just didn't, yeah, it didn't convert. So we were like, weird because you go on Lovable and that's the whole thing of people being able to type and having this chat experience to generate a website, but why wouldn't it work for video editing? And we were like, wow, this is gonna be the next big thing. us to do video editing by chatting and no it just didn't pick up and we're not sure if it's because of the kind of users we have that are not very like as tech savvy like that because the ones that are very very tech savvy and are very good at video editing they don't really use Veed. Veed is just the tool that's accessible for everyone Other people would use, I don't know, like Premiere Pro or After Effects because they're like the pro tools. But yeah, it didn't really pick it up. we kind of, we removed it and focused elsewhere. But maybe that's something that's gonna come back up. Maybe it was a learning curve and maybe after a year or so, people are so used to using chat GBT and things like that, that they actually would start using it in every domain. Like they'll start this chat experience for everything. One funny thing that I related to, For example, when I was working at Fresher, it's like, wow, this one app that you can have for booking hair appointments and nail appointments and things like that. It's like, well, this is a brilliant idea. Like, this is gonna be the biggest thing ever. But then I thought about it and I was like, for example, Airbnb, if we think of one app to go and to book a flat or a holiday, we can think of Airbnb and loads of people have it on their phones. There isn't really one app for booking a restaurant. If you want to book a table at a restaurant, I know there's a fork, but not every person everywhere has that app. It's not really, really famous, but eating out is such a big thing. I think there's these domains sometimes, like the example of video editing. Maybe video editing isn't for this chat experience. Maybe, yeah, eating out and things like that doesn't have an app. People just prefer turning up or calling. People are kind of used to their habits sometimes and not every industry adopts these new technologies. So that's something that I've learned quite a lot. At Fresher, it's such a big app and more and more users are using it. But you would think a lot of people these days, they just go to the hairdressers that they used to go into for the past 15 years and they book. and they call and things like that. yeah, there's some industries that are always gonna have like, keep their old habits and not advance as much with this new technology that's appearing. And I think that's good. I think why not? Why not walk past the restaurant and just walk in instead of having to scan the QR code and book and things like that. Jim Zarkadas (1:01:19) Yeah, yeah, I fully, fully, fully agree. And it's like the more tech you get, like the more you start appreciating like the human interaction on things as well. Like digitizing everything and make everything like superficial and like itself is not always like the best for the user experience for some people because there's always the element of human connection. Yeah. It's a very good one. And especially for like services like a haircut and so on. Where like one of my barbers, like he didn't even have an online platform. To me, I'm a tech person so it was a bit annoying like man. I cannot call you every time I spent 10 minutes to find a slot I just want to see your calendar But he was really keeping it real Lewis (1:01:54) Yeah. Yeah. Oh no, I'm not used to that. I don't want any of that. Do you prefer, for example, when you get into a restaurant and you sit down, are you happy when you see a QR code to order or do you prefer opening a menu and looking at a menu and having a waiter? Jim Zarkadas (1:02:02) Yeah, yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I would say the second one, honestly, like the first one would be nice for McDonald's or like more fast food kind of a vibe or like could be like not type of per se, but could be more like a fast food type of a vibe, like a burger place and so on. If it's like a better restaurant, I would love to just have the weather and like feel the vibe, right? It's not because like ordering is not just like playing customer support. Hey, I have a question. Like what do you think? Like how can I do this where you have an AI chatbot and it's Lewis (1:02:24) Yeah. Yeah. Thanks. Jim Zarkadas (1:02:44) It's fine. Like you want something more like yeah, with a QR code also, you don't have an interaction. So if it was an AI chatbot, maybe that would be fun because I could ask for some ideas. I would be like, yeah, I'm on this mode. What do you suggest from the menu? Like it would be a better experience actually with the QR code. feel it's like, okay, we don't want to spend money on waiters. Like here you are, just do your order on your own. So that's the part that I don't really like. So if it was digital, Lewis (1:03:07) Yeah. Jim Zarkadas (1:03:11) I would prefer an AI chatbot that reflects the vibe of the restaurant. Like we go, for example, at The Hague, to Schuybeningen, like it's on the North Sea, to really nice surf restaurant. Like the vibe there is amazing. two like... beautiful like fresh pizzas and like next to the beach. They also have a surf school and so on and has a very unique atmosphere. And that's why I love going there. And if I would do an online order, I would love to see this vibe in that digital interface. I don't want a boring like menu where I can tap. Like I want to make it like an experience where you have like the brand, the brand element. And that's a very interesting topic with AI like how corporate You can incorporate your branding into this whole thing, but yeah, that's entirely different, different topic, but this is my long answer. Like my long take on the QR codes and how I feel about them as a designer. Lewis (1:03:50) Yeah. No, fully agree. mean, QR Code has been around. for ages. They only picked up like since COVID. It's like, oh, now you can't touch that menu. But yeah, I fully agree with you. It depends. If you're like going to dress up and going out to a restaurant and eat nice, you want to talk to a waiter, you're there, you have time. Sometimes I go out for lunch and I just want a QR code because I don't want the faff of being able to put up your hands, you're ready to order, you're not ready to order, like, or to get the bill. Like QR code, generally you pay straight away. and when you finish your food, you can just get up and walk out. Like it's faster in a way. So like you said, it's good for a fast food experience, but on the proper experience, you want more vibes. Yeah. Jim Zarkadas (1:04:38) Mmm. Yeah, that's a good one. Yeah, it's a very good one. when you don't care about like, you want to just eat. It's like when like you just want to grab the lunch and like make it time efficient, it's a beautiful use case. But when you want to make like a nice dinner experience, then it's kind of a bummer. Yeah, that's a really good separation actually in this. I didn't really think about it this way. On this one, because I see we it's been like... Lewis (1:04:54) Yeah. Yeah. Jim Zarkadas (1:05:07) We've been an hour already. ⁓ I was thinking to slowly wrap it up and ask like my two last questions, which is I'll start with the first one, which is about taste. Usually asked this in the beginning of the episode, but we went straight into all the AI cool stuff. Lewis (1:05:09) Yeah. Yeah. Jim Zarkadas (1:05:23) the question of this is how do you define taste as a designer? So you're really into AI, you're super exposed like more than me and you've been playing with generative AI a lot. So I'm curious about your take on taste. How do you define taste and how do you think about taste as a designer nowadays, which is also a hot topic. Lewis (1:05:43) Would it be like visual taste? Jim Zarkadas (1:05:45) Yeah, mostly, yeah, in the space of design. yeah. So like taste when it to designing a product experience, let's say. Lewis (1:05:48) Yeah. It's so personal, I've realised. Recently in the design team, for example, we've been turning Veed into, when it was like very static panels, into floating panels. For here I see the software we're here, we've got a floating panel. it's like, whether it's like static, like full width or floating buttons and things like that, it's all like a personal taste because in the design team, we had a call and we was like, does anyone prefer floating or not floating? And like four of them said, oh no, I prefer like the static non-floating UI and things like that. And the reason why Veeda floating is because I like floating and I presented floating to the CEO who also likes floating and he's like yeah it looks thick it looks really good so Sabit was like yeah right it's floating but it's all a personal taste right it's all like it's all my personal taste on what I think looks nice I can go to my mum which will say look at this painting and painting looks really good and I'll be like yeah Jim Zarkadas (1:06:41) You Lewis (1:07:02) It looks alright. It's all personal taste design and I think when it comes to that, you're designers, product designers, you have to kind of visualize a kind of... Jim Zarkadas (1:07:03) Yeah. Hmm. Lewis (1:07:16) like a group of users what their best preference and taste is going to be like because you're designing for a group so I'm not designing for myself I'm designing in mind what are they going to like the most so you're gambling or not because if you do some testing you kind of know but I feel like That's why so many companies now are copying the Apple aesthetic design because they're confident enough that so many people love Apple's design that if as a business I copy them in terms of the style, the animations, the visuals, they're gonna like, they're gonna trust it. They're gonna like it and trust it. And sometimes it's easier than to create your own personal taste because if I go and create a business and do something completely different, someone might come up with it Jim Zarkadas (1:08:04) Hmm. Lewis (1:08:05) like, whoa, what is that? Like, should I trust this? It's very unfamiliar. I'm not sure I know this. So that's why, yeah, a lot of people are kind of trying to have similarities, but still amongst all of that, like similarities and like the creativity, try and find a difference where it could be like in a feature and things like that. Because then if everything looks the same, it's like, it's just the brand logo that's going to look different. So Jim Zarkadas (1:08:08) Mm. Hmm. Lewis (1:08:34) So yeah, that's kind of my vision on taste. It's like try not to be too personal, but try and understand what others think as well. Jim Zarkadas (1:08:38) Love it. Love it. Thanks for explaining. And on this one, I'm curious, a quick follow up question on this is, do you have any systematic or structured way to develop your own taste? I'm curious about, what are some things that you do to cultivate your taste? Do you have anything specific or is it just kind of just happens along the way? Lewis (1:09:06) I do lot of research in like, I mean, it used to be dribble. Now it's more mobbing. You look at other actual proper realistic existing websites. So I kind of inspire from there. I look at a lot of the competitors as well, direct competitors. So when it comes to Veed, I'll look at the direct and indirect competitors, see what they're doing and make it better. That's generally how I would start. Jim Zarkadas (1:09:13) Hmm, same. Lewis (1:09:36) But yeah, as a creative designer or so like that's that's a starting point. Like I said, I hate starting from scratch. I'll start from like that inspiration, but then add my own kind of ingredients to the recipe. so yeah. Jim Zarkadas (1:09:48) Mm. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Really cool. and then my last question is about your, that's a question that I ask every guest, which is what's your favorite SaaS product because it's a SaaS podcast, but it can be like an app on your phone or like it's on the digital side. So it has to be like a digital product, but it could be like an app that you use on your phone or some kind of a B2B SaaS that you use in the context of, ⁓ of it ⁓ when you're working on, on design and so on. So when I ask you what's your favorite, what are the top one or the top two that come to your head immediately? Lewis (1:10:27) ⁓ wow, that's the trickiest question I've had all the time the podcast. good. What is my favourite sass? Hmm, I use so many to be fair. For the day. I would say my least favourite is Slack. Jim Zarkadas (1:10:43) Okay, that's a great answer, I love it. Let's go into it. Lewis (1:10:47) Trying to think of my favourite is quite hard because I look quite a lot. I like to say my least favourite, if I can twist that question, is Slack. If I can burn a product and start again, it would be Slack. Jim Zarkadas (1:11:04) Is it because like how noisy it gets or what's the reason? Lewis (1:11:07) Yeah, it's just thousands and thousands of channels like on the side creating each other trying to find a conversation It's just it's just a nightmare and even in like I wouldn't even blame it on the business for creating too many project channels and groups It's like slack should do better to Help that this AI now they funny enough they Introduced AI summaries, which is within a whole channel If you haven't caught up you click on AI summary and it will Jim Zarkadas (1:11:26) Mm-hmm. Hmm. Lewis (1:11:35) summarize the whole conversation and just give you something brief actually that's great and I mentioned them on Twitter I said slack I love your AI summaries but that's just more reading like it's just reading it's the same thing it's just like summarize I said Why don't you make that into a podcast so on the commute in the morning you could have your air pods in and not Conversation but like this say six conversations you can just listen to so why you're instead of listen to music or another podcast you Listen and catch up to what you've missed out at work through this AI summaries and They replied we'll speak to the product team and get back to you and that was last year. hopefully like slack Jim Zarkadas (1:12:00) Hmm. Lewis (1:12:22) we're going to introduce this, like you can listen to conversations through AI summaries, maybe. ⁓ Jim Zarkadas (1:12:28) That's a cool idea. Yeah, I never thought about it. But yeah, it's a really cool point. The one that you're making is like, I don't want to use like reading as the main way to interact with your software. Like I prefer to listen to stuff because especially with this one, it's about catching up. I don't need to like be there, like spend hours on my phone reading. Yeah, that's a beautiful idea. Actually, I would love to see it in Slack. Lewis (1:12:46) Yeah. Yeah, so that would be my worst. Favourite, I'm not, I can't really think of one. Jim Zarkadas (1:12:54) For the favorite, let's try once by rephrasing the question. It's some products that gave you a bit of a wow, like strong feeling. We're like, ⁓ this is cool. If you think about the last month, some that you used where it gave you this kind of ⁓ a vibe. For me, for example, one of the tools, because asking what's your most favorite. can be very tricky because you may have like many that you like. Also like for me, sometimes I have a hard time to answer and it changes from month to month. What is the one that stands out? Zitter for example, is a tool that creates this feeling of like, man, I love this tool. It's like so simply designed, it's designed to be like very simple and easy to use. It gives me new superpowers. Now I can add motion into my LinkedIn content, let's say, without having spent 10 hours. I can incorporate into my weekly workflow and I can make my content more. Lewis (1:13:14) Yeah. Jim Zarkadas (1:13:42) interesting and more premium through beautiful sample animations, let's say. So Jitter, for example, is that stood out because of the impact that it has on me. Stanley also is like, yeah, I gave a long description before. It's also a very, very cool one. Lewis (1:13:59) I think like Google AI studio is something that I recently discovered, but the interesting thing about that is you don't need a lot of UI. You don't need a lot at all of SaaS experience because you just need to chat. like the scary thing I think about like in the future is these products, like let's say you're looking for a tool to be able to edit one of your podcast things and like add animation and things like that. Jim Zarkadas (1:14:08) Mm. Lewis (1:14:28) but there's not quite the perfect tool for what you need. So I feel like in the future you could create your own tool within five minutes. You can describe what you need to do, your tasks that you want. And instead of having subscribing into like a product and a video editor, you would just describe the feature that you need and it would generate it. And I think that's why sometimes a UI like you look at chat GBT and Google AI studio, like it's just simplified so much because all you need is that chat experience. and then it will build it for you. But yeah, if I was to select an app, it's gonna sound very basic, but one that's really made a difference is Revolut for me. I used to use an old bank and... Jim Zarkadas (1:15:00) Hmm Lewis (1:15:10) A lot of people are skeptical about Revolut because it's like this online, still this kind of online banking and things like that, but I use it for everything. It's like, that's where my income goes into, that's where my savings are. And I think that's, it's just the experience for me. Like, I'm not saying the most trustworthy bank and the biggest bank because there's many more, but they were so old fashioned because I used to be like a nationwide in the UK where if you want to send money to someone, you have to put your card in a card either put a code so it checks that it's correctly you but it's so like old-fashioned and Revolut these days there's so many features you can do inside the app they're creating like this ecosystem where you can have like insurance your your money and you can subscribe for traveling yeah travel things and things like that points so Jim Zarkadas (1:15:51) Hmm. Lewis (1:15:59) I just like how it's structured and how it looks so easy and nice to use. So that's something that I use on a daily basis. Jim Zarkadas (1:16:09) love it, love it, yeah, yeah, I've been also one of the skeptical ones about treble but I end up also using it, it's yeah, they've grown so much and they've added so many cool stuff, yeah, it's pretty, pretty cool indeed, nice. Lewis (1:16:21) I know a lot of people that work there. Some people that work at my school actually that work there. So it's got a lot of designers there. They recently opened a new office as well. So yeah, quite good. You'll not see me there though any day. I'm not going into FinTech. That's one thing that I don't have any knowledge in, but I'm not going to go into it. Jim Zarkadas (1:16:25) Mmm. Nice. Well, yeah. Yeah, it's a yeah, it's there is because I had like mailing from wise like she told me about a cool conference in in Austria that is taking place about FinTech designers I want but yeah, yeah FinTech is a is a pretty unique kind of a space I have to I have to say yeah, yeah. Yeah, and it also like from a creativity point of view. I don't know. It sounds pretty Lewis (1:16:57) Yes. Jim Zarkadas (1:17:04) transactional in a way, like it cannot get super creative. Like being a VEED, I feel like it's very creative environment because you're essentially building something like Figma for videos, right? Like to an extent. So you really create something super creative by nature because people can create so many cool things. So yeah, it's very cool. Nice man. Thanks a lot for today. Yeah, it's been a really, really nice conversation. Lewis (1:17:14) Yeah, Yeah, yeah, yeah. Cool. Yeah, yeah, time's flew by, so yeah.