Full Transcript for Ep #12: James Storer (Monzo): Fake Banks, Real Learning, and Being Monzo's Biggest Token Burner

kind of disseminate this through the whole design 00:04:07.342 --> 00:04:08.842 discipline and, and beyond really? 00:04:09.202 --> 00:04:11.362 Uh, and I'm not the only person doing that, but it's just that obviously 00:04:11.362 --> 00:04:14.182 I'm, I'm kind of owning a lot of those goals, so I'm trying to figure this 00:04:14.182 --> 00:04:19.792 out and as I said, in that kind of great position of to really, uh, you 00:04:19.792 --> 00:04:22.792 know, do what you say, put your money where your mouth is, if you will, I 00:04:22.792 --> 00:04:24.442 get to kind of do that day in, day out. 00:04:24.652 --> 00:04:30.142 Um, so I, I would say that I spend a lot of my time playing around in Cursor 00:04:30.202 --> 00:04:35.572 in Claude Code, uh, whether that's prototyping or figuring out we can use 00:04:35.572 --> 00:04:39.922 it to, you know, build data dashboards really easily or interrogate insights or 00:04:39.922 --> 00:04:44.482 all of these things that I, I think, you know, one time or another are all part 00:04:44.482 --> 00:04:49.552 of our, our roles as designers, but when weren't necessarily quite successful, 00:04:49.557 --> 00:04:51.592 weren't, weren't so easy just to do. 00:04:52.402 --> 00:04:53.512 so it's a really great place to be. 00:04:53.512 --> 00:04:54.772 Well, what are time to be alive? 00:04:55.797 --> 00:04:59.212 Um, and I, and I actually think that probably answers the, the 00:04:59.212 --> 00:05:02.602 third part of that question is like, why, to go back into IC work. 00:05:03.052 --> 00:05:05.992 I think I've actually, I mean, you, you probably know this, if you looked 00:05:05.992 --> 00:05:09.292 at my LinkedIn for, for a little while this morning and maybe Tom's Claude 00:05:09.292 --> 00:05:12.982 skill didn't pick, pick up on this one, but I've kind of flip flopped 00:05:12.982 --> 00:05:17.362 between management and IC work, uh, like to the last 10 years or so. 00:05:19.162 --> 00:05:22.492 uh, predominantly then, you know, you'll know this as well as I do, 00:05:22.522 --> 00:05:26.482 it was the only direction you had to become a manager, a lead to be 00:05:26.482 --> 00:05:28.132 able to, to, to sort of progress. 00:05:28.522 --> 00:05:29.152 So I did that. 00:05:29.152 --> 00:05:33.052 Then I did the, the kind of classic I, I'll I'll manage some people and then, you 00:05:33.052 --> 00:05:37.792 know, you realise that I'm, I'm actually, uh, the best way of putting this? 00:05:38.182 --> 00:05:39.742 I, I'm a great leader. 00:05:39.742 --> 00:05:43.672 I think I'm a good lead by doing, by showing how to, to, 00:05:43.672 --> 00:05:44.602 to sort of lead from the front. 00:05:44.812 --> 00:05:46.072 I'm not sure I'm the best manager. 00:05:46.977 --> 00:05:50.212 I've, uh, I've, I've tried to a few of my, I mean, I've got a few reports now. 00:05:50.212 --> 00:05:53.362 I'll, I'll let them, uh, sort of hang, hang me out to dry here. 00:05:53.362 --> 00:05:57.682 But I, I, I think I, I described myself to,

to one of them 00:05:57.682 --> 00:05:58.822 as a bit of a chaos agent. 00:05:58.822 --> 00:06:03.982 So I think, I think it's not always the best thing, but I, um, I really 00:06:03.982 --> 00:06:08.092 love helping people progress, but I really love doing, doing the do as well. 00:06:08.092 --> 00:06:10.642 And what's, what's worked really well for me there. 00:06:11.358 --> 00:06:14.568 And as I've gone through these cycles of leading a team and then being 00:06:14.568 --> 00:06:15.738 like, oh, I just wanna get involved. 00:06:15.738 --> 00:06:18.348 You sort of then have to go back into an IC specific role. 00:06:18.708 --> 00:06:21.408 I think what's happened really nice there over the last 10 years is that there's 00:06:21.408 --> 00:06:23.268 been these more hybrid roles come about. 00:06:23.268 --> 00:06:27.978 You have kind of, you know, senior leads and all this kind of stuff now, um, and 00:06:27.978 --> 00:06:30.228 more hybrid, uh, sort of player coaches. 00:06:30.228 --> 00:06:31.998 So, so that's worked really well for me. 00:06:31.998 --> 00:06:36.198 And you do kind of gain a lot of, uh, you know, a experience, 00:06:36.198 --> 00:06:39.708 b insight, understanding of how to play the strategy game. 00:06:39.708 --> 00:06:43.458 You get all of that and when you can package that up with a, you know, a 20 00:06:43.458 --> 00:06:48.018 year career of, of, of being a designer, you can do some great design work as well. 00:06:48.018 --> 00:06:52.788 So I, I think that for me has been, uh, the, the kind of pinnacle and 00:06:52.788 --> 00:06:56.568 be, but going from like a founder position that that is, you know, people 00:06:56.598 --> 00:06:58.008 might see that slightly differently. 00:06:58.008 --> 00:07:00.918 I'm, you know, for anyone that's done it, John, you'll know this for, for 00:07:00.918 --> 00:07:06.288 sure, you are, you are in the tools like 24 7 because there isn't anyone else. 00:07:06.288 --> 00:07:07.158 There is no team. 00:07:07.158 --> 00:07:09.588 You are it, you are the first and last line of defence. 00:07:09.918 --> 00:07:15.108 So for three years, you know, I was the only designer that's got some benefits. 00:07:15.108 --> 00:07:17.208 You get very, very into the tools. 00:07:17.928 --> 00:07:21.438 Uh, but the, the, but the side part that made me want to go join in a 00:07:21.438 --> 00:07:25.278 more established team was peers, having people to learn from, to 00:07:25.278 --> 00:07:27.018 continue to develop myself as well. 00:07:27.438 --> 00:07:30.408 And equally just, you know, having some really, really great people to work with. 00:07:30.468 --> 00:07:33.678 Uh, again, I think Tom, you'll have worked with some of, uh, the, the 00:07:33.678 --> 00:07:37.218 great folks over at Monzo that, you know, what a fantastic team it is. 00:07:38.357 --> 00:07:41.867 Tom: Is a fantastic team and you're, you're lucky to work with them. 00:07:41.957 --> 00:07:43.997 Um, love that story. 00:07:43.997 --> 00:07:48.917 The one thing about the career back and forth that I was particularly curious 00:07:48.917 --> 00:07:53.807 to ask you around, and I'm curious with this AI shaped role that you're doing 00:07:53.807 --> 00:07:57.827 at the moment, do you see that as, it seems like this sort of sweet spot of, 00:07:57.917 --> 00:08:02.417 of bringing together your IC focus and there's some people leadership and there's 00:08:02.417 --> 00:08:04.487 some direction setting across the company. 00:08:04.817 --> 00:08:08.927 I'm curious if you see that as like a, what the time horizon is for that? 00:08:08.957 --> 00:08:12.527 Is that like a one year role that then you switch back into IC or people management? 00:08:12.527 --> 00:08:19.577 Or do you think the future of this craft is this hybrid together of, of, uh, 00:08:19.637 --> 00:08:21.557 disciplines through AI enabling that? 00:08:22.622 --> 00:08:23.762 James: A really great question. 00:08:23.792 --> 00:08:26.642 Uh, ho I don't know for sure. 00:08:26.642 --> 00:08:30.062 I'm not sure any of us can know where the end state is right now, but I, 00:08:30.452 --> 00:08:36.627 I, I, I don't want to, uh, to lay too heavily one way or the other, but I, 00:08:36.902 --> 00:08:42.032 I think that there's definitely, uh, always gonna be a need for people that 00:08:42.032 --> 00:08:47.432 are very strategically minded, great leaders, great managers, like people will 00:08:47.432 --> 00:08:49.232 always need that to be able to develop. 00:08:49.232 --> 00:08:54.632 And, but I do think like, just like ICs are having to expand their skillset, 00:08:54.632 --> 00:08:57.632 their breadth, I think that's kind of the same in terms of leadership. 00:08:57.632 --> 00:09:01.922 Like they can't just turn a blind eye and not know what's happening in AI, 00:09:01.922 --> 00:09:05.282 the tools that we're using, you know, but I, I, I spent enough time like 00:09:05.342 --> 00:09:09.962 out of Figma that going back into it was hard at the time and they didn't 00:09:09.962 --> 00:09:11.372 even move that quickly at that point. 00:09:11.402 --> 00:09:14.672 But I think that now you can't really take your foot off, so 00:09:14.672 --> 00:09:15.992 your eye off the ball really. 00:09:16.742 --> 00:09:19.892 So I think it's, I think it's, they're always gonna exist. 00:09:19.922 --> 00:09:24.872 I'm not sure whether the, the, the hybrid role will be there forever because I 00:09:24.872 --> 00:09:30.362 am, I think for me personally, as much joy as I take from helping people, 00:09:30.362 --> 00:09:34.052 managing people, I'm probably better at, at actually just doing the work. 00:09:34.412 --> 00:09:39.902 Um, felt like, uh, the current collective that I'm in needed somebody 00:09:39.902 --> 00:09:42.362 closer to the actual problems. 00:09:42.362 --> 00:09:44.522 The work that was happening at the time when we, we sort 00:09:44.522 --> 00:09:45.392 of started the collective. 00:09:45.632 --> 00:09:46.772 I think that made a

lot of sense. 00:09:46.802 --> 00:09:51.122 I dunno, going forwards, once we actually establish ourselves, start to ship some of 00:09:51.122 --> 00:09:55.142 this, this work, um, I'm not sure whether that might then need somebody to be a 00:09:55.142 --> 00:09:59.372 little bit more sort of just day in, day out in the actual, in those leadership 00:09:59.372 --> 00:10:01.082 meetings in the in Australia sessions. 00:10:01.082 --> 00:10:04.322 I, I try as much as humanly possible to stay outta those. 00:10:05.222 --> 00:10:08.402 Um, but you, you can't, you can't, you can't sort of do that all the time. 00:10:08.402 --> 00:10:08.732 So. 00:10:10.005 --> 00:10:10.425 Tom: Daily. 00:10:11.295 --> 00:10:11.745 interesting. 00:10:13.395 --> 00:10:16.215 Jonny: I, I suppose I've got another follow up question, and this is 00:10:16.215 --> 00:10:17.475 from personal experience as well. 00:10:17.475 --> 00:10:20.895 As a founder, as you mentioned, James, when you're a founder, you 00:10:20.895 --> 00:10:23.865 don't have the designer title, but if you're the design founder, 00:10:23.865 --> 00:10:25.425 then you are the designer as well. 00:10:25.425 --> 00:10:25.725 So you, 00:10:25.918 --> 00:10:26.278 James: Yeah. 00:10:26.295 --> 00:10:29.445 Jonny: I think I found myself in a situation where I was doing a lot of 00:10:29.835 --> 00:10:35.715 design work, but always struggling to justify spending longer than I 00:10:35.715 --> 00:10:40.875 needed to on it because I was, as I was CEO and, and also doing like 00:10:41.235 --> 00:10:45.645 fundraising at various points and I, and product management for the most 00:10:45.645 --> 00:10:48.015 part, for, uh, for long periods of time. 00:10:48.225 --> 00:10:52.095 And so the PM bit of me would be like, what is the smallest thing we can get out? 00:10:52.095 --> 00:10:55.005 And then the designer would be like, but I wanna spend a bit longer 00:10:55.635 --> 00:10:57.075 to, to, to make it a bit better. 00:10:57.075 --> 00:11:00.345 And then the, the PM help would come back on and be like, no, ship it, move on. 00:11:00.705 --> 00:11:06.555 Um, so I'd end up like, looking back, I think the ways that I sort of tried to 00:11:06.555 --> 00:11:10.455 combat it was, you know, promising myself that I'd go back and improve it over time. 00:11:10.455 --> 00:11:12.375 And I ended up designing way more in code. 00:11:12.375 --> 00:11:16.095 'cause it was just faster to get to something that was high fidelity anyway. 00:11:16.935 --> 00:11:22.275 But I'm just interested, like, as you left being you one of three founders, 00:11:22.275 --> 00:11:26.325 but like, you know, various things on your plate and lots of competing 00:11:26.325 --> 00:11:30.435 priorities as a, as a founder of a early stage startup, then going into a 00:11:30.435 --> 00:11:35.445 big team, you mentioned being out the tools for a while is hard to catch up. 00:11:35.505 --> 00:11:38.775 Was that a moment where you had to sort of recalibrate how long you 00:11:38.775 --> 00:11:43.720 could spend on craft or how, how you would sort of reprioritize where, 00:11:43.725 --> 00:11:45.975 where to where to put your time? 00:11:47.582 --> 00:11:51.362 James: Yeah, I mean, I think like one, one of the, one of the driving factors for me 00:11:51.407 --> 00:11:57.452 to, to sort of leave founder life was that many hats and at points it's enjoyable, 00:11:57.452 --> 00:12:01.502 it's great, the energy's there, it's fun, but it can also be an energy sort 00:12:01.502 --> 00:12:03.362 of snap it can take figure out of you. 00:12:03.812 --> 00:12:07.082 And so I think for me it was more around like, yeah, being able to have 00:12:07.082 --> 00:12:11.672 that extra time to spend thinking about something you want to, um, I 00:12:11.672 --> 00:12:14.852 just needed that mental energy to have that, that ability to do that. 00:12:15.122 --> 00:12:15.722 And do me wrong. 00:12:15.722 --> 00:12:20.102 I think AI has been phenomenal for being that thought partner, being 00:12:20.102 --> 00:12:23.972 able to like accelerate parts of your work, like you said there, you 00:12:23.972 --> 00:12:25.532 know, have resonated a lot with me. 00:12:25.892 --> 00:12:29.212 I was predominantly like building features by the end of Jitty. 00:12:30.107 --> 00:12:35.822 I, I wasn't really designing everything first because one, we built a really 00:12:35.822 --> 00:12:39.392 great design system, so you had all the Legos available and you know, you 00:12:39.392 --> 00:12:44.192 can't always be too precious in a, in a startup where, you know, days 00:12:44.192 --> 00:12:47.822 and hours are, are, are your enemy, not the, the weeks or months it might 00:12:47.822 --> 00:12:49.262 take to ship features in bigger orgs. 00:12:49.592 --> 00:12:51.962 So you sometimes you just have to have to deliver. 00:12:52.382 --> 00:12:58.112 Um, and so that, that was definitely thing I really wanted to gain from sort 00:12:58.112 --> 00:13:01.982 of like moving on from founder life was, yeah, just having the headspace to go, 00:13:02.192 --> 00:13:06.602 my priority today or this week is to literally think about this problem or go 00:13:06.602 --> 00:13:08.672 and build a, a prototype in this space. 00:13:08.672 --> 00:13:08.912 And, 00:13:09.121 --> 00:13:09.391 Jonny: Right. 00:13:09.572 --> 00:13:12.332 James: you know, it's happening right now at the minute we we're doing a lot of, um, 00:13:12.452 --> 00:13:17.552 our cycle planning for the next half and I get to go and kind of prototype a lot 00:13:17.552 --> 00:13:21.842 of those bets because that's become part of our process now, which is fantastic. 00:13:22.262 --> 00:13:25.112 But it's, I mean, so for me it's, I I sound giddy saying it like, it's 00:13:25.112 --> 00:13:29.252 like it's both great to get the time and head space to go and think about 00:13:29.252 --> 00:13:32.882 these like, future problems we wanna solve, but equally getting to, to play 00:13:32.882 --> 00:13:34.892

around is the better way of putting it. 00:13:34.892 --> 00:13:39.152 It's to play around building these things, uh, not, and you know, the, this is kind 00:13:39.152 --> 00:13:43.652 of what we touched on last time, Tom, is that not to the level of sort of fidelity 00:13:43.652 --> 00:13:47.402 or quality execution where I would be shipping them, but to the point where we 00:13:47.402 --> 00:13:51.212 can share them round as artefacts, share them round as like, uh, you know, sort 00:13:51.212 --> 00:13:54.782 of direction of travel, and prototype them in enough to test with users. 00:13:54.782 --> 00:13:58.952 That's what's really, really created some fantastic leverage for us, uh, at 00:13:58.952 --> 00:14:03.242 Monzo so far and, and given me this, the giddy awkward smile that you see. 00:14:04.033 --> 00:14:06.793 Jonny: I know you James, and I know how you work, or at least how you 00:14:06.793 --> 00:14:12.253 worked 10 years ago and uh, I can only imagine how exciting it, you, you 00:14:12.253 --> 00:14:13.873 were in the growth team at Deliveroo 00:14:14.014 --> 00:14:14.374 James: Yes. 00:14:14.503 --> 00:14:17.563 Jonny: in the day, which is was the team that moved the fastest 00:14:17.563 --> 00:14:19.843 and had the ideas and then just like would throw them out there. 00:14:20.263 --> 00:14:22.093 I think you and I are quite similar in that sense. 00:14:22.183 --> 00:14:26.803 Uh, just like to sort of build something and just see, so to be able to have, 00:14:28.423 --> 00:14:33.793 uh, an organisation that operates where as part of planning, not only do you 00:14:33.793 --> 00:14:37.183 get like maybe an engineering spike into some sort of technical question, 00:14:37.213 --> 00:14:42.313 but you actually get to build like a sort of user experience spike as well. 00:14:42.793 --> 00:14:45.463 Man, we would've loved that 10 years ago, I think to, to have 00:14:45.463 --> 00:14:46.843 had that opportunity to do that. 00:14:47.556 --> 00:14:50.211 James: yeah, I mean, I, I, I say it quite often at the minute, but I, 00:14:50.211 --> 00:14:55.146 I, I feel like, uh, you know, I've, I've been a, an average designer for 00:14:55.146 --> 00:14:59.106 the most of my career, and a lot of the, what, the many things that I've 00:14:59.106 --> 00:15:00.666 done, I, I, some people don't know. 00:15:00.666 --> 00:15:03.906 I, I started as a, as a web designer, as a web engineer back 00:15:03.906 --> 00:15:07.146 in the early two thousands and sort of moved into this direction. 00:15:07.146 --> 00:15:10.866 But it's a lot of the skills that I have acquired over this time, I 00:15:10.866 --> 00:15:14.171 feel like they've come to a head where it's like, I do understand, uh, 00:15:14.176 --> 00:15:15.936 uh, a lot of the coding decisions. 00:15:16.326 --> 00:15:18.996 I mean, not to the amount of coding languages that I now, 00:15:19.056 --> 00:15:22.686 you know, orchestrate, but I understand, uh, some of it. 00:15:23.951 --> 00:15:26.346 And I think that's proven really, really powerful. 00:15:26.346 --> 00:15:29.396 This, that tech, that technical connection, the, the problem-solving 00:15:29.436 --> 00:15:32.436 perspective and the actual like visual craft element. 00:15:32.586 --> 00:15:35.676 And then equally, I think you, you once said this to me, Jonny, it stuck 00:15:35.676 --> 00:15:38.826 with me for a long time, is that, you know, I, I, I used to call myself loud 00:15:38.826 --> 00:15:40.416 mouth and I thought it was a negative. 00:15:40.416 --> 00:15:43.356 And you said it's actually a, it is a superpower, it's a communication skill. 00:15:44.196 --> 00:15:44.676 thanks for that. 00:15:44.946 --> 00:15:48.996 And, uh, and I think that that coupled with these other things has become 00:15:48.996 --> 00:15:53.106 this way of like being able to be on the forefront, forefront of, of AI 00:15:53.106 --> 00:15:56.466 and design and understanding how we use it and helping others to kind of 00:15:56.466 --> 00:15:57.756 come along on that journey as well. 00:15:57.756 --> 00:16:03.876 So it's a, it's a, it's a weird collection of skills, but seem, it seems to be 00:16:03.876 --> 00:16:05.171 working pretty well for me at the minute. 00:16:06.401 --> 00:16:06.761 Jonny: Yeah. 00:16:06.851 --> 00:16:09.401 And you, and I love that you've managed to just sort of define 00:16:09.401 --> 00:16:14.981 yourself between the cracks of like the, the traditional archetypes. 00:16:15.221 --> 00:16:20.921 Uh, you, I think you are the best example so far that we've had on this podcast 00:16:20.921 --> 00:16:22.541 of someone who is doing exactly that. 00:16:22.541 --> 00:16:26.831 They're sort of dancing between these definitions and actually carving something 00:16:26.831 --> 00:16:32.411 out for yourself that is, um, the best reflection of what you want to do. 00:16:32.411 --> 00:16:36.251 So therefore, probably the best value you could, you can offer to an organisation, 00:16:36.734 --> 00:16:37.154 James: Yeah. 00:16:37.571 --> 00:16:42.491 Jonny: which is great and probably not possible five, 10 years ago for various 00:16:42.491 --> 00:16:45.551 other reasons, like, you know, coding models didn't exist and, and whatnot. 00:16:45.551 --> 00:16:50.081 But, uh, but it's, it feels like it's breaking down those silos and I spent 00:16:50.621 --> 00:16:51.971 years thinking about career paths. 00:16:51.971 --> 00:16:57.551 I'm so glad that, um, we don't have to always talk about the management track in 00:16:57.551 --> 00:17:00.281 the, the IC track, in, in that same way. 00:17:00.808 --> 00:17:02.248 James: You should, you should go again. 00:17:02.248 --> 00:17:05.548 But with all these little, uh, micro, uh, uh, tracks, 00:17:06.593 --> 00:17:07.733 Jonny: Thank you, James, but no way. 00:17:08.273 --> 00:17:09.083 Absolutely no way. 00:17:09.823 --> 00:17:12.178 James: the, the, the interesting you mentioned archetypes there. 00:17:12.178 --> 00:17:17.068 We, we, we had a, um, we had like

a, a senior IC, uh, session with, with 00:17:17.068 --> 00:17:20.398 some designers a couple of weeks ago, and we started talking about different 00:17:20.398 --> 00:17:24.058 archetypes of our most senior ICs and like what makes us all unique? 00:17:24.088 --> 00:17:25.168 What are our superpowers? 00:17:25.168 --> 00:17:28.348 How can we bring them to the groups, uh, to the, to the wider group? 00:17:28.348 --> 00:17:30.808 And, and, you know, everyone does have a different path and it's now 00:17:30.808 --> 00:17:34.378 starting to sort of like, where, where are your sort of like skills, 00:17:34.378 --> 00:17:38.488 your strengths, and how can you ex sort of amplify them with AI, um, and 00:17:38.488 --> 00:17:39.988 with your peers around you as well. 00:17:40.648 --> 00:17:45.298 my, the, the one that kind of came out for me was, uh, was the trellis, which 00:17:45.388 --> 00:17:49.858 I'm not, I'm not sure I, uh, appreciated so much, but it was essentially, uh, you 00:17:49.858 --> 00:17:53.998 know, we had some folks that were more around like, uh, you know, being like a 00:17:53.998 --> 00:17:58.438 sturdy founding, uh, foundation or like a, a holding wall and they might be like more 00:17:58.438 --> 00:18:02.938 systems focused and mine was more around like, I enable others to kind of climb 00:18:02.998 --> 00:18:05.788 because I, I'm a wooden fence apparently. 00:18:05.788 --> 00:18:10.528 But, but I think I took it as more like as, as a, as a compliment, it's like more 00:18:10.528 --> 00:18:15.058 of an enablement, uh, skill set than, than me just being a, a, a wooden trellis. 00:18:18.529 --> 00:18:19.789 Jonny: An uncanny resemblance. 00:18:20.008 --> 00:18:20.488 James: Thank you. 00:18:20.488 --> 00:18:21.148 I appreciate that. 00:18:23.649 --> 00:18:26.529 Tom: Um, and for anyone who's just tuning in, we were, uh, talking about 00:18:26.529 --> 00:18:30.789 walls before we started recording, and James', uh, taking, taking a long 00:18:30.789 --> 00:18:32.169 time to knock down various walls. 00:18:32.169 --> 00:18:34.659 And I feel like that's come full circle now with the, with the 00:18:35.002 --> 00:18:35.332 James: Yeah. 00:18:35.469 --> 00:18:36.129 Tom: the wooden fence. 00:18:36.309 --> 00:18:37.869 Um, James, I had a question for you. 00:18:37.869 --> 00:18:42.969 Uh, I think it was a, a previous podcast guest, Avi, at Deel, um, he, 00:18:42.969 --> 00:18:47.529 um, posted this morning or over the weekend on LinkedIn about the idea of, 00:18:47.589 --> 00:18:51.249 um, raising the floor and raising the ceiling happening in different ways. 00:18:51.309 --> 00:18:54.249 And the, perhaps the more traditional model, and this is my interpretation 00:18:54.249 --> 00:18:57.759 of what he was writing, but the more traditional model of outlining what 00:18:57.759 --> 00:19:02.739 skills are required for a team and the sort of core competencies of a 00:19:02.859 --> 00:19:04.839 progression framework is that floor. 00:19:05.049 --> 00:19:08.769 But the ceiling is kind of this more exciting, uncharted territory. 00:19:08.979 --> 00:19:13.539 Um, and your comments there about, um, archetypes and specialisms, uh, 00:19:13.569 --> 00:19:15.279 sort of start to get at that a bit. 00:19:15.279 --> 00:19:19.869 And I remember from my time at Monzo as well, there was this sense of once you 00:19:19.869 --> 00:19:24.729 reach a certain level, say staff designer, everything above that level, if you're 00:19:24.729 --> 00:19:29.049 looking for a promotion or looking to get more senior in your, your role really 00:19:29.079 --> 00:19:33.219 needs to come from you and really be driven and defined by who you are and 00:19:33.219 --> 00:19:37.449 what you are, what, what value you're bringing to the, the organisation that 00:19:37.449 --> 00:19:41.289 is uniquely in terms of how you operate. 00:19:42.069 --> 00:19:47.889 I'm kind of curious with your sort of theme here, how much of it is about 00:19:47.889 --> 00:19:55.269 AI at all versus just individual growth and sort of skill improvement? 00:19:55.569 --> 00:19:59.739 Like, is there a specific AI lens to it or it's just like, AI exists now, so why not? 00:19:59.829 --> 00:20:02.589 Like maybe we should talk about this and, um, and there's probably 00:20:02.589 --> 00:20:04.389 AI ways AI can help with all of it. 00:20:04.629 --> 00:20:07.779 Or is there a more structured way that AI is sort of integrated into this? 00:20:07.779 --> 00:20:11.709 Because I'm curious how, how that does raise the ceiling of the team, um, and 00:20:11.769 --> 00:20:16.779 with an organisation of a hundred or so designers that has the power to be very 00:20:16.779 --> 00:20:20.499 impactful at setting or raising that bar for, for what teams are capable of. 00:20:21.692 --> 00:20:22.982 James: Yeah, it's, it's a good question. 00:20:22.982 --> 00:20:26.492 It ca it came up, I, I went to Config this year and it, there was a similar 00:20:26.852 --> 00:20:30.962 quote about sort of AI lowering the floor, but it's, you know, it's up to 00:20:30.962 --> 00:20:34.922 us as designers as, as, as technical and non-technical people to, to raise 00:20:34.922 --> 00:20:36.392 what the ceiling raise, what's possible. 00:20:36.872 --> 00:20:42.212 And I think this, this comes across for me in terms of what I look for 00:20:42.212 --> 00:20:45.542 when I'm thinking about kind of craft now, when I think about design craft. 00:20:46.802 --> 00:20:49.802 and just to be clear as well, we, we haven't like solidified anything 00:20:49.802 --> 00:20:51.182 in our progression framework yet. 00:20:51.392 --> 00:20:52.742 I think it's a little too early. 00:20:53.012 --> 00:20:57.092 The, we are gonna make some changes around just, you know, staying, 00:20:57.122 --> 00:20:58.832 uh, curious, continually learning. 00:20:58.862 --> 00:21:01.502 Uh, and I think AI fits within that band. 00:21:02.372 --> 00:21:04.592 again, it's like, you know, you don't wanna brush AI on

00:21:04.592 --> 00:21:05.972 everything just for the sake of it. 00:21:06.212 --> 00:21:08.897 I think it's trying to understand that actually what are we looking for and, 00:21:08.902 --> 00:21:14.432 and how is that gonna sort of help both individuals and the wider team at 00:21:14.432 --> 00:21:18.422 Monzo, uh, sort of elevate and that, and I think that's, that's the key for me 00:21:18.422 --> 00:21:22.742 is that, you know, we've always looked for, in product designs, you always 00:21:22.747 --> 00:21:27.812 look for strong breadth of skills, uh, like craft skills, um, amongst others. 00:21:28.232 --> 00:21:30.602 And then you look for those like individual depths, the, 00:21:30.602 --> 00:21:31.772 the, the, the T shape, right? 00:21:32.222 --> 00:21:37.862 So I'm talking to two, two very senior designers, apologies, and one that built 00:21:37.862 --> 00:21:39.152 the book on progression frameworks. 00:21:39.332 --> 00:21:41.612 So you see what t is, Jonny, you, you take this. 00:21:43.442 --> 00:21:47.792 But, so the, the, the point I'm making is that I think there's, there's this a lot 00:21:47.792 --> 00:21:51.662 of information at the minute that makes it sound like just expected to expand 00:21:51.662 --> 00:21:54.392 and expand and expand our role, and AI's gonna let us do all of these things, 00:21:54.392 --> 00:21:57.722 and all of a sudden we're gonna, we're gonna be product managers and engineers, 00:21:57.722 --> 00:21:58.832 and we're all gonna just keep going. 00:21:59.252 --> 00:22:04.322 I'm not sure I view it quite as the same, but I think it, it widens what we are able 00:22:04.322 --> 00:22:06.152 to do and what we're able to do better. 00:22:06.392 --> 00:22:09.992 Like, there's been a bunch of times in my career where, you know, uh, 00:22:10.022 --> 00:22:11.702 data has not been a strength of mine. 00:22:11.702 --> 00:22:15.842 Or like, motion, for instance, skills that you, you know, are definitely 00:22:15.842 --> 00:22:17.642 on that craft, uh, sort of framework. 00:22:17.642 --> 00:22:20.162 But you, you don't always expect, you're not expect to have them 00:22:20.432 --> 00:22:21.812 or, or even have a depth in them. 00:22:22.524 --> 00:22:27.024 I think that the, that's the floor sort of lowering to me is that I now 00:22:27.024 --> 00:22:31.224 can go onto Figma and I can say, can you make these shapes move please? 00:22:31.224 --> 00:22:35.244 And it, you know, it might, it might do it maybe, but, but the po the real 00:22:35.334 --> 00:22:39.774 point I'm making is, is that it allows me to have this base entry at the very 00:22:39.774 --> 00:22:43.014 least, to where we have incredible motion designs, by the way, at Monzo. 00:22:43.014 --> 00:22:45.924 And I wouldn't belittle their skills, but that's their depth, right? 00:22:46.404 --> 00:22:49.014 And so where I look at it is, is that it allows me to do that. 00:22:49.074 --> 00:22:53.794 It allows me to interrogate BigQuery or look at, um, NotebookLM 00:22:54.624 --> 00:22:58.074 Notion and look at our latest, uh, research studies and really try 00:22:58.074 --> 00:22:59.904 to pull some snippets of insight. 00:22:59.904 --> 00:23:02.574 It shouldn't replace us going and doing research in specific areas, 00:23:02.574 --> 00:23:05.424 but it's great to be able to quickly pull together something. 00:23:05.784 --> 00:23:10.224 So that's the breadth for me where I think that AI really is gonna 00:23:10.374 --> 00:23:12.354 accelerate people is the superpowers. 00:23:12.354 --> 00:23:15.084 It's like, how do you take a strength that somebody already 00:23:15.084 --> 00:23:18.204 has and it into a superpower? 00:23:18.264 --> 00:23:21.744 It's like, you know, don't, can't think of an example particularly, but 00:23:21.744 --> 00:23:24.534 I was gonna go for some kind of like Thor example, but he's got a hammer. 00:23:24.534 --> 00:23:29.994 So, but he, he, but I think, I think the point is, is that if you're good at 00:23:29.994 --> 00:23:32.184 something, you can be even better at it. 00:23:32.184 --> 00:23:33.504 You can accelerate that. 00:23:33.589 --> 00:23:36.774 And I think that's, like, for me it's the, it's the, it's the technical side. 00:23:36.774 --> 00:23:38.754 It's the being able to build stuff, it's the understanding. 00:23:39.024 --> 00:23:42.384 And I've always done a good job at being able to connect those worlds and really 00:23:42.384 --> 00:23:44.364 being pragmatic about what was possible. 00:23:44.634 --> 00:23:47.184 And I think for a lot of people now, they can, like, even at the, 00:23:47.184 --> 00:23:49.554 at the base level of that, they can understand that a bit more. 00:23:49.794 --> 00:23:53.034 Because if they try and mess around in code for a few hours and you can't, if 00:23:53.034 --> 00:23:56.484 you can't make it do the thing you want it to do, it's probably not that easy to do. 00:23:57.359 --> 00:24:00.924 So, whereas if you have an interaction in mind or you've seen it and you 00:24:00.924 --> 00:24:03.894 want to sort of play around with it, you could drop a video of it in, we 00:24:03.894 --> 00:24:06.894 do this a lot now, you sort of like reverse engineer interaction patterns. 00:24:07.554 --> 00:24:07.764 think. 00:24:07.764 --> 00:24:10.284 Like those things for me are like, they are really being able 00:24:10.284 --> 00:24:11.514 to accelerate those superpowers. 00:24:11.514 --> 00:24:15.114 And so that was a very long answer to your question, Tom, but I think 00:24:15.114 --> 00:24:18.234 that's how I see the difference between sort of like the lowering the 00:24:18.234 --> 00:24:19.494 floor and the raising the ceiling. 00:24:20.723 --> 00:24:21.293 Tom: Yeah, I really 00:24:21.294 --> 00:24:24.354 James: I'm not sure that's the answer to your question, but I, it's an answer. 00:24:25.103 --> 00:24:26.393 Tom: It's, it's a good, it's a good answer. 00:24:26.453 --> 00:24:26.723 Yeah. 00:24:26.723 --> 00:24:27.803 I think it makes a lot of sense.

00:24:27.893 --> 00:24:32.483 And then I guess as you get more senior, that expectation of how you 00:24:32.483 --> 00:24:38.123 raise that ceiling is on you to know yourself and what, what that shape 00:24:38.123 --> 00:24:42.743 looks like, and maybe the role of managers to help you back what that is. 00:24:43.163 --> 00:24:47.933 Um, and I guess use AI as well to even help reveal that to yourself, 00:24:47.993 --> 00:24:49.523 not just to get things done. 00:24:50.460 --> 00:24:55.500 James: Yeah, I, I mean, honestly, I I, I used AI a lot last year when I 00:24:55.500 --> 00:24:59.160 was thinking about what's the type of role I want post founder and, 00:24:59.160 --> 00:25:02.190 you know, you just talk to it and say, these are the things I enjoyed. 00:25:02.310 --> 00:25:03.480 These are the things I didn't enjoy. 00:25:03.480 --> 00:25:05.040 Here's where I think my strengths are, blah, blah. 00:25:05.250 --> 00:25:08.400 And it can just be a really great sparring partner in that respect. 00:25:08.400 --> 00:25:11.665 And, uh, it's either, it's either talk to ChatGPT or talk to my wife and I, 00:25:11.670 --> 00:25:15.840 I, I get pretty much the, uh, opposite I get sycophant and, no, just do it. 00:25:17.730 --> 00:25:19.140 I'll let you decide which is which. 00:25:24.275 --> 00:25:24.935 Tom: Amazing. 00:25:25.115 --> 00:25:28.055 Um, James, I'm gonna switch gears a little bit unless you 00:25:28.055 --> 00:25:29.205 have any more follow ups, Jonny. 00:25:30.719 --> 00:25:33.329 Jonny: No, I, I mean, it has made me think quite a lot actually 00:25:33.329 --> 00:25:36.449 about this sort of choice. 00:25:36.899 --> 00:25:40.349 Is there this choice that we start to have now where we can go and 00:25:40.349 --> 00:25:44.609 specialise in some new direction because we've got extra tools. 00:25:44.609 --> 00:25:46.859 Like I could go and become a design engineer even though 00:25:46.859 --> 00:25:47.879 I've never been an engineer. 00:25:48.089 --> 00:25:49.769 Maybe to maybe a little bit. 00:25:50.159 --> 00:25:54.629 But I think what we've always found, and we've talked about it on this 00:25:54.629 --> 00:25:59.399 podcast before, is in any given domain, everyone outside that domain 00:25:59.399 --> 00:26:01.589 is like, oh, AI can do that now. 00:26:01.589 --> 00:26:04.349 So, you know, design is cooked or et cetera, et cetera, all 00:26:04.349 --> 00:26:05.909 of this ridiculous stuff. 00:26:06.179 --> 00:26:10.319 Anyone who's inside that domain and knows what good looks like, knows 00:26:10.379 --> 00:26:15.869 that that not to be true, and there still needs to be true expertise. 00:26:15.869 --> 00:26:21.599 And actually the what it means to be an expert changes and will, will rise as, um, 00:26:21.629 --> 00:26:25.769 the technology enables more of the, the easy stuff or the rote work to be done. 00:26:26.819 --> 00:26:31.919 And so, uh, it would be easy to like tell a story of, well, everyone, 00:26:31.979 --> 00:26:35.279 every designer can now do everything because there's AI to do it. 00:26:36.569 --> 00:26:42.179 But in fact, the, the standard and the expectation is shifting such that, um, you 00:26:42.179 --> 00:26:46.559 know, I, it, it's, it's still a function of how much time someone has in the day. 00:26:46.559 --> 00:26:50.759 Like, I can't be an excellent PM and an excellent engineer and an excellent 00:26:50.759 --> 00:26:53.039 designer because there just isn't enough time and I don't have enough 00:26:53.039 --> 00:26:54.689 time to get good at all of those things. 00:26:54.689 --> 00:26:57.509 So I'll end up still being mediocre at all of them, which is why it 00:26:57.509 --> 00:26:59.039 would've been five years ago as well. 00:26:59.789 --> 00:27:06.719 Um, it's just interesting to think about, I think like this illusion of all powerful 00:27:06.839 --> 00:27:12.809 designers, when I suspect that will not be the end result, we will still need 00:27:12.809 --> 00:27:17.879 to have someone who's exceptional at emotion if we really care about that. 00:27:18.029 --> 00:27:19.949 There'll be a set of companies where they're like, yeah, it's 00:27:19.949 --> 00:27:21.659 fine, you know, it's good enough. 00:27:22.139 --> 00:27:26.879 Um, or they don't wanna spend the money on the, the specialisms, but yeah. 00:27:27.778 --> 00:27:28.108 James: I, I, I agree. 00:27:28.113 --> 00:27:33.448 I, I, I don't think, the way, any of the, the sort of AI assisted 00:27:33.448 --> 00:27:36.328 coding or products that I do, I think any of that makes me an engineer. 00:27:36.778 --> 00:27:40.918 And similarly, I, you know, you said like, what, what other things did it apply to? 00:27:40.918 --> 00:27:43.378 Like, I've been messing around with hardware, I've never touched 00:27:43.378 --> 00:27:44.998 hardware in, in, in my life. 00:27:45.268 --> 00:27:48.268 And now I'm like, oh, am I a, am I a physical engineer now? 00:27:48.268 --> 00:27:48.988 You know, cool. 00:27:49.258 --> 00:27:53.098 Uh, I'm, I'm even looking at, I was looking at soldering irons the other day. 00:27:53.098 --> 00:27:53.968 I don't even how to use it. 00:27:53.968 --> 00:27:56.188 I haven't used it since I was like 15. 00:27:57.028 --> 00:27:57.148 very 00:27:57.247 --> 00:27:59.407 Jonny: But now you work in robotics, James, obviously. 00:27:59.458 --> 00:27:59.518 James: a 00:27:59.887 --> 00:28:00.127 Jonny: Yeah. 00:28:00.268 --> 00:28:00.808 James: engineer. 00:28:00.937 --> 00:28:01.297 Jonny: Yeah. 00:28:01.438 --> 00:28:03.058 James: I'm, I'm, I'm, I've got promoted. 00:28:03.508 --> 00:28:07.558 But I, I think, I think that, hon, honestly, you are right. 00:28:07.618 --> 00:28:09.508 None of these things makes you those things. 00:28:09.508 --> 00:28:12.598 It doesn't make me a great engineer or a great product manager, et cetera. 00:28:12.808 --> 00:28:16.168 And likewise, it doesn't make an engineer a great designer if they go and prompt 00:28:16.468 --> 00:28:18.868 Stitch to, to throw a

few visuals out. 00:28:19.288 --> 00:28:23.788 It's, it's still the core skills that we have make us great at those specialisms. 00:28:23.788 --> 00:28:28.378 But I, I love the mentality of I can go and try things. 00:28:28.588 --> 00:28:30.178 I can do, do X, Y, and Z. 00:28:31.108 --> 00:28:33.478 Um, and I would love to, to do more of that. 00:28:33.478 --> 00:28:36.548 Like gen like the hardware thing came about from, you know, I've, I've, 00:28:36.568 --> 00:28:40.558 I've conquered all these mountains, like what's, what's, what's next? 00:28:40.618 --> 00:28:42.778 Um, it was actually 'cause I wanted to build something for my kids. 00:28:42.778 --> 00:28:46.978 But I, I think, I think the, the great thing is, is just that, that feeling of 00:28:46.978 --> 00:28:51.778 possibility of like, that you can have a go at anything where previously, you know, 00:28:51.838 --> 00:28:56.088 the first hurdle that you hit and you're like, nah, I'll go back to drawing boxes. 00:28:56.839 --> 00:28:57.259 Tom: Yeah. 00:28:57.349 --> 00:28:58.819 What, what have you built recently? 00:28:59.089 --> 00:28:59.359 What? 00:28:59.449 --> 00:29:00.799 What are some examples of that hardware? 00:29:01.596 --> 00:29:06.336 James: Yeah, so we, we actually had a guy, um, Rob, uh, who had been playing 00:29:06.336 --> 00:29:08.526 around with these little M5Stack sticks. 00:29:08.586 --> 00:29:12.456 Uh, and he'd managed to get his kids like balances, uh, showing on them 00:29:12.456 --> 00:29:15.696 because obviously like without a phone, uh, on kids accounts at the 00:29:15.696 --> 00:29:17.196 minute they can't see their balance. 00:29:17.196 --> 00:29:20.226 And my, my two have, my youngest just turned six, uh, this year, 00:29:20.226 --> 00:29:21.876 so they both now got accounts. 00:29:22.206 --> 00:29:23.526 So I, I built that. 00:29:23.586 --> 00:29:26.646 Um, then that kind of like goes, oh, I can build on hardware now. 00:29:26.646 --> 00:29:30.846 So you, you sort of, you branch out a little and, uh, I built, uh, an 00:29:30.846 --> 00:29:35.406 app on our tv, our Samsung tv, uh, for like a, to show, sort of show our 00:29:35.406 --> 00:29:40.056 calendars to show things like, uh, we haven't got like, to-do lists a lot. 00:29:40.056 --> 00:29:42.396 A lot of it's through like Google, uh, you know, you'll have like 00:29:42.396 --> 00:29:43.566 Google apps that do a lot of this. 00:29:43.566 --> 00:29:46.716 So if you kind of just build in, build into an ecosystem, you can 00:29:46.716 --> 00:29:48.246 get quite a bit quite far from it. 00:29:48.246 --> 00:29:52.926 So just showing like our our to-do lists, like where we're gonna be and 00:29:52.926 --> 00:29:56.676 when, like, um, and then we, I did put the kids balances on there as well, 00:29:56.676 --> 00:29:57.966 just so they could see it on the screen. 00:29:57.996 --> 00:30:00.186 And it is just something like that that's really fun and enjoyable. 00:30:00.546 --> 00:30:01.296 And even if my wife 00:30:01.343 --> 00:30:03.443 Jonny: I assume you didn't put your balance on there, James. 00:30:03.496 --> 00:30:06.256 James: no, I mean my, I, I should just write note on the screen 00:30:06.256 --> 00:30:07.456 and it's, uh, it'll be done. 00:30:07.463 --> 00:30:07.943 Jonny: Hard coded. 00:30:07.966 --> 00:30:13.006 James: Uh, yeah, e even if my wife refuses to open it, I'm still proud that I did it. 00:30:14.146 --> 00:30:18.466 But I, I think those things, it's like, it is, it's like a, a bit of a gateway. 00:30:18.466 --> 00:30:20.476 It kind of like pulls you into the next thing. 00:30:20.476 --> 00:30:24.646 So now, um, I dunno whether you're familiar with the, the, the sort of, um, 00:30:24.886 --> 00:30:26.746 the LightUp keyboards that you can get. 00:30:26.896 --> 00:30:30.136 Uh, uh, it used to be called Lumi, but it's, it's called ROLI now. 00:30:30.376 --> 00:30:33.046 So they, they're, they're unfortunately not doing very well. 00:30:33.286 --> 00:30:36.166 I hope that they pull out of it, but what they did was open source, all 00:30:36.166 --> 00:30:40.516 of the, the code so that if it does go down, then people can still kind 00:30:40.516 --> 00:30:43.816 of use the, the hardware devices that they've, that they've bought. 00:30:43.816 --> 00:30:44.956 And so I was like, oh, okay. 00:30:45.406 --> 00:30:49.936 So now I'm trying to build a, an app to work with a Lumi device. 00:30:49.936 --> 00:30:53.446 So it's, I don't know, I, I think these things, like you say, have a way of, of 00:30:53.446 --> 00:30:54.766 making you feel that things are possible. 00:30:54.766 --> 00:30:59.806 And I genuinely think if I, if I was gonna be around with anything, 00:31:00.106 --> 00:31:04.606 this would be my state of mind, not what can I build to make some money. 00:31:04.636 --> 00:31:08.506 And I think that's where people perhaps go a little bit wrong is that you, 00:31:08.896 --> 00:31:12.346 you see it on, on Reddit and other channels, it's like, you know, my app 00:31:12.346 --> 00:31:17.416 that's doing a hundred thousand pounds MRR and that, you're like, okay, sure. 00:31:17.416 --> 00:31:22.426 And, and so tho those for me is like, it's like cha chasing the dream, whereas I'm 00:31:22.426 --> 00:31:25.576 happier that I'm just building something to solve my own personal problem. 00:31:26.236 --> 00:31:28.336 uh, we have had like a bit of internal debate around that. 00:31:28.336 --> 00:31:31.546 It's like whether or not that will be more of a thing going forwards. 00:31:31.546 --> 00:31:35.506 Like if you might see more personal apps, like would you, could you even imagine 00:31:35.506 --> 00:31:37.216 a personal app store on your phone? 00:31:37.216 --> 00:31:39.766 Like, these are the kind of things that I would love to see. 00:31:40.216 --> 00:31:43.546 Um, it's just more like niche products than what we thought, what we've 00:31:43.546 --> 00:31:46.336 had to date, which are kinda like bigger products that do a lot more.

00:31:47.039 --> 00:31:47.339 Jonny: Yeah. 00:31:47.386 --> 00:31:50.596 James: I, I, I'd be really interested in following that thread and seeing, 00:31:51.046 --> 00:31:52.351 seeing like really where that comes out. 00:31:52.351 --> 00:31:54.766 Because I don't know whether it's the thing I want or whether it's just the 00:31:54.766 --> 00:31:56.386 thing I want right now because it's fun. 00:31:56.866 --> 00:31:59.776 Um, you know, if it becomes a point of like, people stop building 00:31:59.776 --> 00:32:02.536 these bigger apps because people are building niche ones and I 00:32:02.623 --> 00:32:02.953 Jonny: Hmm. 00:32:03.076 --> 00:32:06.916 James: a app to do a certain thing, I've gotta go and build it to just to get it. 00:32:07.486 --> 00:32:08.866 I think that would be a bit of a blocker. 00:32:08.866 --> 00:32:09.676 But yeah. 00:32:11.199 --> 00:32:11.379 Jonny: Yeah. 00:32:11.379 --> 00:32:15.309 With there, there's been a, probably about a year ago there was this, uh, iPhone app 00:32:15.309 --> 00:32:21.879 released Wabi, WABI, which promised to be this sort of, uh, personal app builder. 00:32:22.179 --> 00:32:23.889 I'm not sure how well it's doing 'cause I haven't heard 00:32:24.009 --> 00:32:26.949 that much about it post-launch. 00:32:26.949 --> 00:32:31.719 But there is this bet, I suppose, that everyone will be a builder at some point. 00:32:31.719 --> 00:32:33.399 Everyone will build their own tools. 00:32:33.939 --> 00:32:40.929 I suspect you and us three on this call are outliers in, in 00:32:40.929 --> 00:32:43.269 the sort of broader ecosystem. 00:32:43.629 --> 00:32:45.819 Well beyond design, you know, normal, normal. 00:32:45.819 --> 00:32:48.999 If I imagine my mother-in-law doing something, I, I, I can't imagine, you 00:32:48.999 --> 00:32:52.689 know, she's gonna be digging around trying to build something anytime soon. 00:32:53.439 --> 00:32:57.339 But if the technology gets to a place where it just feels like an app you're 00:32:57.339 --> 00:33:00.974 using and you're just asking a question and then it like, makes something and, and 00:33:00.979 --> 00:33:02.589 it says, do you wanna do that every day? 00:33:02.589 --> 00:33:05.709 And you say yes and then suddenly you've built one without knowing maybe 00:33:05.709 --> 00:33:07.809 it can sort of get to that place. 00:33:07.929 --> 00:33:11.199 I do like what you're saying about this sort of, um, 00:33:13.599 --> 00:33:18.639 personal like hobby cottage, app building type. 00:33:18.849 --> 00:33:22.569 We do stuff for fun as a family when we might have played a board game instead. 00:33:22.569 --> 00:33:23.649 We'll like build a thing. 00:33:23.679 --> 00:33:25.869 Tom, I know you are doing a lot of this kind of stuff as well. 00:33:26.409 --> 00:33:30.519 Um, and where whether there will be anything in between where more 00:33:30.519 --> 00:33:35.409 people become entrepreneurs to try and make money, or it might just 00:33:35.409 --> 00:33:40.149 be like hobbyists and like, you know, people takes over Warhammer 00:33:41.075 --> 00:33:41.405 Tom: Yeah, 00:33:41.619 --> 00:33:42.279 Jonny: that's like where. 00:33:43.325 --> 00:33:44.915 Tom: yeah, I've, I've been thinking about this. 00:33:45.005 --> 00:33:49.505 Um, we are recording this on a Monday, on Friday, we recorded the last episode 00:33:49.505 --> 00:33:55.115 of just Jonny and I, we, and I mentioned in there about building a, a, uh, to 00:33:55.115 --> 00:33:57.545 play chess game for my 5-year-old son. 00:33:57.815 --> 00:34:01.815 Um, and it was really an ex just a chance to explore Three.js 00:34:01.835 --> 00:34:03.455 and what it can do with creating a 3D world. 00:34:03.455 --> 00:34:08.315 And we had this underwater world with fish and things playing different chess pieces. 00:34:08.315 --> 00:34:12.095 And, um, anyway, that was two days ago, three days ago. 00:34:12.155 --> 00:34:16.745 And on the weekend, on Saturday, I was like, oh, I, I, is a, looks, 00:34:16.745 --> 00:34:19.835 this is cool as a proof of concept experiment, but I don't think my 00:34:19.835 --> 00:34:21.125 son's actually gonna wanna play this. 00:34:21.215 --> 00:34:26.615 So I had cla Claude turn it back into a 2D game, make it more of a pixel art style 00:34:26.615 --> 00:34:30.575 with like these sort of rainbow colours and like, want some motion animation, make 00:34:30.575 --> 00:34:34.415 these have characters, give them eyes, make them move around, do fun things. 00:34:34.895 --> 00:34:38.555 Um, and then we played together on Saturday for about an hour, um, during our 00:34:38.555 --> 00:34:41.165 youngest times, youngest one's nap time. 00:34:42.005 --> 00:34:46.895 Anyway, the whole experience felt like, left me with a question of is this, 00:34:47.345 --> 00:34:50.975 is this actually is the value here the personal software that I created? 00:34:50.975 --> 00:34:55.415 Or is it the, the process of collaborating with my 5-year-old to make something 00:34:55.415 --> 00:34:57.125 that feels more fun and engaging? 00:34:57.125 --> 00:34:59.345 And it doesn't actually matter if that's any good. 00:34:59.585 --> 00:35:02.645 Um, it's the process of creating it together that this now enables. 00:35:02.945 --> 00:35:07.925 Um, and it's sort of hard to imagine there being a big enough value difference 00:35:07.925 --> 00:35:12.305 between a dedicated piece of software like Wabi versus just using Claude Code or some 00:35:12.305 --> 00:35:18.425 other, other sort of fairly mainstream LLM coding agent to be able to build that. 00:35:19.745 --> 00:35:23.405 yeah, I think the, the value was, this experience at least, was less about 00:35:23.405 --> 00:35:28.475 the a kid's chess game and more about collaborating to create something that 00:35:28.475 --> 00:35:32.585 was managed to weave in the things I was interested in helping my son learn 00:35:32.615 --> 00:35:36.335 and creating it into a format that was fun and exciting for him to play with.

00:35:36.725 --> 00:35:40.235 So turning this back around to, to you James, and the, the whole point 00:35:40.235 --> 00:35:42.425 of this actual interview, um, yeah. 00:35:42.425 --> 00:35:45.725 Some of those examples you gave there with the, with the TV and hardware and trying 00:35:45.785 --> 00:35:51.125 bank balances for kids, I'm, I'm curious about your perspective on involving, 00:35:51.605 --> 00:35:55.295 involving your kids in these experiments or your wife or other sort of people in 00:35:55.295 --> 00:35:59.795 shaping them, or if it still feels like it's a solo, like you are the author of 00:35:59.795 --> 00:36:03.965 this product and it's just like the, has a very specific niche target, but it's 00:36:04.175 --> 00:36:07.145 less about the collaboration to create it. 00:36:08.476 --> 00:36:09.646 James: Yeah, I, I think so. 00:36:09.646 --> 00:36:11.656 So sometimes it definitely is the, the latter. 00:36:11.656 --> 00:36:14.956 It's like, I will have an idea and I just want to pursue it, but I, 00:36:14.956 --> 00:36:18.856 yeah, I definitely used it to, to sort of play around with my kids. 00:36:18.886 --> 00:36:23.596 My, my wife is usually more, she have an idea and say, I want you to build it. 00:36:24.021 --> 00:36:26.116 And I keep being like, I, you know, I, I would like that it's 00:36:26.326 --> 00:36:29.116 something that we do together, which I think we, we will eventually. 00:36:29.116 --> 00:36:32.596 But yeah, certainly my, my, my, my son especially has 00:36:32.596 --> 00:36:34.276 shown a great interest in it. 00:36:34.396 --> 00:36:37.846 I think he kind of pokes his head in here sometimes and sees me doing stuff 00:36:37.846 --> 00:36:39.346 and he is curious, what are you doing? 00:36:39.376 --> 00:36:44.686 And we, similarly, Tom, we, we built a Nuno game, um, which for copyright reasons 00:36:44.686 --> 00:36:49.001 I'm gonna call Duo, um, or dos do surely. 00:36:49.396 --> 00:36:54.736 Uh, and so yeah, we, um, he basically wanted to play, uh, more 00:36:54.741 --> 00:36:55.756 and, and it sounds really bad. 00:36:55.756 --> 00:36:57.826 I didn't build it to not play with my son, just to be clear. 00:36:57.946 --> 00:37:00.226 He went to play on his own, but also with other people. 00:37:01.096 --> 00:37:03.526 And you, got the card sets and he loves them. 00:37:03.586 --> 00:37:06.526 Uh, and he's got like a few different versions, but he basically wanted to 00:37:06.526 --> 00:37:10.156 build it so that he could play with his like nanny and grampy or with 00:37:10.156 --> 00:37:11.446 his aunties and stuff like that. 00:37:11.836 --> 00:37:14.806 Uh, and also he wanted to make his own versions, his own rules. 00:37:14.836 --> 00:37:16.276 He was like, I want it to explode. 00:37:16.666 --> 00:37:18.586 I'm like, what's, what's, what's exploding? 00:37:19.636 --> 00:37:23.296 And so, so we built, we built the core game and then built like a, an 00:37:23.296 --> 00:37:27.526 invite, uh, system so he can, he can put their number in, it'll text, text 00:37:27.526 --> 00:37:29.266 them a link and they can play together. 00:37:29.956 --> 00:37:31.666 built that and he absolutely loved it. 00:37:31.666 --> 00:37:34.366 So then we started building more ru rules, different game types, 00:37:34.666 --> 00:37:37.876 and he has got, yeah, he's got a, an extreme version, which does, 00:37:37.906 --> 00:37:39.976 uh, basically cards can explode. 00:37:41.266 --> 00:37:45.586 So, but this, I think it's, you know, I, I love chasing down those cur curiosities 00:37:45.586 --> 00:37:46.876 and I think that is really great. 00:37:47.146 --> 00:37:51.466 And I, I would love, I mean, I, I've not got there yet, but I would love for 00:37:51.466 --> 00:37:53.236 him to be able to do that on his own. 00:37:54.226 --> 00:37:57.016 I think maybe at all, like, uh, you know, that Lovable or 00:37:57.016 --> 00:38:00.016 something like that might, might be beneficial for him in that respect. 00:38:00.496 --> 00:38:04.306 Um, not to sort of pencil any particular one out, but I can't see him like firing 00:38:04.306 --> 00:38:06.076 up Claude Code anytime soon, for instance. 00:38:06.406 --> 00:38:09.106 But I, I, I do, I would love for him to be able to do that. 00:38:09.106 --> 00:38:12.226 And so when I was, when we were building it, I was trying to get him 00:38:12.226 --> 00:38:15.976 to do the talking, so like, speak to it, tell it what you want it to do. 00:38:16.336 --> 00:38:19.696 Trying to understand that this is like prompt engineering of some kind. 00:38:20.481 --> 00:38:22.186 it is, you know, it is like building those skills. 00:38:22.186 --> 00:38:22.456 I think. 00:38:22.486 --> 00:38:25.636 I mean, I mean like, you know, for, for what it's worth as much as what 00:38:25.636 --> 00:38:30.346 we've learned in our X amount of years, uh, gents, I, he, he's like 00:38:30.826 --> 00:38:35.296 a, he knows how to use his iPad more than I ever have known how to use it, 00:38:35.716 --> 00:38:37.996 um, to the point where he actually mentioned lock me out of it, which I 00:38:37.996 --> 00:38:39.616 couldn't actually figure out how he did. 00:38:40.336 --> 00:38:42.736 they're, and they're gonna be AI native, these kids, so they're, 00:38:42.736 --> 00:38:44.086 they are, they're gonna fly. 00:38:44.850 --> 00:38:48.060 I think kind of enabling those curiosities now is great. 00:38:48.060 --> 00:38:51.990 And I also sort of think to sort of bring it back to the broader design 00:38:51.990 --> 00:38:55.080 team and how we work in companies is, it's the same thing really. 00:38:55.230 --> 00:38:58.770 I mean, I don't, I don't sit with many of the, uh, staff, you know, 00:38:58.770 --> 00:39:00.420 and teach them how to build, do know. 00:39:00.420 --> 00:39:05.700 But I do think it's like, it's stoking that curiosity and uh, and honestly 00:39:05.700 --> 00:39:08.730 like, you know, it, it's just having that kind of growth mindset, that 00:39:08.730 --> 00:39:10.920

learning mindset that's, that's required. 00:39:11.790 --> 00:39:15.240 Um, and I don't think that means that everybody needs to be a builder. 00:39:15.270 --> 00:39:17.340 I think it's the same point as I just made about me and my wife, like 00:39:17.370 --> 00:39:20.310 I'm the builder, but she can have ideas and wanna know how to do it. 00:39:20.790 --> 00:39:26.370 That that curiosity at work can sometimes be, are a bunch of people that are 00:39:26.490 --> 00:39:31.500 enabling, laying those foundations and creating the right environment so that 00:39:31.500 --> 00:39:33.900 anyone can, can pursue those curiosities. 00:39:34.170 --> 00:39:37.140 So then when they are there and they want to do it, you need it to be simple. 00:39:37.140 --> 00:39:38.490 You need it to be easy to access. 00:39:38.490 --> 00:39:40.170 And so they can just go and do it. 00:39:40.170 --> 00:39:43.380 And we, we've had some real success with that and I, I, it's been really 00:39:43.380 --> 00:39:47.310 nice to see people that would've, you know, six months ago say, I'm, I'm 00:39:47.310 --> 00:39:49.350 terrified of AI, I dunno what I'm doing. 00:39:49.350 --> 00:39:50.190 I dunno what's going on. 00:39:50.400 --> 00:39:54.960 To then be like building like full flows with, with APIs, with 00:39:54.960 --> 00:39:58.350 data call up and, and doing it like pretty much on their own. 00:39:58.590 --> 00:40:00.600 It's really nice to see that progression happen. 00:40:01.343 --> 00:40:04.733 Jonny: Yeah, I, um, I was with my parents this weekend and I told 00:40:04.733 --> 00:40:09.323 my dad, who's a vicar, uh, about Lovable, and I said, you know, you 00:40:09.323 --> 00:40:10.613 could build the new church website. 00:40:10.613 --> 00:40:12.443 And he said, oh, the church website's awful. 00:40:12.833 --> 00:40:15.533 And we have a web guy, he's a young guy, about 50. 00:40:15.923 --> 00:40:20.393 And I was like, of that, you know, the, the, the average age of the sort of church 00:40:20.393 --> 00:40:23.363 team is such that the young guys are 50. 00:40:23.753 --> 00:40:24.893 But, uh, he's like, 00:40:25.052 --> 00:40:25.262 James: niche 00:40:25.433 --> 00:40:27.923 Jonny: how, how long would it take for me to build this? 00:40:27.983 --> 00:40:30.833 And I was like, I mean, the church website must gonna be half an hour, 00:40:30.833 --> 00:40:31.973 probably, something like that. 00:40:31.973 --> 00:40:34.433 You know, just point at the old one to get the brand and 00:40:34.433 --> 00:40:36.383 then, you know, uh, off you go. 00:40:36.833 --> 00:40:42.713 Uh, so yet to yet I wanna watch him do it because, you know, if my, uh, 69-year-old 00:40:42.713 --> 00:40:46.493 father can, can navigate Lovable and build something good, then, you know, that's a, 00:40:47.423 --> 00:40:48.773 there's something very interesting there. 00:40:49.043 --> 00:40:49.463 Anyway. 00:40:49.463 --> 00:40:49.733 Right. 00:40:49.733 --> 00:40:53.423 Let's move on because I really want to hit, I wasn't at mostly working. 00:40:53.423 --> 00:40:57.503 James, you, you came and spoke at Mostly working, which is, uh, Tom's, 00:40:57.563 --> 00:41:01.343 uh, meetup that he runs for design and AI in London, which is excellent. 00:41:01.971 --> 00:41:02.121 Tom: With 00:41:02.183 --> 00:41:04.853 Jonny: came and spoke at it with Simon from Morse, sorry, yes. 00:41:04.853 --> 00:41:05.603 With Simon from Morse. 00:41:05.843 --> 00:41:07.673 Um, James spoke at it. 00:41:07.673 --> 00:41:08.783 I couldn't make that one. 00:41:08.783 --> 00:41:10.103 I was gutted to miss it. 00:41:10.553 --> 00:41:15.323 I would love to just hear, uh, and I think everyone that wasn't at that 00:41:15.323 --> 00:41:19.313 event, we would love to hear what you spoke about, the specific project that 00:41:19.313 --> 00:41:25.433 you were working on at Monzo that you demoed, uh, and, um, you know, like how 00:41:25.433 --> 00:41:29.333 transformative that's been, because I think every team could learn from this. 00:41:29.333 --> 00:41:30.833 So I'll, I'll hand over to you. 00:41:31.612 --> 00:41:31.902 James: Yeah. 00:41:31.907 --> 00:41:31.942 Yeah. 00:41:31.942 --> 00:41:32.272 Awesome. 00:41:32.272 --> 00:41:32.602 Thanks. 00:41:32.662 --> 00:41:36.142 Um, yeah, so I think it was actually similar to what I was just saying 00:41:36.142 --> 00:41:40.612 is that it was very much how we're trying to enable designers to 00:41:40.612 --> 00:41:44.452 use AI, you know, inside of real, a real team, real organisation. 00:41:44.872 --> 00:41:48.022 Um, and the core argument that I was making was kind of the biggest 00:41:48.022 --> 00:41:52.702 value that we can have as designers and, and other non-technical staff 00:41:52.702 --> 00:41:57.772 at the minute isn't suddenly that we ship production code and we're like 00:41:57.982 --> 00:41:59.662 committing to the actual code base. 00:41:59.662 --> 00:42:03.472 In some, in some companies, that is gonna be the biggest leverage. 00:42:03.472 --> 00:42:05.177 And so I, I think my point was not around. 00:42:06.428 --> 00:42:07.328 Don't do that. 00:42:07.328 --> 00:42:10.088 It was more that you've gotta find the right leverage for your 00:42:10.088 --> 00:42:14.138 organisation and for us it's very much like if we can reduce friction 00:42:14.138 --> 00:42:18.458 to the tools, we can improve the quality, uh, and speed to learning. 00:42:18.493 --> 00:42:22.358 And, and basically I think I called the talk, uh, the messy middle. 00:42:22.718 --> 00:42:26.318 And yeah, it was really like trying to define that gap between, uh, as I've 00:42:26.318 --> 00:42:30.008 mentioned at the start of the, the podcast was between like AI, you know, 00:42:30.008 --> 00:42:34.148 the public narrative of AI is replacing everyone and anyone can ship immediately 00:42:34.148 --> 00:42:35.918 and make a hundred thousand MRR. 00:42:36.368 --> 00:42:41.738 Um, but versus like the actual reality of using AI tooling inside mature 00:42:41.738 -->

00:42:45.278 organisation, but inside a regulated organisation, you know, I know there are 00:42:45.278 --> 00:42:50.588 other banks, fintechs that don't even have access to ums to, to this kind of tooling. 00:42:50.588 --> 00:42:53.108 So it's, you know, it is great that we have got that. 00:42:53.948 --> 00:42:58.178 I think for us, like the, work has really been like a mix of, 00:42:58.238 --> 00:43:01.418 of having this like prototyping infrastructure that I've helped build. 00:43:01.868 --> 00:43:04.568 Um, but also like safe access to the tools. 00:43:04.568 --> 00:43:09.878 Like we have contracts in place with all of these LLMs so that we're not using, you 00:43:09.878 --> 00:43:11.918 know, they can't use it for training data. 00:43:11.948 --> 00:43:13.778 We're not putting PII data in there. 00:43:14.168 --> 00:43:19.238 Um, but equally like you need infrastructure to help you settle this up. 00:43:19.238 --> 00:43:22.778 So you have to have like security and platform supports, uh, to 00:43:22.778 --> 00:43:24.548 give you sort of that capability. 00:43:24.998 --> 00:43:26.948 Um, so it is a, it is a team effort. 00:43:27.038 --> 00:43:30.068 I'll be, honestly, everyone's sort of bringing their bit, but we, we, like I 00:43:30.068 --> 00:43:35.798 said, the core from my perspective was if we can improve the kind of quality 00:43:35.798 --> 00:43:40.028 of our prototyping, our, our learning, we can get these like higher quality 00:43:40.028 --> 00:43:44.378 insights just to basically, I don't think it's even efficiency at this point. 00:43:44.378 --> 00:43:46.928 We, we were talking about it more as if you look at like an 00:43:46.928 --> 00:43:51.758 efficiency by value graph, very much at the top end of the value. 00:43:51.938 --> 00:43:54.158 I'm not sure we're like that much more efficient. 00:43:54.428 --> 00:43:57.398 You probably just spend more time like, you know, stressing the details. 00:43:57.398 --> 00:44:01.118 This isn't a bad thing, but I think the higher value is that we are 00:44:01.118 --> 00:44:05.108 able to just be more sure about the direction we're going in. 00:44:05.108 --> 00:44:08.438 We can get this like much, much higher quality signal. 00:44:08.498 --> 00:44:12.308 I mean, like you consider, even a year ago we were probably still stressing 00:44:12.308 --> 00:44:14.348 about how do we put inputs in prototypes. 00:44:14.708 --> 00:44:19.118 It is, it's really, it's really mental that we've gone from having 00:44:19.118 --> 00:44:23.288 been able to solve that for 10 years all of a sudden, hey, we can do that. 00:44:23.288 --> 00:44:26.378 And also here's this entire database backend that we can 00:44:26.408 --> 00:44:28.358 have that mi that mimics a bank. 00:44:29.558 --> 00:44:32.888 so, so that, that's, that's just to bring it back to the point that's, 00:44:32.918 --> 00:44:37.028 that's actually what we've built is this kind of clone of the Monzo 00:44:37.058 --> 00:44:40.028 product and, and, uh, uh, an

ecosystem. 00:44:40.028 --> 00:44:44.168 So we have, um, a design prototype, uh, built and React Native. 00:44:44.228 --> 00:44:48.998 So it feels, it feels like the Monzo app, but it's using all, 00:44:49.058 --> 00:44:50.528 uh, sort of like fake data. 00:44:51.228 --> 00:44:55.008 We can create accounts, connected accounts, we can simulate transactions. 00:44:55.398 --> 00:44:59.988 And what it's allowed us to do is to be able to build much faster into, 00:44:59.988 --> 00:45:01.908 you know, more murky directions. 00:45:01.908 --> 00:45:03.288 You can prototype much more quickly. 00:45:03.288 --> 00:45:04.158 You have an idea. 00:45:04.428 --> 00:45:08.808 And rather than jump into Figma sometimes it's much quicker, especially where a 00:45:08.808 --> 00:45:12.108 lot of the things that we're thinking about at the minute are AI enabled. 00:45:12.168 --> 00:45:14.058 It's quite hard to do that on a static canvas. 00:45:14.478 --> 00:45:18.438 You use using a, a prompting agent as your canvas. 00:45:18.438 --> 00:45:21.228 You say, this is what I want it to do, here's how I want it to work. 00:45:21.528 --> 00:45:23.268 You might want to add some colour on that. 00:45:23.268 --> 00:45:26.208 This is what it, I, I've sort of like mocked it up to look like, but 00:45:26.208 --> 00:45:30.798 we built it all on our rails of our component system so it knows of our DS. 00:45:30.858 --> 00:45:34.578 It's like, it, it's, you can get much, much better quality. 00:45:34.578 --> 00:45:37.668 I think I called it, um, previously where you might have used 00:45:37.668 --> 00:45:39.368 Figma Make, Lovable or similar. 00:45:39.728 --> 00:45:44.778 You kind of got the, uh, the Temu Monzo, which is, you know, it it, it just comes 00:45:44.778 --> 00:45:47.118 out splashed with a bit of Hot Coral. 00:45:47.388 --> 00:45:48.588 It looks awful. 00:45:48.588 --> 00:45:50.118 It doesn't look anything like the product. 00:45:50.358 --> 00:45:53.298 And I think we, we actually, honestly, you know, I, I'm, I'm 00:45:53.298 --> 00:45:56.418 still, I'm still believing using the right hammer for the right nail. 00:45:56.418 --> 00:45:59.633 And I'm not saying that the React Native app is their only way to, to 00:45:59.688 --> 00:46:04.488 test anything or the inner way to learn, ultimately as well, you know, it's, it's 00:46:04.488 --> 00:46:10.338 difficult to go out to users as a bank, show them this hacked together product 00:46:10.338 --> 00:46:14.088 and be like, can you, uh, can you, you know, what would you do with your money? 00:46:14.088 --> 00:46:16.398 Or could you tell us how, where you would put your account details? 00:46:16.488 --> 00:46:19.818 And you know, they're gonna go, is this, is this real? 00:46:19.848 --> 00:46:22.068 Is this, is this actually the case? 00:46:22.068 --> 00:46:24.438 And so I, I think you, you know, you have to think about it from 00:46:24.438 --> 00:46:25.668 a security perspective as well. 00:46:26.058 --> 00:46:29.328 Um, but yeah, what we've built, I'm, I'm, I'm really pleased with and 00:46:29.328 --> 00:46:33.858 yeah, it really is enabling us to, to sort of move, move faster in, 00:46:33.858 --> 00:46:35.058 in lots of different directions. 00:46:35.063 --> 00:46:38.598 And, and like I said earlier, it's great when you see people who previously were 00:46:38.598 --> 00:46:42.978 a little bit more AI shy or a little like unconfident using those tools up 00:46:42.978 --> 00:46:46.668 with this whole prototype of like their, the thing they've been working on. 00:46:46.878 --> 00:46:48.858 And then testing it with users as well. 00:46:49.248 --> 00:46:52.668 We had a sprint, uh, two weeks ago on a, on a, on a product I can't talk 00:46:52.668 --> 00:46:56.628 about, but they, they literally, like start of the week, we just, were were, 00:46:56.693 --> 00:47:00.018 we were jamming on ideas, we were thinking about the specific use cases 00:47:00.678 --> 00:47:02.958 and then they turned it into prototypes and tested it by the end of the week 00:47:02.958 --> 00:47:04.128 using this React Native prototype. 00:47:04.128 --> 00:47:05.418 It was fantastic to see. 00:47:05.808 --> 00:47:10.938 So it's, yeah, I, I, I really love that, that level of, of quality and 00:47:10.998 --> 00:47:14.238 uh, and craft that we can get out of that in, in such a short space 00:47:14.238 --> 00:47:15.558 of time is, is just phenomenal. 00:47:16.063 --> 00:47:18.853 Jonny: I do remember the, uh, we used to do design sprints together 00:47:18.913 --> 00:47:20.173 in, out of the Sprint book. 00:47:20.203 --> 00:47:22.993 And just think the Sprint book now is probably, you'd have to give it 00:47:22.993 --> 00:47:24.223 a little rewrite now, wouldn't you? 00:47:24.668 --> 00:47:27.268 James: I mean, it's, uh, you, you got, you got Jake Knapp on speed dial. 00:47:27.268 --> 00:47:31.328 It's, uh, it, it, it's, it's, it's what, 10 years old at least 00:47:31.328 --> 00:47:32.288 now, maybe a little bit more. 00:47:33.119 --> 00:47:33.419 Jonny: More. 00:47:33.449 --> 00:47:35.279 I would, I would imagine a bit more than 10 years. 00:47:35.279 --> 00:47:35.609 Yeah. 00:47:35.959 --> 00:47:36.319 Tom: Hmm. 00:47:36.398 --> 00:47:39.788 James: So yeah, I, I, I, I would argue, yeah, it's definitely, I, I, 00:47:39.788 --> 00:47:43.688 like, I wouldn't, I wouldn't go back to like paper prototyping necessarily. 00:47:43.928 --> 00:47:47.318 I actually, we, we, we did, sorry, I'm, I'm off on tangent now, but as 00:47:47.318 --> 00:47:51.878 part of this, uh, of this sprint, we, we did some, uh, some drawing 00:47:51.878 --> 00:47:54.468 in, um, in Figma, uh, in FigJam. 00:47:55.238 --> 00:47:58.928 And it's been such a long time since I've done kind of like draw box, uh, 00:47:58.928 --> 00:48:02.558 you know, uh, wire framing that I was like, I, I was going so slow, and 00:48:02.558 --> 00:48:03.788 I'm like, we only got eight minutes. 00:48:03.788 --> 00:48:04.448 Oh, crap. 00:48:04.658 -->

00:48:06.678 So instead, I just, I just started prompting ChatGPT. 00:48:08.108 --> 00:48:09.608 I'm like, right, and this is what I want to look like. 00:48:09.608 --> 00:48:13.358 And then, you know, give it me in this wire frame, uh, styling, and then just 00:48:13.358 --> 00:48:15.278 dropped, dropped these, these images in. 00:48:15.278 --> 00:48:18.488 I'm like, then annotated them and be like, this is what I'm thinking. 00:48:18.698 --> 00:48:21.938 Because it was quicker to do that than me try and put a few boxes together, 00:48:22.328 --> 00:48:25.368 which I don't think speaks, uh, volumes to my, uh, my skill in FigJam. 00:48:26.918 --> 00:48:30.728 no, it was, it was, it was, it was really interesting to see that was the 00:48:30.728 --> 00:48:32.438 flow that I ended up going through. 00:48:33.818 --> 00:48:34.148 yeah. 00:48:35.155 --> 00:48:35.425 Tom: Yeah. 00:48:35.455 --> 00:48:36.235 Super interesting. 00:48:36.445 --> 00:48:41.185 I remember one of my takeaways from your talk, James, was the, was the focus 00:48:41.185 --> 00:48:42.955 on shrinking the, the learning loop. 00:48:43.015 --> 00:48:47.125 And so everything you talked about there, where the prototyping is in 00:48:47.125 --> 00:48:53.785 service of able to move faster and, and shorten the time to help decide 00:48:53.785 --> 00:48:55.615 if a direction is one worth going in. 00:48:55.615 --> 00:48:58.165 And I think you've shared some really interesting things about 00:49:00.385 --> 00:49:04.315 influenced content to inform the product experiences as well that you're 00:49:04.315 --> 00:49:05.725 prototyping, which is really cool. 00:49:05.995 --> 00:49:09.145 I did have a follow up question around all of this, which is, um, 00:49:09.925 --> 00:49:12.595 had to do that presentation again now, or that walkthrough again now, 00:49:12.685 --> 00:49:15.235 like what, what are, what is the slide or two that you would add? 00:49:15.265 --> 00:49:18.055 Like what are the, what has changed since you gave that, because that must 00:49:18.055 --> 00:49:20.395 have been a couple of months ago now, and I think a lot of the things you 00:49:20.395 --> 00:49:27.745 were showing seemed mature ish or like they were sort of approaching maturity. 00:49:27.745 --> 00:49:33.055 But I'm, I'm curious if there's any insights or new themes or new that you've 00:49:33.055 --> 00:49:34.735 reached now that you have that in place. 00:49:36.156 --> 00:49:37.506 James: Yeah, that's a, that's a good question actually. 00:49:37.506 --> 00:49:41.376 I, I think that the core value is definitely the same. 00:49:41.376 --> 00:49:45.186 It's, it is definitely the learning loop, but I do think that we. 00:49:46.410 --> 00:49:49.440 The addition is definitely, there's a greater depth of collaboration. 00:49:49.440 --> 00:49:52.770 Now, I think, uh, and we, I've talked about it a little bit earlier on, but 00:49:52.770 --> 00:49:57.480 there's, there is definitely like this expectation that these prototypes, whether 00:49:57.480 --> 00:50:01.620 it's a, a link shared or a video, they, there is this expectation that they go 00:50:01.620 --> 00:50:05.670 along with either, you know, a feature that you're building or like I was 00:50:05.670 --> 00:50:09.330 talking about in planning, like we, we are expected as part of planning to share 00:50:09.330 --> 00:50:13.080 these prototype of what we're, and you know, it is, it's understandable, but when 00:50:13.080 --> 00:50:19.800 you can't really explain what, uh, you know, a a, a sort of non-deterministic, 00:50:21.000 --> 00:50:26.220 UI is gonna do in a few, few screenshots, it's really hard to get, get that across. 00:50:26.220 --> 00:50:30.450 Especially when you're talking all of these, uh, strategy plans and proposals, 00:50:30.480 --> 00:50:34.585 you know, they go through our, our senior leadership and our C-suite and, 00:50:34.590 --> 00:50:37.050 and you know, it's what we're gonna spend the next six months working on. 00:50:37.050 --> 00:50:39.510 You need to be concrete on your bets, actually. 00:50:39.510 --> 00:50:41.490 You could end up wasting six months essentially. 00:50:41.490 --> 00:50:45.660 So, yeah, it's, it's great that they've been such a deeper point of 00:50:45.660 --> 00:50:48.480 collaboration where there's, yeah, there's expectation now that they exist. 00:50:48.690 --> 00:50:51.330 And I can only imagine that, you know, if we had this conversation in another 00:50:51.330 --> 00:50:54.150 two months, that would a only be deeper. 00:50:54.180 --> 00:50:57.420 And the other thing I would really like to see when I'm starting to see a bit 00:50:57.420 --> 00:51:01.860 of is the, the kind of handoff, and I mean, I would expect it to be less 00:51:01.860 --> 00:51:06.150 of a handoff and more of a handshake experience between design engineering. 00:51:07.170 --> 00:51:10.440 we're already, uh, trying to play around with how could we bring 00:51:10.740 --> 00:51:15.000 that react prototype into, uh, so Figma code layers, for instance. 00:51:15.000 --> 00:51:20.430 So, you know, for anyone that hasn't seen the Config, uh, uh, 00:51:20.460 --> 00:51:22.730 demos, but like they've, they've kind of brought Figma Make to the 00:51:22.730 --> 00:51:24.220 canvas, it looks really impressive. 00:51:24.510 --> 00:51:27.090 I think that it gives us a lot of ability. 00:51:27.210 --> 00:51:32.100 We, what we want to be able to do is, know, connect all of the infrastructure 00:51:32.100 --> 00:51:36.000 that we've built, have it live on the canvas, and then actually like 00:51:36.030 --> 00:51:40.950 a, Linear ticket or some kind of like, say, like handover handshake 00:51:40.950 --> 00:51:43.410 would be, you drop that link in. 00:51:43.830 --> 00:51:46.980 And also it could be that it, uh, you know, tells you what the 00:51:46.980 --> 00:51:48.390 components are that have been used. 00:51:48.390 --> 00:51:49.590 It could give you a spec. 00:51:49.980 --> 00:51:52.500 That's the

kind of thing that I would see as the next step. 00:51:52.890 --> 00:51:58.740 But equally the reverse, not just how do designers make more code? 00:51:58.770 --> 00:52:02.670 How do we get engineers and product managers getting into Figma, getting 00:52:02.670 --> 00:52:05.820 into those prototypes and then saying, well actually we could do it like 00:52:05.820 --> 00:52:08.310 this duplicate boom, here's my idea. 00:52:08.670 --> 00:52:11.580 'cause I don't see a lot of, a lot of that I see with products sometimes 00:52:11.580 --> 00:52:15.150 that they might grab your frame and give you a rough idea or, or butcher 00:52:15.150 --> 00:52:16.110 it, whatever you wanna call it. 00:52:16.440 --> 00:52:20.160 Um, but I do, I do, I I haven't seen a lot of it from engineering 00:52:20.160 --> 00:52:21.660 where they would like design. 00:52:21.900 --> 00:52:26.370 Whereas I think if we could start to bring this like experience where 00:52:26.370 --> 00:52:30.840 it is like a connection of code and design, I would love to come and have 00:52:30.840 --> 00:52:34.860 like a, a collab session, a jam with engineers, with product managers. 00:52:34.860 --> 00:52:35.520 I think that'd be great. 00:52:35.520 --> 00:52:38.850 So I think the next, you know, we, we can have another chat in two months. 00:52:38.850 --> 00:52:43.410 I don't mind in two months I would love to be selling you that not only are. 00:52:43.676 --> 00:52:48.026 Design utilising this to to, to, know, shorten the learning loop. 00:52:48.266 --> 00:52:52.466 We're using it at a strategy level to set vision and direction and the 00:52:52.466 --> 00:52:56.486 sense expectation that these artefacts go along with, um, the actual, 00:52:56.516 --> 00:52:57.566 uh, features that we're building. 00:52:57.956 --> 00:53:00.566 I would love to say they're not artefacts anymore. 00:53:00.566 --> 00:53:03.326 It's not, it's not just a thing that we look at, it's a thing that we actually 00:53:03.356 --> 00:53:05.906 use that we visually collaborate on. 00:53:05.936 --> 00:53:09.026 That's the, the next sort of step, in my opinion. 00:53:09.056 --> 00:53:11.876 That is certainly what I would like to see more of at Monzo. 00:53:11.881 --> 00:53:14.546 But at the minute it's been really hard 'cause the, the tools don't really allow 00:53:14.546 --> 00:53:16.556 for that level of collaboration yet. 00:53:16.556 --> 00:53:19.076 You know, you don't have multiplayer on, on, on, on Cursor 00:53:19.076 --> 00:53:20.006 or Claude Code for instance. 00:53:20.006 --> 00:53:24.206 So think that that would be a really great, uh, piece if we can get it 00:53:24.206 --> 00:53:25.976 to work in the way I want it to. 00:53:26.036 --> 00:53:29.126 I, I definitely think there's layers to that, a bit, bit of a amisu. 00:53:29.186 --> 00:53:32.936 I think we could quite easily on a really small interaction. 00:53:33.236 --> 00:53:35.396 You, you don't need to go to the depths of like pulling the 00:53:35.396 --> 00:53:38.006 entire, um, design prototype repo. 00:53:38.006 --> 00:53:41.726 You could just say, I want to play around this interaction, and then you might have 00:53:41.726 --> 00:53:43.946 a few riffs off of that with other people. 00:53:44.876 --> 00:53:48.506 but yeah, I, I think that for the, um, the sort of depths of where we want 00:53:48.506 --> 00:53:52.946 to go, um, with the design prototype, I really do think it's about just 00:53:52.946 --> 00:53:54.146 trying to choose the right path. 00:53:54.146 --> 00:53:58.646 So if collaboration is the key element, keep it light, keep it on the canvas. 00:53:58.946 --> 00:54:03.146 If building something that mimics the app experience, we wanna test it with users. 00:54:03.176 --> 00:54:04.646 Do that in the React Native prototype. 00:54:05.066 --> 00:54:08.681 I think this, this is what I would like to sort of see the progression of it be. 00:54:11.155 --> 00:54:15.175 Tom: You are, you're bullish on, on Figma still having an important role to play or, 00:54:16.948 --> 00:54:17.128 James: yeah. 00:54:17.128 --> 00:54:17.578 sorry. 00:54:17.578 --> 00:54:17.968 Yeah. 00:54:17.968 --> 00:54:26.188 Um, yes, I am, uh, I went to Config this year to say, what are you gonna 00:54:26.188 --> 00:54:27.928 do to make me open you every day? 00:54:28.348 --> 00:54:30.238 That, and like, I'll be completely honest about that. 00:54:30.478 --> 00:54:34.078 I said it, I said it to a lot of people because I wasn't, I was, I was purely, 00:54:34.078 --> 00:54:37.528 and again, I I, I do say this with a caveat of, I have a very privileged 00:54:37.528 --> 00:54:41.938 position where I don't have to open it to handover with a squad every day. 00:54:41.938 --> 00:54:45.538 So I, I do recognise that I still think it is the predominant way that 00:54:45.538 --> 00:54:51.328 teams collaborate, but I was personally not using it on a daily basis. 00:54:51.388 --> 00:54:56.128 And mostly only if I was going to kind of play around with other people's 00:54:56.128 --> 00:55:00.208 work or, or butcher their work, uh, or be trying to build something, I was, 00:55:00.208 --> 00:55:04.648 you know, mostly using it as a context source for an agent of some sort. 00:55:05.428 --> 00:55:10.048 it was, I very much went to Config to be like, what are you gonna do about it? 00:55:10.138 --> 00:55:14.158 And I, and I, and I, honestly, I do think they popped up with a great answer 00:55:14.158 --> 00:55:20.278 because think at the minute, the, the thing that cannot be matched is you 00:55:20.278 --> 00:55:25.528 still have, designer knows how to use Figma and they know how to use a canvas. 00:55:25.528 --> 00:55:29.608 And that is their, like still their primary sweet spot, their primary tool. 00:55:30.028 --> 00:55:35.098 So if you can then their skills without them needing to leave the tool. 00:55:35.158 --> 00:55:37.408 'cause this has been one of the adoption problems that I think 00:55:37.408 --> 00:55:38.608 every team has been

facing. 00:55:38.608 --> 00:55:42.928 It's like, how do you get designers to go and open an IDE to open the terminal, 00:55:43.918 --> 00:55:45.688 you know, and start, start hacking? 00:55:45.748 --> 00:55:47.158 Uh, how do you get 'em to do that? 00:55:47.608 --> 00:55:50.758 So the, it is quite clever that the way they've done it with Figma is just that. 00:55:50.758 --> 00:55:52.048 Yeah, let's bring it to the Canvas. 00:55:52.053 --> 00:55:55.228 I, I don't think Figma Make was the thing, I think when they built Figma Make, they 00:55:55.228 --> 00:55:59.518 were trying to stave off Lovable when they've now thought about it properly. 00:56:00.148 --> 00:56:02.338 Sorry if anyone from Figma ISS listening, but when they've, they've 00:56:02.338 --> 00:56:03.478 had a minute to think about it. 00:56:03.478 --> 00:56:07.168 And actually the thing that they really need to stave off is not how do we 00:56:07.288 --> 00:56:08.878 keep up with these other no code tools. 00:56:08.878 --> 00:56:15.088 It's if people are gonna move to work in an IDE to code first, how 00:56:15.088 --> 00:56:17.458 do we, how do we keep up with that? 00:56:17.458 --> 00:56:21.538 How do we make it that that can be done where you, where you work in Figma with 00:56:21.538 --> 00:56:24.208 all of Figma other, uh, great features. 00:56:24.208 --> 00:56:28.378 So I think the collaboration aspect, comments, annotation, you know, you can, 00:56:28.408 --> 00:56:32.128 you can even use of the Figma motion piece, like I've been playing around 00:56:32.128 --> 00:56:37.353 with, with Figma Motion, bring it into a component, drop that into a, into a, a, 00:56:37.358 --> 00:56:40.078 a prototype it all, it's all connective. 00:56:40.138 --> 00:56:40.858 Same with Weave. 00:56:40.858 --> 00:56:44.158 Like you've got that, um, the node based tool, how it kinda connects 00:56:44.158 --> 00:56:47.308 things and if you change like the source, it will update the whole piece. 00:56:47.308 --> 00:56:50.968 That's sort of what I expect now from tool. 00:56:51.448 --> 00:56:54.748 Just, it's like, I think your expectation just expands and you're 00:56:54.748 --> 00:56:58.588 sort of like, you know, if I was gonna encode change a component, it would, 00:56:59.338 --> 00:57:00.778 propagate through the entire code base. 00:57:00.778 --> 00:57:04.618 So if I change a static component, it should propagate through the whole thing. 00:57:04.618 --> 00:57:09.188 And so that applies to these, um, to these code layers as well. 00:57:09.188 --> 00:57:11.578 And I think Figma Make didn't really do that very well 'cause 00:57:11.578 --> 00:57:13.498 it was so detached from Figma. 00:57:13.558 --> 00:57:15.598 I think, you know, the same kind of problem that they've had with. 00:57:15.964 --> 00:57:17.584 And insights and FigJam, et cetera. 00:57:17.584 --> 00:57:20.404 It wasn't on the core product, the core canvas. 00:57:20.404 --> 00:57:23.584 So I, so I really do think that they've, uh, they've come

out fighting and 00:57:23.584 --> 00:57:27.754 I, it's certainly given me a reason to open them and play around again. 00:57:27.784 --> 00:57:32.884 So I, I, and I do think for those folks that are maybe less keen to 00:57:32.884 --> 00:57:37.354 open Claude Code or Cursor or whatever you tool of choice is, it's a really 00:57:37.354 --> 00:57:39.664 great way to start learning things. 00:57:40.774 --> 00:57:43.804 'cause you, you can start to learn some principles as well, like, you know, 00:57:43.984 --> 00:57:46.084 duplicate a frame, it's, it's a branch. 00:57:46.534 --> 00:57:49.504 How do I make edits and then I, you know, I wanna save them. 00:57:50.134 --> 00:57:53.164 It's kinda like learning Sketch again, you know, command S is, well, that's 00:57:53.164 --> 00:57:56.104 actually a commit, you know, you've gotta sort to understand some of these things. 00:57:56.109 --> 00:58:00.544 Uh, I have spoke to the Figma team and one of the things I said was, I 00:58:00.544 --> 00:58:06.094 understand the, the desire to, and I don't mean dumb it down, but to sort 00:58:06.094 --> 00:58:08.734 of it more user friendly, friendly. 00:58:08.734 --> 00:58:10.684 I think auto layout is a great example here. 00:58:11.044 --> 00:58:14.969 Also, layout is really easy to use, but it does not help you understand Flexbox. 00:58:15.829 --> 00:58:19.774 In fact, I'd argue it makes it even worse because you're like, 00:58:19.834 --> 00:58:21.514 hang on, I want it to be there. 00:58:21.574 --> 00:58:23.569 I've said flex-start, and then it's over here. 00:58:24.549 --> 00:58:28.414 And so if they'd, if they'd have taught, if they'd have found a way 00:58:28.444 --> 00:58:33.154 to talk, to teach people the auto layout, how it actually connected to 00:58:33.154 --> 00:58:37.834 Flexbox, even with just like the subtle label naming, maybe, that would've 00:58:37.834 --> 00:58:42.094 gone a long way from designers, you know, seven years ago starting to use 00:58:42.094 --> 00:58:45.964 auto layout to now trying to figure out what the hell flex start means. 00:58:46.175 --> 00:58:46.535 Jonny: Mm. 00:58:46.744 --> 00:58:46.894 James: I 00:58:46.925 --> 00:58:49.085 Jonny: Although James, it, it doesn't matter 'cause no one's 00:58:49.085 --> 00:58:50.555 gonna read the code anymore, so. 00:58:50.682 --> 00:58:54.282 James: I mean, I mean you say that, but Well, so, so this is, this is the other 00:58:54.282 --> 00:58:59.052 thing there that bothers a little bit that bugs me, which I really think there needs 00:58:59.052 --> 00:59:03.642 to be a solution in Figma for, is that, you know, if I, I, I do go in and I will 00:59:03.642 --> 00:59:08.502 make code and it's because sometimes not necessarily won't work, but sometimes I'm 00:59:08.502 --> 00:59:13.752 token conscious and so I don't, I don't wanna spend money just to move something 00:59:13.752 --> 00:59:16.092 from here to there when I know what to do. 00:59:16.332 --> 00:59:19.362 Same with like anything, if you want, you know, you want it to understand, 00:59:20.352 --> 00:59:24.612 rounding or you set a specific tech size, and then I understand they built the, the 00:59:24.612 --> 00:59:27.072 kind of, uh, inspect panel in, in Cursor. 00:59:27.282 --> 00:59:28.422 But that is clever. 00:59:28.422 --> 00:59:32.172 The way they did it was that it still needs a, a, a pro, 00:59:32.202 --> 00:59:33.282 it just gives you a prompt. 00:59:33.492 --> 00:59:34.692 It doesn't actually change it. 00:59:35.142 --> 00:59:38.262 And it's, it, I say clever because they, you know, they've, they've cashed in. 00:59:38.352 --> 00:59:41.142 But what, what bothers me is I don't wanna do that. 00:59:41.142 --> 00:59:42.162 I don't wanna have to pay for that. 00:59:42.162 --> 00:59:44.802 And I, and I do think if there was a little bit more of a 00:59:45.012 --> 00:59:47.022 habitual learning loop between 00:59:47.743 --> 00:59:48.133 Jonny: Hmm. 00:59:48.192 --> 00:59:52.452 James: doing and the code, it would be a lot better for, for us as designers of 00:59:52.452 --> 00:59:53.982 how we're actually learning these things. 00:59:54.399 --> 00:59:54.669 Jonny: Yeah. 00:59:54.672 --> 00:59:57.252 James: think that's the, that has been my feedback on code layers is 00:59:57.252 --> 01:00:00.192 like, how can you actually connect what people are doing to how it 01:00:00.192 --> 01:00:02.022 really is working in the background? 01:00:02.022 --> 01:00:03.372 Like, how is it working with Git? 01:00:03.642 --> 01:00:06.012 'cause you know, you, you take a designer through GitHub for the first 01:00:06.012 --> 01:00:07.692 time and they're like, what's a commit? 01:00:07.692 --> 01:00:08.322 What's a branch? 01:00:08.322 --> 01:00:10.722 What's a pr I don't, I don't get it. 01:00:10.782 --> 01:00:14.442 And then you start trying to like, describe it as, you know, well, imagine 01:00:14.442 --> 01:00:17.862 I copy your file and I put it over here and I do whatever I want with it. 01:00:18.342 --> 01:00:20.652 And it's, you know, you, you try and go down those roads. 01:00:20.652 --> 01:00:23.532 So I, I really hope that they take the opportunity to, to 01:00:23.532 --> 01:00:25.032 teach a little while, while 01:00:25.119 --> 01:00:25.449 Jonny: Yeah. 01:00:26.109 --> 01:00:29.079 James, I'm pretty sure you brought Abstract into, uh, Deliveroo 01:00:29.079 --> 01:00:31.749 back in the day when that was the original for Sketch file. 01:00:31.809 --> 01:00:32.859 Uh, Sketch files. 01:00:32.859 --> 01:00:33.489 Yeah, Sketch files. 01:00:33.619 --> 01:00:34.069 Tom: Yeah. 01:00:34.899 --> 01:00:38.469 Jonny: What I think, um, let's move on to the quickfire round 01:00:38.874 --> 01:00:39.174 James: Ooh. 01:00:39.579 --> 01:00:42.459 Jonny: and James Quickfire is quickfire for a reason. 01:00:44.232 --> 01:00:45.817 James: I have no idea what you're talking about. 01:00:47.601 --> 01:00:51.561 Jonny: Uh, so, uh, my, I, I have, uh, a quick fire question 01:00:51.561 --> 01:00:52.611

and then I'll hand over to Tom. 01:00:53.061 --> 01:00:57.561 So, uh, last week we talked quite a lot about managers and senior, 01:00:57.591 --> 01:01:01.971 senior designers burning out and sort of feeling, feeling like they're 01:01:01.971 --> 01:01:05.796 behind on the tools and behind on the craft, but also, and that that's an 01:01:05.796 --> 01:01:07.401 expectation of them all of a sudden. 01:01:07.761 --> 01:01:14.151 Um, any tip, tip or two for someone who is in that position where they're 01:01:14.151 --> 01:01:17.271 like, I'm suddenly feeling like I need to actually be designing again. 01:01:17.421 --> 01:01:18.981 I haven't designed for a little while. 01:01:19.341 --> 01:01:21.231 Uh, you know, how would you get back into it? 01:01:22.972 --> 01:01:25.942 James: So you're sort of asking like what's the the opposite to using AI? 01:01:27.442 --> 01:01:27.857 Is that the question? 01:01:28.063 --> 01:01:30.883 Jonny: I mean, I suppose this is in a world where AI isn't 01:01:30.883 --> 01:01:31.843 gonna just do it for you. 01:01:32.053 --> 01:01:32.293 Yeah. 01:01:32.612 --> 01:01:33.002 James: Gotcha. 01:01:33.392 --> 01:01:37.592 Yeah, I, I mean, I think, I mean, it can be nice to have a palate cleanse, right? 01:01:37.592 --> 01:01:41.822 I think that getting into a project where AI isn't gonna do it for you, 01:01:42.122 --> 01:01:45.002 getting your head in, and that, if that isn't possible at work, maybe something 01:01:45.032 --> 01:01:46.442 in, in your, in your personal work. 01:01:46.862 --> 01:01:50.102 I think just getting into something that's like really design focused. 01:01:50.372 --> 01:01:52.832 You really wanna solve a problem and you don't necessarily wanna 01:01:52.832 --> 01:01:54.692 think about how am I gonna build it? 01:01:54.722 --> 01:01:56.132 How, what's the end product? 01:01:56.462 --> 01:02:00.602 What, like, you just genuinely get into some craft execution. 01:02:01.052 --> 01:02:03.122 Uh, I would call that like a nice little pallet clean. 01:02:03.962 --> 01:02:07.832 And I, I honestly like, I mean, I, I know I was talking about my holiday 01:02:07.832 --> 01:02:12.182 last week before we started recording, but I did, I did build something, but 01:02:12.242 --> 01:02:16.052 it was a massively different thing, complete pallet cleanse for me. 01:02:16.352 --> 01:02:18.662 It wasn't anything to do with work, it wasn't anything to do with any 01:02:18.662 --> 01:02:19.892 of the projects I've got on the go. 01:02:20.162 --> 01:02:21.962 And it was just fun and I enjoyed it. 01:02:22.412 --> 01:02:27.842 Uh, and I think that for me is, is what sometimes what you need, and it can stave 01:02:27.842 --> 01:02:29.522 off, stave off the burnout, I think. 01:02:29.522 --> 01:02:34.322 But equally, I know this is quick fire, but equally, I think that put so much 01:02:34.322 --> 01:02:38.222 pressure on yourselves, like, you know, just, just there's so much going on. 01:02:38.222 --> 01:02:43.442 Try and focus on the things that help you and that improve your workflow and 01:02:43.442 --> 01:02:44.552 improve the things you are good at. 01:02:44.582 --> 01:02:48.512 Don't think about every tool that comes in the market, just, you know, narrow. 01:02:49.791 --> 01:02:51.021 Jonny: Brilliant Tom. 01:02:52.697 --> 01:02:56.147 Tom: James, when AGI takes over everything, what will you do 01:02:56.147 --> 01:02:56.912 with all of your free time? 01:02:58.406 --> 01:03:02.276 James: Oh, uh, well, you know, I actually, I think we touched on it earlier. 01:03:02.336 --> 01:03:06.266 I would probably, still make things like a hundred percent, 01:03:06.266 --> 01:03:07.316 I'd still be building stuff. 01:03:07.316 --> 01:03:13.376 But if you, I guess if you assume that we have this, you know, uh, uh, greater 01:03:13.376 --> 01:03:18.326 than human intelligence where anything is possible, so not just building software, 01:03:18.326 --> 01:03:23.276 building hardware, probably start going a bit bit big on my, my project ambitions. 01:03:23.276 --> 01:03:26.456 Like, I don't know, start trying to build like an Iron Man suit or something, 01:03:26.456 --> 01:03:30.956 or, or, or I dunno, a spaceship. 01:03:30.956 --> 01:03:31.916 Can I build a spaceship? 01:03:32.006 --> 01:03:32.216 Build, 01:03:32.383 --> 01:03:35.053 Jonny: So you, you were serious about this robotics designer thing, eh? 01:03:35.216 --> 01:03:35.516 James: Yeah. 01:03:35.576 --> 01:03:37.016 I mean, like, but my, this is my point. 01:03:37.016 --> 01:03:40.916 If, if, if something more intelligent than me and more and like, more 01:03:40.916 --> 01:03:44.811 impressive than what I can learn on, on YouTube tells me what to do, I, 01:03:44.816 --> 01:03:46.526 I, I'll, I'll start building stuff. 01:03:46.526 --> 01:03:46.766 Yeah. 01:03:46.826 --> 01:03:49.211 I think that, I dunno, I'd probably get divorced, but I, 01:03:50.511 --> 01:03:51.686 but I'd be building things. 01:03:51.686 --> 01:03:55.046 I, but then wife would be like, why is there a spaceship in the garden? 01:03:55.046 --> 01:03:56.866 Well, AGI. 01:03:56.916 --> 01:03:57.236 AGI.. 01:03:59.455 --> 01:04:03.145 Jonny: Related, but have you seen this website MeatLayer where, um, you 01:04:03.145 --> 01:04:06.535 can sign up and it's like a Fiverr or whatever, but agents can ask 01:04:06.535 --> 01:04:07.765 you to do things in the real world. 01:04:07.765 --> 01:04:13.765 So if an agent has to complete a task, like post a letter, then it can pay you to 01:04:13.765 --> 01:04:17.035 go to the post office for it completely. 01:04:17.095 --> 01:04:18.415 Uh, you could do that. 01:04:18.475 --> 01:04:21.745 You could be, yeah, you could, uh, you could be, 01:04:21.850 --> 01:04:22.360 James: meat. 01:04:22.645 --> 01:04:25.165 Jonny: yeah, be meat for the agents anyway. 01:04:27.086 --> 01:04:27.536 James: Wow. 01:04:28.465 --> 01:04:32.575 Jonny: uh, I've got one more, uh, and uh, and maybe we'll do, do one more each.

01:04:32.845 --> 01:04:36.805 Uh, so what is, it sounds like you're a Figma bull. 01:04:36.925 --> 01:04:39.445 We've had some Figma bears on, on this podcast as well. 01:04:39.805 --> 01:04:44.545 Um, aside from Figma, what is your favourite product at the moment? 01:04:47.448 --> 01:04:52.008 James: Oh, I can tell you my most used actually, and then probably favourite 01:04:52.008 --> 01:04:57.858 as well, but I, I've been using Hex, uh, it's a dictation app, but I like 01:04:57.858 --> 01:05:01.518 it, which it's open source, so I managed to like, on top of it, build some of 01:05:01.518 --> 01:05:04.378 the features that I wanted it to do, to have, make it a bit more like Wispr 01:05:04.668 --> 01:05:05.958 Flow, but without having to pay for it. 01:05:06.138 --> 01:05:06.918 Sorry, Wispr Flow. 01:05:07.368 --> 01:05:10.008 Um, if you ever want the one that's a sponsor, I've just killed that now. 01:05:10.008 --> 01:05:13.578 So, um, so that's definitely my most used because, because I, I, 01:05:13.578 --> 01:05:15.798 I pretty much don't type anymore. 01:05:16.248 --> 01:05:22.968 Um, and I'd say favourite, am I allowed to say Monzo? 01:05:22.968 --> 01:05:24.553 Is that, is that, is that too much of a plug? 01:05:25.695 --> 01:05:28.395 Jonny: I mean, it's, it's a little bit embarrassing, but you can say it. 01:05:28.793 --> 01:05:29.693 James: Oh, no, I know. 01:05:29.733 --> 01:05:32.688 I, I think, I think probably Cursor is, is my, is my favourite. 01:05:32.688 --> 01:05:36.768 I, I genuinely, it's the first thing I open in the morning, so I 01:05:36.768 --> 01:05:40.428 would say that would, that gives you uh, of enough to know there. 01:05:42.419 --> 01:05:42.959 Tom: Fascinating. 01:05:43.439 --> 01:05:49.079 Um, one very niche specific question about Monzo since we, I, I previously worked 01:05:49.079 --> 01:05:50.369 in Monzo, you are, you're at Monzo now. 01:05:50.549 --> 01:05:53.249 I'm curious what the best AI themed Slack reaction is. 01:05:55.616 --> 01:05:57.836 James: Uh, there's some really good ones actually. 01:05:57.836 --> 01:06:03.656 I, I would say it's really the, the, the, uh, AI image game has really 01:06:03.656 --> 01:06:06.326 taken off in the last, like 12 months. 01:06:06.326 --> 01:06:09.446 And I think my joining has got nothing to do with that whatsoever. 01:06:09.896 --> 01:06:10.766 Uh, but any, 01:06:10.875 --> 01:06:11.960 Tom: have, uh, led that charge. 01:06:12.806 --> 01:06:14.456 James: do, I do, I do enjoy it. 01:06:14.816 --> 01:06:17.396 Um, but I think anything that gets created immediately gets 01:06:17.396 --> 01:06:18.566 turned into a Slack reaction. 01:06:18.566 --> 01:06:21.566 So I, I, there's some really cracking ones. 01:06:21.626 --> 01:06:26.366 Uh, you, we've got our design system lead, uh, Sam, who I'm sure you, you know 01:06:26.366 --> 01:06:30.926 very well, Tom, uh, and he is our sort of resident apple, uh, expert as well. 01:06:31.226 --> 01:06:35.486 And he, he recently had a

really big milestone and uh, uh, at work and I, I 01:06:35.486 --> 01:06:40.346 turned him into a, um, a sort of Sam Jobs character, uh, you know, get good old. 01:06:40.826 --> 01:06:43.196 I think I might have done that to you one, uh, back in the day as 01:06:43.196 --> 01:06:45.026 well, Jonny, the old Silicon Valley, 01:06:45.279 --> 01:06:45.819 Jonny: I think so. 01:06:45.819 --> 01:06:48.819 I think we were both in, yeah, we were both in this, in that poster 01:06:48.896 --> 01:06:49.616 James: The hair, I 01:06:49.629 --> 01:06:49.929 Jonny: moment. 01:06:49.946 --> 01:06:50.366 James: hair. 01:06:50.829 --> 01:06:50.949 Jonny: Yeah. 01:06:51.236 --> 01:06:54.776 James: but yeah, so I did that and, and now there is a, a Sam Jobs 01:06:54.776 --> 01:07:00.296 reaction, so anything re remotely Apple related gets, gets the Sam Jobs. 01:07:00.326 --> 01:07:02.636 And there's, there's a, there's a few other really good ones, but yeah, 01:07:02.906 --> 01:07:06.956 I've got an entire folder, like just like AI, slop images, basically. 01:07:08.051 --> 01:07:10.751 Tom: What and what, what your, what is your tool stack of choice 01:07:10.751 --> 01:07:12.341 when generating such memes? 01:07:13.276 --> 01:07:14.476 James: That's a good question actually. 01:07:14.601 --> 01:07:19.786 I, I found a lot of joy with ChatGPT actually recently I tried, 01:07:19.846 --> 01:07:23.176 I had a, a whole Gemini period 'cause I thought Nano Banana was 01:07:23.176 --> 01:07:25.096 pretty good when it first started. 01:07:25.096 --> 01:07:30.616 But I tend to find the, the drift on Nano Banana now is like really wide. 01:07:30.676 --> 01:07:33.406 You can sometimes get really good output and sometimes awful. 01:07:33.436 --> 01:07:36.496 Uh, whereas I think it's a little tighter on ChatGPT you might sometimes need a 01:07:36.496 --> 01:07:41.056 couple of revisions, but I also think the UX on ChatGPT image generation 01:07:41.056 --> 01:07:45.076 has got a lot better because you can describe more specific, uh, edits. 01:07:45.076 --> 01:07:47.986 You can obviously use circle and annotate and things like that and you can, if 01:07:47.986 --> 01:07:52.636 you, if it wildly misses, which it really frequently does, if it wildly misses 01:07:52.636 --> 01:07:55.906 the reference photo for instance, you can drop it back in and say, no, this, 01:07:57.046 --> 01:08:01.126 and there's, yeah, I dunno why, but whenever I do a picture of of, of me and 01:08:01.126 --> 01:08:02.746 others, everyone else comes out great. 01:08:02.746 --> 01:08:04.786 And I, I, I look like some kind of burnt cake. 01:08:05.146 --> 01:08:09.886 Uh, so it's, I'm not entirely sure what's going on there. 01:08:09.916 --> 01:08:13.186 I think it's how to get me, they're trying to reduce my token, uh, usage. 01:08:14.623 --> 01:08:16.908 Jonny: Well, if we clip one thing from this podcast, James, that'll be it. 01:08:17.500 --> 01:08:18.760 James: The The burnt cake. 01:08:18.820 --> 01:08:19.625 Oh, surely not. 01:08:22.107 --> 01:08:22.347 Jonny: No, 01:08:22.931 --> 01:08:23.381 Tom: Amazing. 01:08:24.117 --> 01:08:25.347 Jonny: you said some good stuff. 01:08:25.347 --> 01:08:28.377 I'm sure we'll find something to clip that eclipses the burnt cake. 01:08:28.617 --> 01:08:31.047 Um, right. 01:08:31.417 --> 01:08:31.627 Tom: Let's 01:08:31.767 --> 01:08:33.687 Jonny: think, uh, I think, I think that's wrap. 01:08:33.747 --> 01:08:38.877 Uh, James, thank you so much for joining us and, um, really excited 01:08:38.877 --> 01:08:43.347 to see what you continue to build at Monzo and keep pushing AI 01:08:43.347 --> 01:08:44.817 forward and all that kind of stuff. 01:08:45.207 --> 01:08:48.147 London is a fintech capital and we've had two fintechs so far. 01:08:48.357 --> 01:08:49.437 We'll probably continue. 01:08:49.437 --> 01:08:53.607 So, um, uh, great work there and, uh, thanks everyone for tuning 01:08:53.607 --> 01:08:56.037 in and we'll see you next time. 01:08:57.566 --> 01:08:57.956 James: Awesome. 01:08:57.956 --> 01:08:58.526 Thanks both. 01:08:58.586 --> 01:08:59.396 Really appreciate it. 01:09:01.136 --> 01:09:01.346 Bye.