Varun Rajan 0:06

As I've been exploring the future of work, I've found it really interesting talking to designers and design leaders. And when I do, I keep running into the same question underneath all of these different conversations. With all of the tools that we have at our disposal, what do you actually have to be good at now? now that the tools can generate a reasonable-looking interface in seconds, what's the thing that still matters? Steven Patterson, my guest today, has been a design leader in fintech for over a decade. He's built in-house design teams at companies like Braintree and Highnote, and he's one of those designers who can also code, which, as you'll hear, turns out to be really, really relevant right now. A few things from this conversation that I genuinely couldn't stop talking about after we stopped recording. The first is this: Steven describes a new kind of sameness spreading across digital products. Same fonts, same grids, same feel. Uh, what I like to call the AI equivalent of what Bootstrap did to the web 10 years ago. Tailwind is the new Bootstrap is something that I've heard and I've been repeating ad nauseam because I think it really does resonate. It's a clean way to name something that I think we've all been noticing but couldn't articulate with all of these AI-generated websites and tools and all that kind of stuff, and it requires everybody who's generating something new to have an elevated sense of what is the look and feel and branding, and what, what are they actually trying to achieve with the thing that they're building from a design perspective. The second is where he says the real design skill is moving. It's not the pixel perfect Figma execution, but it's moving upstream. The brand system, the voice, the principles, the visual rules, the tools, uh, that, are pulled from, and the thing that tells AI what to make. That reframing really stuck with me. And the third thing is something that he says near the end of our conversation that I think is the best single test I've heard for whether a creative person will thrive in this environment. And he says it's not being afraid of the terminal, and, I think that's important for a couple of reasons. Because it's not just about the terminal and being comfortable with tools like Claude Code and Codex. It's about getting comfortable with tools you otherwise thought weren't for you, and I think that applies across discipline. So that's the episode in a nutshell. Let's get into it, because this was a super interesting conversation with, I think, a lot of really practical, uh, applicable learnings Stephen Patterson, thank you for taking the time today. one of the things that I've been really obsessed with learning more about, or trying to, really identify a problem space in is like talent, generally. So like how are things so rapidly changing? And so you had a really thoughtful post about how, good enough in terms of design, and stuff like that, is rampant now. It's like really easy, to get that with AI tools. but I'd love to hear a little bit more about that, specifically and what you're seeing today in terms of, what are the kinds of issues that you're running into as a hiring manager? what are you seeing in terms of attitudes, profiles, all that kind of stuff.

Stephen Patterson 3:24

So yeah, so there's still for any given design role, if you're having hundreds, specifically thousands of candidates, you're gonna get a variety of portfolios and, obviously there's only so many you can realistically go through. And I feel like on a daily basis, and while I would say that it's not with the introduction of kind of various AI tooling and people vibe coding and stuff like that, like I think it is. slowly shifting. But I would say, you still see a variety of, of portfolios where people kind of presenting work, in a variety of ways. but I think there is this, discussion. I think, within design and design hiring is like there's, AI tools can help expedite design, in terms of the production of, of work. But there is this layer of sameness or this kind of like vanilla feel to generated ai,

Varun Rajan 4:16

Yeah,

Stephen Patterson 4:18

using the same typefaces or the same grids or the same formula that you see across, websites

Varun Rajan 4:25

so

Stephen Patterson 4:26

products.

Varun Rajan 4:27

I heard recently was like, tailwind is the new bootstrap. So right, like it was like 10 years ago, like everything had cut up like the same like bootstrappy vibe,

Stephen Patterson 4:35

like even with co if you talk to Claude or Cursor or something like that, they might Yeah, pull from Tailwind or maybe like a library, like Sha cn, you get these components that kind of all, maybe they're using inter fonts and they all have the same, feeling. Which, from a design standpoint it's like, very, a good grid system. It's very Swiss type and has all of those standard practices that I feel like designers would say this is best practices and good to use and stuff like that. But I think there is this level of, what's on brand or original or is this kind of how it should be represented. and so I think, coming back to like design hiring and stuff like that, it's. finding people that understand those things. it is, there isn't like a level of sameness across their work or they're just pumping things out there. But, there's no originality to it, no kind of like feeling to it. And I think that's where, a designer that can, choose or decipher or go through AI process with kind of best practices, originality, using kind of modern tools. there's this, navigating that I think a little bit. And I think, yeah, some of the, some of my comment and um, and LinkedIn was around that in terms of, being able to choose and design thinking. And those practices are still relevant and still at play, even if It, everything looks really nice and really polished. It's okay, like how did you get there? What problems do they solve? Like those underlying pieces, to to design, I think. Yeah.

Varun Rajan 6:11

Yeah. Has your, has your hiring process changed to account for things like that, or are these more you have to put more work into the filters?

Stephen Patterson 6:22

I think there, there hasn't been, I think a huge process shift. there's still, I think from a design standpoint, this kind of reviewing work, in some format, whether it's, someone sending us a, sending you a link to their portfolio or a PDF or some work that they've done, like I know. know with engineers, it seems like it's shift to like utilizing AI tools and like code tests and things to whittle out. Can they, do this type of work or, what level are they at, depending on, the types of, the quality of code that they get for, a certain prompt or insight. but I feel like yeah, design has this level of taste where I feel like you can't really tell an ai like, is this good design or bad design? it's especially for, I feel like a design role can vary depending on if you're going to a really technical company or kind of a lifestyle type company, like an e-comm brand versus, FinTech or brand, like a. What you want your designer to, the skillset they have can, vary a lot. And so I don't think like a portfolio that might work for one might not work for another. so there is a little bit of that with design where like taste and quality and what, a company's looking for in their candidate, goes into play a little bit more than I think coding, it's very much input output. Like what's the quality of this? and do they know what they're doing and are they like, do they really know next JS or React or, what kind of libraries do they use? And that kind of thing where it's, I wouldn't say it's like directly binary, but I think in the age of AI tools, there's a level of AI's gonna spit out this code and can you be like, is this a good quality code or is this bad quality code? and go from there where, design is very much more nuanced, I think there.

Varun Rajan 8:19

Yeah. so I do wanna continue like digging, in or like pulling that thread in particular, but I realized I also just jumped right into the conversation and it was like, here's what we were talking about. Let's like talk about this,

Stephen Patterson 8:31

yeah.

Varun Rajan 8:32

very particular thing. First of all, you were traveling, you were in Japan. How was that?

Stephen Patterson 8:36

it was good. So yeah, my, I guess a little backstory, so yeah, my, my family and I have been traveling for six months actually. So we just got done with a six month, I was working during this time, but we did a six month trip,

Varun Rajan 8:49

Yeah.

Stephen Patterson 8:49

in September. Mostly as my kids are two and three, so it's like just before they're starting to hit school age. And so we, I don't know, we made the crazy like thing to sell our house and go on this kind of big trip before we kinda got locked into school year and all that kind of stuff. so we're

Varun Rajan 9:08

That's amazing.

Stephen Patterson 9:08

kind of Ja Japan was the last, the last piece of that. So we're transitioning back into, into real life

Varun Rajan 9:15

that's amazing. so you guys made a decision to do six months of traveling, like with your kids, before they were like school age and you had to settle down somewhere. What were the, yeah. what were the things that led up to that decision? That's wild.

Stephen Patterson 9:28

so yeah, so we've been in, I mean we've been in, so yeah, we live in Detroit, so we've been here for five years. obviously have two younger kids and knew that, obviously like school was coming up and. be beholden to, school schedules and holidays and all that kind of stuff. and I think, with where we were at our house, we knew we needed to move into kind of a different lifestyle, house bigger living conditions. So I think, with that, my wife and I always talked about doing kind of some large trip like this. and so we, it came up in that conversation like, Hey, do we transition into this house? Or since, we're both working remote, there's this opportunity to like potentially, take the show on the road, I guess

Varun Rajan 10:11

Yeah.

Stephen Patterson 10:12

for a period of time. then it was, yeah, basically just conversations with work to make it, make it work with, with the team and. and all of that. and we didn't do a

Varun Rajan 10:22

super

Stephen Patterson 10:22

aggressive timeline, and it was like a month in each location, with kids. So it was a softer in that as far as it wasn't, super rapid, a new place every week or every two weeks. So we tried to integrate per place, for a period of time. that was a choice we made too, just with the having kids and trying to feel comfortable in the place. so yeah, it I came about as. Opportunity and certain things aligning and trying to get that to work. And, um, we made it work and it was, yeah, I would say it had its ups and downs, definitely with the

Varun Rajan 10:55

I'm sure.

Stephen Patterson 10:56

olds. So there, there was, really high highs and some low lows during the travel experience, yeah.

Varun Rajan 11:02

man. where all did you go?

Stephen Patterson 11:04

so we started in Europe. So we did, we did a month the English countryside, so in the uk, the southwest of the country, in Cornwall. And then we did a month in Copenhagen, and then, in Lisbon. and then we went down to, like Mexico City Oaxaca. I had a friend that was getting married in

Varun Rajan 11:27

Oh, sweet.

Stephen Patterson 11:28

We were there for a little bit, split between those two. and then, then we, we did Australia and then Japan. Yeah. So then we came back. So a, mostly full world trip,

Varun Rajan 11:41

that's awesome. I, I wanna ask actually, if we take it back to you, you're in the spot right now where, you and your wife were both working remotely. you're, working in FinTech right now.

Stephen Patterson 11:53

Correct.

Varun Rajan 11:54

and, and your companies were supportive. This is really awesome. I am actually, I'm genuinely curious about just the trajectory of your career. if we were to just like rewind and, how did you get into design in the first place? Is that where you started your career? yeah. Tell me more about what did school look like for you? what did you think your career was gonna be? and, where did you get started?

Stephen Patterson 12:14

Yeah. yeah, taking it back, back to college, it was, I was very, I was a liberal arts major slash Studio art minor. So it was definitely, I did a lot of hands-on art, painting, drawing, standard, I think graphic arts, alongside just like a variety of, more of a liberal arts degree. So I went kind to more of a private school. and then after that kind of was trying to find my way into what I wanted to do a little bit. and then, eventually found my passion, wanting to really go into design, but I didn't really necessarily know the tooling, which at the time was predominantly just like Adobe, tools and Cork Express if you remember that.

Varun Rajan 12:58

Wow.

Stephen Patterson 12:59

yeah, I went to, yeah, a portfolio school, in Chicago to learn those skills. which I think was really helpful. 'cause there was a lot of, people in a lot of the industry that taught there, 'cause a lot of it was night classes, so after their day jobs at certain agencies or. In-house studios would teach there.

Varun Rajan 13:14

Oh, interesting.

Stephen Patterson 13:16

yeah, so that's where I honed my skills a bit and like the whole schooling was it was, one of those, like one year program you're creating like a portfolio of work to come out of there to hopefully get like a junior intro job.

Varun Rajan 13:31

and and tell me how long ago was this at this or like when abouts was this and was, did UX look like UX at the time? or was it more like more like visual design. Graphic design stuff that, that you were doing.

Stephen Patterson 13:43

it was still screens, but a lot at that time. my first job was at, FCB, the agency and working on the Discover Card app at the time. It was, yeah, it was all Photoshop at that time, so it was, there was a thing called like layer comps where you basically could change, the different states of things. So you'd have one canvas and go through all the states of that design, through that. So it was very, you're designing in pixels and, it's using a lot of layers and, clicking through screens, in a way within Photoshop that was people were I feel like using Photoshop or Illustrator, but both tools weren't, really built to design screens. But that was just to get the idea down of what we should build. So yeah, that was like my first role was, more of a like production designer for that, like taking the kind of the brand and. interpreted that into, their iOS app. You just pass those off to whoever they have developing it. sometimes developers were like at the agency, sometimes they would have, some external shop that would develop 'em out. So it was definitely, very like blind way of designing where you're just okay, like here you go. seeing them until they're, in a working app almost.

Varun Rajan 15:04

Yeah.

Stephen Patterson 15:05

yeah. So it was a different way of working, I think, than, then where it's at today, obviously. But

Varun Rajan 15:10

Yeah. I'm curious, did you have product managers and stuff or like requirements or like where did the, where did like definition come from?

Stephen Patterson 15:17

yeah, it was very old school and that, it was like a creative director. Sometimes you would, might have a product or account manager that would oversee, feedback and set meetings and. Maybe write expectations and things like that, but then you might have creative director that kind of oversaw the vision for where it should go. and like designers underneath that. which I guess, there's, I guess a lot of levels of product designer now, or like product design, lead and manager. So it's, I think it's maybe the term creative director is maybe less or more towards brand and marketing side of things. I feel like now versus how that's thought. But yeah, so it's definitely, it was definitely, yeah, more of an old school traditional agency type model, in the way it was presented. but yeah, it was always weird kind of reviewing designs on, PowerPoint slides, like static ideas and pitches and that kind of stuff. a way, you wouldn't really consume a website or consume an app. You're looking at them and like these like very static things, not very in like an interactive way. yeah.

Varun Rajan 16:24

Yeah.

Stephen Patterson 16:25

that's

Varun Rajan 16:25

Super interesting. what came after that for you?

Stephen Patterson 16:29

after that's when I made my transition into in-house, which was Braintree at the time. which I was in Chicago, so that was one of the hot, a hot tech companies coming outta Chicago at the time. I think I joined, I was like employee, maybe one, like 1 30, 1 20, somewhere around there. but it was like pretty much right after the PayPal acquired, Braintree and Venmo. so yeah, Venmo and Braintree, we were in the same office and the design team was a little, we worked on both a little bit. but yeah, that was where I dove into FinTech and learned about in-house design and, I feel like saw the industry kind of shift towards in-house, teams, over I think utilizing like agencies or outsourcing certain things.

Varun Rajan 17:16

I'm curious, like how, like what did you think about that? Like obviously from the perspective of somebody going in-house for the first time versus being at an agency and then seeing the industry shift towards that.

Stephen Patterson 17:28

Yeah.

Varun Rajan 17:29

I guess my question is. It's like, how did you see that as an employee, right? being like, oh, I get to be embedded and think about this. Like from the perspective of someone that gets to have like long-term kind of like ownership and context. and also did you see why the industry moved in that direction? Because there were some actual kind of benefit, to it. Like what's the as opposed to, 'cause I think about this a lot, right? as somebody that has done product at a bunch of different companies and, the agency model does appeal to me in some ways. And it was like, oh, you get reps, like you can go in like quickly understand problems and deliver solutions as well. curious about how you weighed the trade offs and how you weighed the trade offs at the time and like what you might, how you might look back on it. just reflecting back now.

Stephen Patterson 18:13

right. Yeah, I think, I. Certain risk that I had, I guess going into it was like, am I gonna be bored? I think as as a, as a designer you're like, oh, I gotta work on maybe, three or four companies at once, and you are like, maybe getting some fresh new ideas in. You're working across maybe a couple different industries, have this optionality to it, where you're going into one company, right? You're just like, can I work on this one product for this one brand? Is it gonna be, fulfilling enough or interesting enough versus like kind of traversing, maybe a variety of work. but I think, and then going in house and just seeing kind of the variety of work that exists. I think especially for design, whether you're. talking about marketing and brand and, websites to very technical products, and workflows and dashboards and things like that. there's, there is like quite a variety in design.

Varun Rajan 19:10

All right.

Stephen Patterson 19:11

and I think obviously the real benefit I feel like, obviously that people bring up is, having all of that context and really deeply knowing the products to make swift decisions. But I also think it's, becoming, coming there with a level of trust and like autonomy that you can have in you're just you learn the products and the team and the company begins to trust you as an individual or as a discipline within the company. So you can move a lot faster without having to maybe get all these approvals from like top down or from a variety of stakeholders or. I think there is some level of, checks and balances, obviously, as work goes out to make sure it's, hitting the right notes or solving the right problems. but I think there's, whether it's running over to someone's desk or having a 15 minute chat really quick, I think there's a lot more fluidity and trust and stuff that can be built in-house versus having that maybe oh, on Thursday next week we're gonna review these designs. Or, it's very choppy where you're like giving feedback and then you're like having an agency go back to the drawing board or make edits and then, try to come back with, maybe another meeting or sending a link. I know the agency model, there's more modern agencies now that can move quicker, or at a product team's pace. But I think at that time I feel like there was like. a lot more speed at an in-house team. think the, the so I think that's when it, a little bit comes back in-house, I feel hiring becomes a lot more important. 'cause you make the wrong hire. the design of your, product or, your deliverables are gonna look, are not gonna look great. And to be like, okay, now we have to go hire this agency for all this money to, do something and we have to. Give them all this context and they don't know the product and all this kind of stuff. so I think, so yeah, I do think in-house teams, and seeing that, I think at Braintree at the time, which was very much a, I would say a technical like I think we had six designers and there was maybe like, two or 300 engineers. it was like a very lopsided like,

Varun Rajan 21:21

Yeah.

Stephen Patterson 21:22

um, you know, design team, um, to like ratio.

Varun Rajan 21:27

one thing that I'm like thinking about a lot, I think, when I started doing the podcast, I was thinking about career transitions specifically because I found that talking to people about them, like when I was like a hiring manager, interviewing them, it was like those transitions told me a lot about the person, what they cared about, their story. getting a sense of how they got to where they were. Like, to this point in time, But the other thing that I think that I'm starting to get a lot more interested in, especially as I'm thinking about how work is changing and all that kind of stuff is like, is this idea of longevity. Like you were at, Braintree for a few years, right?

Stephen Patterson 22:01

Yeah, like six, six, I believe. Like

Varun Rajan 22:03

six years. I feel like nowadays six years, working in tech like anywhere is it's a good, it's a solid tenure. and as somebody that was coming in thinking about oh, how am I gonna get bored here? what were the things that kept you around? What were the, the moments where you thought maybe you might move on and then you decided to stay and what were the inputs like going into those decision points, like during that time?

Stephen Patterson 22:22

yeah, I think finding the work interest screen is like a big, is a big one. being able to like switch teams. the, I would say like the company itself was, growing very fast. We were up into the right pretty much every year I was there, like it was moving very well. So I think that, trajectory and having an impact on that and, continuously hitting, new milestones every year, I think was like a big one. Like we didn't really have much of a downturn. When I was there. So I feel the company doing well, the introduction of new products, like when we go into payments or new tooling or, a variety of new endeavors where it wasn't just necessarily like we're processing payments or we're just doing this one piece the whole time. that kind of kept things fresh and, liking the team I'm working with and the company as a whole. But I think having a, a company that's doing well and making interesting product and we were hiring, I would say all the I've worked with there have gone on to a variety of good places. that I worked with, designers that are not

Varun Rajan 23:28

eligible

Stephen Patterson 23:28

at Audien, at, other startups, leading teams. So I felt like we had a really good core. Of designers at the time there, which I feel like we all fed off each other. so I feel like that was a good atmosphere. And

Varun Rajan 23:42

oh six.

Stephen Patterson 23:42

it was all those conditions were like really good. There wasn't really

Varun Rajan 23:46

In the first five years,

Stephen Patterson 23:47

I like, would made, would've made me like, leave. I think I left 'cause I, I felt like I had touched so much of the products and you get to a point where you're like going back and fixing some things that you like did in the past or oh, am I redesigning this for the third or fourth time? Or, this kind of, okay, now might be the time to look for something

Varun Rajan 24:09

very,

Stephen Patterson 24:09

especially being there after six years.

Varun Rajan 24:11

yeah.

Stephen Patterson 24:12

and I think that was the time where like PayPal started to come in a little stronger as. creating direction. we were pretty autonomous after they hired us to oh, you still do what you're gonna do and, own your trajectory. But then, I think there started to be like more influence there, which kind of slowed things down and created more bureaucracy. And so that, that kind of quick startup pace was starting to dwindle a little bit. and yeah, I I, like of startups and have jumped to other ones since then. So I think, that's when I found my time, but

Varun Rajan 24:49

Yeah, totally. So did you end up looking for next? Where did you end up landing? I understand the push factors and also the kind of like sticking factors, right? Whereas was actually enough to work on that, kept you interested and motivated for a long period of time. You also had a lot of people that you worked with that you seemed to really respect, got along with those working relationships, like all that's obviously really crucial. And then eventually what? And then the kind of like speed of execution, like your ability to be creative across multiple different, projects and execute very quickly all of those, maybe not the people, but like the execution part. Slow down with the bureaucracy. You're finding yourself on rotation with like old projects, like revisiting things. and so like you're looking for Yeah. Something fresh. Things got a little bit stale. yeah. Yeah. so what were you looking for next? And what, where did you end up landing?

Stephen Patterson 25:33

yeah, so I was looking, I wanted to get out of FinTech 'cause I like, felt like I had, six years and I'd really dove into payments and I was like, what else is out there? It was my first in-house job. so I ended up, at the time I transitioned from Chicago to Detroit. so I kind was looking in like the Detroit startup space. so yeah, I ended up landing called Bloom Scape. there's like plant delivery, so like e-commerce. I liked plants, so it was like those two things. And they were looking for their first kind of in-house designer to help own the, the complete vision. So a little more lifestyle where I was, from art direct photo shoots and overall brand to,

Varun Rajan 26:17

Oh,

Stephen Patterson 26:18

working with, CMS, like content management systems and building out the website and, obviously optimizing checkout flows and all of that.

Varun Rajan 26:26

sure. Okay.

Stephen Patterson 26:27

was the technical side of things to the brand side of things. yeah, so that kind of came across my plate. and yeah, I ended up being there for I think a year and a half. mostly 'cause the company did very well during the pandemic 'cause everyone was getting plant deliveries and then

Varun Rajan 26:43

Yeah.

Stephen Patterson 26:44

started to fall off a little bit after that and, ended up going away a little bit. So that's when I transitioned out of that. But, but yeah, I think it was a transition to try something new, expand my design skillset, into other areas, which really interested me. so that was a little time of like discovery and trying something different and seeing other aspects of like design and how they impact, the company and the product and the bottom line and all of that.

Varun Rajan 27:11

Yeah.

Stephen Patterson 27:12

yeah.

Varun Rajan 27:13

that's very cool. so it sounds like the company itself had a huge pop, like during the pandemic and then things started winding down and, yeah. How did you self, how did you find yourself at, at High Note? Eventually, I

Stephen Patterson 27:25

Yeah. So that was, so yeah, it was around a time where I was, thinking of kind of, leaving the company. 'cause there was like some layoffs and then I was still around, at that point a bunch of it layoffs. So then I was, like I was a designer and front end engineer and like a product manager, I was like

Varun Rajan 27:43

Okay.

Stephen Patterson 27:43

all of these hats and I was oh, I don't want to be in this kind of

Varun Rajan 27:45

Oh.

Stephen Patterson 27:46

this kind of all encompassing role. it's like too much.

Varun Rajan 27:50

can I ask a little bit about that? if you, you ended up in this role partially because it was like, it sounds like you took on the responsibility of like other people that were like, let go and the company couldn't afford anymore or whatever. did you, what about that did you like and dislike? And I'm curious, it sounds like it was a lot of work, but like you strike me as someone and I identify as this kind of person too that like really likes to flex into different skill sets a lot of different times. and so I'm, and maybe I'm reading that wrong, but I'm curious if there was anything that was somewhat compelling about that, just in terms of like diversity of activities that you got to do on a day-to-day basis.

Stephen Patterson 28:22

right. yeah. Yeah. So yeah, going back to my days at Braintree a little bit is, so Braintree had a unique hiring for designers 'cause they require designers to know how to code, front end code.

Varun Rajan 28:35

Interesting.

Stephen Patterson 28:35

was like a level, even when during the interview process there was, a whiteboarding problem. But then you had to, but then there was another kind of like hour session where you to try to, start to code, like your solution basically into, basically just using HTML and CSS,

Varun Rajan 28:56

Yeah,

Stephen Patterson 28:56

a basic, a basic, like understanding of, at that time it was like the box model and, how do you know padding and margin and,

Varun Rajan 29:03

Yeah.

Stephen Patterson 29:04

how to do all those kind of basic things. But so there was like a, yeah, so that's where honestly I became, to become

Varun Rajan 29:13

Validate.

Stephen Patterson 29:13

like just a designer creating comps and, passing off designs into a little bit more of like expanding into oh, now I'm like, doing some coding of like my own work. and

Varun Rajan 29:26

Did you, did you have those technical skills coming in? Like you, you mentioned like during the interview process. Did that evolve over time? were you picking up more of those skills while you were there?

Stephen Patterson 29:36

I had taken some, like coding classes, in Chicago, like in-person coding classes of yeah, learning basic, like how to create a website page and that kind of stuff. so I had some basic knowledge, but I hadn't really put it into practice, into like real world scenarios. so I had some stuff in my portfolio that was like, here's some, example websites that I created that I was able to design and code, at the time. but yeah, so the design team there was it was a mix of like designers that learned how to code or like front end engineers that learned how to design. So there was

Varun Rajan 30:10

Yeah.

Stephen Patterson 30:10

of, middle ground a little bit where you had that were like maybe a little stronger in one or the other. but I think that helped also a little bit of the autonomy where I'm just gonna go build this a

Varun Rajan 30:22

Okay. Yeah.

Stephen Patterson 30:25

but yeah, that's I would say there is where my skillset became, more of there was like a designer, but you're a front end engineer. And then there was a little bit of Oh, we're writing our own copy versus using just like filler text. And so it started to build there. So when I got, to Bloomscape, there was a level of oh, I can go in and, add some stuff into the code base. maybe there's a level of, technical ability that a front eng engineer might come into play. But, it did allow for more, more flexibility, wearing more hats, I think, in that role. which I think yeah, ultimately led to oh, this guy can do all these things so need these other people. then

Varun Rajan 31:03

Yeah, it's a double edged sword.

Stephen Patterson 31:06

Yeah, so it was a little bit, and I was like, oh, okay. I'm not, I wouldn't trust me as like a, a replacement for a front end engineer or these people are very specialized fields. more of a generalist with, I think a focus in design,

Varun Rajan 31:19

Yeah,

Stephen Patterson 31:19

maybe. But, but yeah, I think that's where I, I had started to see myself

Varun Rajan 31:25

I get it.

Stephen Patterson 31:25

thrive in kind of those startup environments where you're, 1, 2, 3 designers. you need to move fast, you need to be able to, you have some autonomy there. but the ability to kind of design and get those designs into real, on a website, on a webpage, in a product, updating a dashboard, I think, provided like great value at a startup level where I feel like, if you look at in-house teams that are, a hundred designers, they're very specialized in maybe a certain area. and there's like engineers and resources there, that they don't necessarily maybe need to know how to design. but yeah, I know now obviously there's, AI tools are coming into the, into the forefront, which of, it brings this like, should designers code back up a little bit.

Varun Rajan 32:18

Yeah.

Stephen Patterson 32:18

it's always been there, but it's less about knowing the syntax or how to code or how it works. but this like familiarity around code, or this comfortableness around code, I think is coming back play where it's okay, designers like. need to know code works a little bit.

Varun Rajan 32:42

Yeah. te tell me a little bit about how, your time, at your, at high note, basically how that has evolved. since you joined and are in a design leadership role, how has your kind of and we touched on this a little bit early on obviously, but do you look for differences in how you're hiring today based, with that same frame of I want designers that are like that, don't just live in in Figma but are like comfortable being a little bit more curious in the tool set that they have at their disposal to put together, interactive prototypes and stuff like that. Although, Figma obviously has those tools and there's the clo like integrations and everything. There's there, there's a lot there. but what is the kind of like. Skillset and aptitudes that you're looking for today? and not just in terms of hiring for new people, but has it changed the kind of like skill, like landscape of the team that you have today as well? Breakdown?

Stephen Patterson 33:42

I think yeah, as we, start to look obviously, like things are rapidly changing in the space. And so it's what's working now might be different in six months, but

Varun Rajan 33:50

Of course. Yeah.

Stephen Patterson 33:51

yeah. but yeah, I think, it's, currently it's less of designers can push to prod, like they're writing code and push into production. I do that, but I'm, a little more comfortable. I've been at the company for, Four and a half years now. So I know how everything works and, but I think for, some of the other designers, on the team, it's, or like someone coming in, it's more of making designs like can we quickly prototype or quickly iterate or see something that's more in like a workable, clickable format, to then, have that handoff with, engineers or talking with products or maybe putting in front of customers as like a potential solution, on an or a new feature or product. making it a lot more real and closer to what it should be. and I think making that, that handoff clear versus, taking a perfect static comp. Handing it to a developer, uh, maybe pairing with them, that kind of traditional handoff process into more of, oh, here's the problem trying to solve. There might be like a few options. I'm gonna quickly test a couple of these options. Maybe, go over those with products, or, make them more interactive and kind use AI tools like cursive cursor, Claude to pull in our, design components,

Varun Rajan 35:18

Yeah.

Stephen Patterson 35:19

variables are like brand, to be able to make those as on brand as possible. but to create ideas optionality be able to iterate. I think, versus, in the past it's oh, I want to create a new homepage. Let me create. Spend two weeks creating 10 homepages using all the context that I have and then we'll look at them and then like maybe pick and choose some stuff. So I

Varun Rajan 35:41

People.

Stephen Patterson 35:41

AI brings into the forefront, like the ability to let's gather all this context and like knowledge on the brand and maybe the product requirements and all this stuff we kind of wanna, take and let's create some options and then let's see where we're at and I think wheel it down to a direction. but yeah, I mean there's talking to other, I think designers in the space, there's, everyone's I think testing out into their own workflows and, but yeah, I would say front end engineering at high note, use it daily, use Claude all the time.

Varun Rajan 36:11

Yep.

Stephen Patterson 36:11

and I think like the design process, it's. we're getting into where does it fit the best into that process, when you're working on like code base with PCI compliant data and like all this stuff where it might not be able to access certain things. And so it becomes a little bit,

Varun Rajan 36:30

3 million.

Stephen Patterson 36:30

But I think yeah, also trying to create a platform that product teams can use to visualize ideas that are a little more on brand or something that might be a little more real too, versus a very maybe generic dashboard or generic output too, to be something that they could show a potential, merchant or, an existing one as well.

Varun Rajan 36:52

Yeah.

Stephen Patterson 36:54

but. But yeah, I think it's still learning, but I think there's a knowledge. I think with hiring, it's like a level of, comfortableness or ability or curiosity or, they've used those tools or have a perception as to how they might utilize them or ways they could, or, ones that they've tried and maybe why they were good or not. So I think it's a little bit less of are they afraid of them or not, or are they adaptable into using new tools? Like I think, we talked, started the conversation about designing Photoshop and then you were designing Sketch and then it was Figma and then you have these variety of tools through time and I see, these tools like Cursor and Claude and others that come up as like tools to kinda help that process. But, Ultimately you need to have good design skills to get a good output from these tools too. So it's like you have to, whether it's knowing how to prompt or knowing how to establish a good design system and good practices, and be able to verbalize that and articulate that and describe that to get the right output. just being like, I want a futuristic looking homepage for this brand or whatnot. we talked about you can get a, you can get a good generic output, but to get stuff that's really solving the problem are very, are gonna be more unique or stand out in the space. I think you do need, those like design thinking skills a bit more.

Varun Rajan 38:27

yeah. No, that, that makes a lot of sense. and I, what I got from you here is I think a good sense of what will change versus what won't change. the need for quality design skills and being thoughtful and getting the best quality output. that need is still gonna be there, And I think, the table stakes for what makes a good designer, has gone up a little bit is, is I think what we were talking about over, over in the LinkedIn comments too, right?

Stephen Patterson 38:54

Yeah.

Varun Rajan 38:55

the

Stephen Patterson 38:56

more, yeah, more skill sets or just more curiosity or kind of expanding upon. Yeah. It's like I, I look at the pendulum of product from, like low fidelity to high fidelity, right? You have oh, I have an idea, and then it goes into the like. What is it? Why, how are we gonna do this, into like product? And then you kind of product and product design like maybe defines those things. And then there's the handoff to development that oh, okay, now we need to like execute on this. We need to this stuff. what codebase should we use? What databases should we use? what frontend frameworks like on all of those technical, things and you get into, then into QA and all this stuff. So you get this like pendulum of these like very open-ended things into okay, I'm gonna funnel this down into okay, I know what I need to build and I just need to execute on it and get it produced.

Varun Rajan 39:50

Yeah.

Stephen Patterson 39:51

I think, yeah, I'm less scared. I think about design in the age of AI because I think it's the ability to identify and having the skillset to build something beautiful and solve problems and create something that's gonna have an impact. I feel like those decisions are still really big, where the, like how does it get built from like a code perspective to me feels AI will just get better at that in terms of just like best coding practices and like pushing that out. but yeah, we'll see where it lands, but I think to me, that's where I see that going a bit.

Varun Rajan 40:34

Yeah, no, that, that's actually really helpful, to get your perspective on, you're not worried about design as much when it comes to ai, and. and what I understand, and I think this is great, like for me as a product manager, I feel like every every day I'm seeing content about like how we're all gonna be out of jobs and like all this other stuff. And I just don't, I don't buy it. am I think I'm, I think there, there obviously gonna be some near term disruptions, but from my perspective, I'm like a techno optimist, right? Like I, I do think that we're gonna find work to do that won't be a shortage of problems to solve. and I, it seems to me like what I'm hearing from you is that like design is always going to have a really important influence in making those decisions and like doing the work of deciding and calibrating and like understanding how to solve those problems.

Stephen Patterson 41:20

Yeah. Yeah. I think I like saw, have been a poster or like a quote I saw around basically just I love design, I love solving problems. I don't like ai, but AI is like a tool and whatever, tool I need to use to solve a problem, I'll use that tool. But at the end of the day, design is what I love, or design thinking is what I love. And I think this level of, I think, yeah, we talked a little bit about, the change in tooling over the years. but I think. Yeah, there is this, obviously AI will probably have maybe a perspective on what a solution might be. but I feel like some of that is, only as good as all of the context and insight it to create a solution. whether it's, myself giving it that context or if it has to go out somewhere and find that, I feel like that's

Varun Rajan 42:16

Okay.

Stephen Patterson 42:17

it loses it, of being on calls with customers or being in meetings or, I think there's a level of knowing what's happening in the industry or like trends or that kind of stuff that it can pull from. But I feel like there's definitely those, anecdotal things that happen through conversations, with a variety of stakeholders that it does not have to create. the output, so

Varun Rajan 42:44

Yeah, there's this like reading between the lines, like when a customer is asking for something or talking about their pain points and like really understanding like what they're, like, what they're saying behind, like the thing that they're telling you explicitly that, maybe it'll get there, but.

Stephen Patterson 42:58

yeah, and I feel like design, we talked about this kind of, the beginning of the conversation is with like portfolios of, but there's a level of like feeling with design too, of like how a design makes you feel. Not just is this giving me more traffic? Or, the metrics on like maybe what a good design versus a bad design is doing. or how usable is this from like a, like how a form should be created and used

Varun Rajan 43:24

Sure.

Stephen Patterson 43:25

like. How does this emotionally make me feel? do I enjoy using it? like those kind of like anecdotal things that someone might not explicitly say, it comes through in like maybe why you choose one product over another product of you enjoy using their tools or how does their brand or color feel? does it make you feel confident? I think, in working in FinTech there's this level of, trust, like the idea of designing for trust that kind of comes up where you're like, trying to check out or if something moves too fast or too slow or you're held up or getting weird errors or do trust this checkout or is the card working the way it's supposed to? Or there's like anecdotal things that I think people like expect or make them feel a certain way that I feel are hard to. Hard to like capture in like a, a data metric type of way.

Varun Rajan 44:21

Yeah,

Stephen Patterson 44:21

I guess like the qualitative is quantitative a bit. I feel like those, yeah,

Varun Rajan 44:27

all.

Stephen Patterson 44:28

know yet how AI will be able to be able to like, oh, they're gonna, people are gonna love this and react to this in this emotional way maybe, over this other thing versus UX design could basically be like, these are good UX principles and we're gonna follow those and create this, interface based on those. And it's very good, but maybe it's the same as a lot of other products. and does that move the needle for your company or products versus trying to maybe do something different? Or get a different emotional response to.

Varun Rajan 45:03

Yeah. do you think, like in this world where that kind of like emotional response ends up being, the, it's basically like the higher stakes, right? You've got the table stakes of something that's functional and ba basically, not saying that it's necessarily AI slop or whatever, but there is like generic ai like look and feel to a lot of these vibe coded apps, let's say. but in this world, does brand become like the competitive edge factor in terms of like products, right? is it this sense of I mean there's this kind of like, how does it make you feel and how usable it is? It obviously, but then there's this other sense of do I identify this thing that I'm, that I'm using, right? does it achieve something from an identity perspective, beyond just like a functional job to be done?

Stephen Patterson 45:45

Yeah. Because yeah, I could see in a world where that kind of base design system. Your kind of manifesto, like whole brand vision and how you want it to be perceived, creating something like that's like very robust and very meticulous to have these tools pull from to create things. I think that in of itself I think is gonna, yeah, like you mentioned brand a little bit. Like I think that might become more of the skills to be able something to build something like that where, you know, designers or product or engineers or whoever at the company could build off of that. where you're creating these very kind of robust frameworks and rules and context that you maybe iterate on and continue to evolve. And, I think, I'm currently working on one with our technical writers around documentation writing and writing rules and how it should. Like brand voice and all that kind of stuff. And it's I think defining these like parameters as to like, should your brand, look or how should it talk or, what type of motion does it have? Or

Varun Rajan 46:58

Yeah.

Stephen Patterson 46:59

all of these like defining contexts and principles, I think, being able to articulate that and visualize that, I think might become maybe a bigger skillset, than, maybe designing some pixel perfect art board and Figma, is maybe like less where time is spent.

Varun Rajan 47:18

yeah. Totally makes sense. Stephen, did I give you an opportunity to talk about, stuff that you wanna talk about? I feel like I just dove in and asked you que whatever, struck my curiosity. Yeah.

Stephen Patterson 47:30

no, I know. Yeah, I know our conversation spun from, design hiring a bit.

Varun Rajan 47:34

okay. I mean that, that was where it started, but I wanted to know more about you as well, so I hope that's okay. Yeah,

Stephen Patterson 47:39

no. Yeah, I think that's good. yeah, obviously I feel like the big conversation now and design is Yeah, around, around AI and tools and workflows, that are evolving and, but yeah, I think, I think we cover a lot of it. there's, yeah, I feel like this move towards opening design up a bit more and, being comfortable in code and getting more technical, but, not being afraid of the terminal,

Varun Rajan 48:06

yeah. Fair enough.

Stephen Patterson 48:07

but, yeah, I'm actually transitioning, so I'm actually transitioning to a new job, in

Varun Rajan 48:13

Okay.

Stephen Patterson 48:14

it's a, it's the AI agent I'm

Varun Rajan 48:18

congratulations. Oh, cool.

Stephen Patterson 48:20

Yeah,

Varun Rajan 48:22

can you tell us more about it or.

Stephen Patterson 48:24

yeah. Yeah. So yeah, I'm gonna be, so I'm moving to a company called Deck. They're out of Montreal. and yeah, I'm gonna be first like kind of principal product designer, so very hands on there, like the first one. and yeah, they're, trying to build agents that, can either do various tasks for you, without the need to, if you just have basically like no APIs needed, so you would just have to utilize through no code. they have some products now that. Get all the data from all these kind of random places that might not have great APIs or access to APIs. if you think of, a utilities company or like a city website or something like that, that companies can actually just like with logins and what's some basic functionality, it can grab whatever types of data you want.

Varun Rajan 49:17

Sweet. Yeah.

Stephen Patterson 49:18

so it's basically creating this world of agents that can go access things for you or do tasks for you, or, yeah, get everything with you without the need for, deep APIs or matching, the right types of API frameworks or calls or really the need for like engineers and people from a technical background, I think working in FinTech, like data comes up quite a bit. so I think, yeah, transitioning to that a little bit and more of a broader space of all types of kind of data and tasks and things like that. so yeah, I've def I definitely will probably have more perspective once getting into building an AI product.

Varun Rajan 50:00

Yeah.

Stephen Patterson 50:01

yeah, definitely more to come there, but

Varun Rajan 50:03

yeah, I, if you're open to it, I would love to do another one of these, at some point, when you have, more to say, in the world that you're about to enter to. 'cause I do think I got a lot, out of, just from the perspective of what we had started talking about, which was like, how is hiring changing in product and design and what does that mean? And,

Stephen Patterson 50:19

right.

Varun Rajan 50:19

know what is likely to be rewarded in this world. but now you're actually like going into building for this world as well, which I think is like super exciting.

Stephen Patterson 50:30

Yeah. Yeah. it's, yeah. evolving a bit. And yeah, I think, yeah, I feel like I've worked, yeah, worked on different aspects of, I think, different workflows and seen different sides of products. and so I think, yeah, this'll kinda be another, I think, perspective to add to that, how that shifts.

Varun Rajan 50:47

I look forward to following your work, Stephen. this is really great. I really appreciate you taking the time.

Stephen Patterson 50:52

Yeah. thanks for setting it up.

Varun Rajan 50:53

Yeah, absolutely. thanks for answering the call. I wanna talk about the thing that really stayed with me from that conversation, because I think it's slightly different from what the conversation was ostensibly about. On the surface, Steven and I were talking about design, what AI changes about portfolios, what hiring managers are looking for now, and whether designers should code. And all of that was interesting and worth your time. But the thing that landed for me was the idea about where the valuable work is moving. And I think that could be applicable across roles and disciplines, et cetera. Steven made the point that if you can produce a technically correct, well-structured interface using AI tools, and honestly, almost anyone can now, you haven't differentiated yourself. What differentiates you is the layer upstream from that, the brand manifesto, the design principles, reiterating some of the stuff I talked about before we dove into the conversation. The voice and motion rules and the visual identity that act as instructions for everything built on top of them, that's where judgment compounds, and that's what AI actually needs from you in order to produce something good. And I keep thinking about how that applies beyond design, because the same logic holds in product and operations and almost any knowledge work that I can think of. The tactical execution is getting faster and cheaper. But also, when I really think about it, that's not where the bulk of the intuition and research and systems-level thinking and strategy actually goes, right? What's getting more valuable is the ability to define the parameters to build the system that others and increasingly machines execute against. Steven is actually putting this into practice. He wrapped up our conversation by telling me that he's leaving Fintech to join Deck, an AI agent startup, as their first principal product designer, not just thinking about what AI means for his craft, but building for it. I thought that that was a pretty good punctuation mark on everything that we had just talked about. The test that he offered, and I think it's the simplest, most honest version of what we were circling, uh, when it comes to whether or not you're afraid of the terminal, it's not about whether you know the syntax, it's whether you're curious enough to figure it out. That's really the durable thing. As you start to move upstream, what can you comfortably delegate by getting uncomfortable using tools that you may not have used before? thanks for listening to the Push/Pull podcast, and I'll, see you next time