Y Combinator Startup Podcast
00:42:36 · Alex Danilowicz, Aaron Epstein
[00:42:36] S1: One more thing that I think is great is actually just how long this landing page is. I learned this from the post hoc guys, actually. So the post hoc folks had a massive footer to communicate that they were, you know, a big company. Right? And so I always encourage folks to think about, like, what is kind of the meta thing that's being communicated? And just by the sheer fact that it's a really long landing page, I think, oh, this company's been around a while. [00:43:01] S0: Yeah. It does a good job of spacing down the page, calling out the main points that it wants to hit on, trying to build trust. And it looks very nicely professionally designed, which helps build that trust as well, which is really important. So overall, I think this this is really well done. Great. Thank you, Slashy. As someone who comes from a a front end engineering background, how did you get better at design and improving your design taste? [00:43:26] S1: So one thing I I try to do is look at beautiful things. Like, as an example, there's a Matisse exhibit here in San Francisco, or just kinda consuming things that you enjoy aesthetically. A great book to read is like the design of everyday things. And again, always considering the human and the user. I think there's this big misconception in Silicon Valley that design is pixel perfect border radius. And it's not. It's thinking through the user experience. And, of course, having high fidelity UI, that's that's beautiful. Right? But...
00:43:26 · Alex Danilowicz, Aaron Epstein
[00:43:26] S1: So one thing I I try to do is look at beautiful things. Like, as an example, there's a Matisse exhibit here in San Francisco, or just kinda consuming things that you enjoy aesthetically. A great book to read is like the design of everyday things. And again, always considering the human and the user. I think there's this big misconception in Silicon Valley that design is pixel perfect border radius. And it's not. It's thinking through the user experience. And, of course, having high fidelity UI, that's that's beautiful. Right? But... [00:43:59] S0: Yep. And how do you do that? What are some things that you do maybe in your day to day as you're building Magic Patterns and leading the company as well that you do to try to put the user front and center and and always keep that voice of the user in [00:44:12] S1: your head? You know what? Like, a couple things that we do is everyone in our company does customer support. So every single person is in the support inbox talking to users every single day, seeing their frustrations when they can't find the share button because we have two CTAs that are the exact same color. Two primary buttons. Right? And the next thing you know, because the engineer's there, they're going ahead and and fixing it because they experienced the user problem firsthand. And also just having a very high bar. Right? Where if something looks off and it just feels off, we encourage all of our team to go ahead and tackle that. Spend time on the extra 20%. Don't just have the vibe coded output and not take it to the next level.
00:44:12 · Alex Danilowicz, Aaron Epstein
[00:44:12] S1: your head? You know what? Like, a couple things that we do is everyone in our company does customer support. So every single person is in the support inbox talking to users every single day, seeing their frustrations when they can't find the share button because we have two CTAs that are the exact same color. Two primary buttons. Right? And the next thing you know, because the engineer's there, they're going ahead and and fixing it because they experienced the user problem firsthand. And also just having a very high bar. Right? Where if something looks off and it just feels off, we encourage all of our team to go ahead and tackle that. Spend time on the extra 20%. Don't just have the vibe coded output and not take it to the next level. [00:45:00] S0: And how do you balance that? Because, obviously, doing that sounds great. The trade offs are now it's gonna take longer to ship something. How do you balance the speed of shipping quickly with actually, you know, going above and beyond and and making something that that is is actually excellent rather than the thing that was just okay?
00:45:00 · Aaron Epstein, Alex Danilowicz
[00:45:00] S0: And how do you balance that? Because, obviously, doing that sounds great. The trade offs are now it's gonna take longer to ship something. How do you balance the speed of shipping quickly with actually, you know, going above and beyond and and making something that that is is actually excellent rather than the thing that was just okay? [00:45:17] S1: Yeah. Well, you have to... It's all about trade offs. Right? And if you don't do that, you might have tons of users that are on your site, and then they're leaving. They're not understanding it. Their their workflow is blocked. Right? And so you have to have faith that it is worth it. And for us, we have tremendous faith that it is worth it. That it is important to think through and to take your time doing something. And I think it's also like people love saying, if it's well designed, it must have taken so long to ship, and they're so slow. I can practice not not really. You can still be really fast, especially considering how much everything is sped up when it comes to writing code. [00:46:00] S0: Yeah. It's actually really interesting. Those trade offs don't have to exist anymore. Historically, they had to exist. What's next for Magic Patterns? What's what's next on the road map for you, and and where do you think design is going from here?
00:46:00 · Aaron Epstein, Alex Danilowicz
[00:46:00] S0: Yeah. It's actually really interesting. Those trade offs don't have to exist anymore. Historically, they had to exist. What's next for Magic Patterns? What's what's next on the road map for you, and and where do you think design is going from here? [00:46:11] S1: Yeah. So this week, we released MagicOS, which again is our new version of our Canvas. It's like Pinterest and Figma had a baby. Mhmm. And you can chat with it, prompt with it to make designs, bring your PRDs in your context. I think what's next for the the future of design, well, one thing's for sure, it's moving very, very fast. And anyone who thinks that they know for sure, you know, probably is just making it up. Right? But I think one thing that's certainly true is code as a medium is here to stay. Because clearly, the Frontier Labs everyone is working on making coding agents very, very good. And that is the ultimate medium for production and for your users. [00:46:56] S0: Yeah. It's interesting. Code is just another medium, like you said. And there's lots of different mediums by which products are created and users experience products. And this is just a new one that has now new tools to be able to build things that weren't possible before. And it's really exciting to see everything get taken to a new level and new things being possible that almost seem like they never would be. And so, it's awesome to have you on and see how you guys are enabling that with Magic Patterns, and really appreciate you joining. [00:47:28] S1: Yeah. Thanks so much.
00:47:28 · Alex Danilowicz, Aaron Epstein
[00:47:28] S1: Yeah. Thanks so much. [00:47:29] S0: Well, that does it for this episode of design review, and we'll see you on the next one.