Y Combinator Startup Podcast
00:00:27 · Aaron Epstein, Marvin Schwaibold
[00:00:27] S0: get into your work at Shopify, I'd love to hear more about your process and the tools that you're using today to design with AI. [00:00:33] S1: I feel like the process itself hasn't really changed. It's still extremely iterative and and and sequenced out. There's a lot of there's a lot of iterations and variations in the work in and of itself, but the tooling has has definitely shifted a lot from tools like Figma and working with aesthetic layouts into more of an AI driven workflow where I'll I'll use Figma as a scratch pad for some of the ideas I have, but then very quickly, that'll transcend into into into, like, real demos that I can use. And then I only piggyback back into Figma from time to time if I need to lay something out or explain something to AI, but it's it's it's it's definitely more of a world now that that in... Includes tools like like like Codex and and and Claude Code and and being in terminal a lot and just getting to an output that I can use and test on my phone or computer a lot faster. And that becomes, like, a really fun... Still very iterative cycle, but we've definitely moved away from the Canvas more to more to, like, AI tools in in in general. [00:01:34] S0: And how much of that workflow is is AI driving a lot of the process, and how much of it is you, the human? I think it's
00:01:34 · Aaron Epstein, Marvin Schwaibold
[00:01:34] S0: And how much of that workflow is is AI driving a lot of the process, and how much of it is you, the human? I think it's [00:01:41] S1: a lot of me, the human, driving AI to do a lot of the heavy lifting for me, but there's a lot of quality controls, decision making that are all that are all up to the designers. We're in the driving seat, and we're actually more than ever now in a position where the output isn't the issue anymore. It's us being extremely selective about what we go forward with and and and and what we work with. So it's a lot more curating what AI is creating, and that is a continuous, like, just back and forth with AI. I feel like AI is extremely capable of getting a lot of things done that that we needed to do as long as you understand the complexity of what it is that you're working on, and you're able to break that down into into a multitude of of almost, like, subtasks that then you can feed to the to the agent bit by bit. And then it's a it's a it's a back and forth. [00:02:30] S0: And it sounds like a lot of what you're describing is that your role is actually to be the editor. We're more [00:02:34] S1: the editors now than ever before, which is, I think, fun. That's great. I mean, that was always the role, but getting to the point of editing just took a lot of, like, handcrafted design that we would do in Figma, and just more and more of that can be now sped up and extrapolated with AI tooling.
00:02:34 · Marvin Schwaibold, Aaron Epstein
[00:02:34] S1: the editors now than ever before, which is, I think, fun. That's great. I mean, that was always the role, but getting to the point of editing just took a lot of, like, handcrafted design that we would do in Figma, and just more and more of that can be now sped up and extrapolated with AI tooling. [00:02:53] S0: And so you, the human, are still responsible for the ultimate final output and making sure that it meets your bar. Always. But you have all these tools now to be able to get there way faster. [00:03:02] S1: A 100%. I mean, AI has definitely raised raised the ceiling for all of us, but it's it's it's it's not a crafter. It it it can execute complexity and and and technology that I couldn't I couldn't handwrite code. It's... It can write code, but it doesn't know what looks good and what looks bad. And that's for me to decide and to and to steer AI into the right direction. [00:03:22] S0: I've been a big fan of your work for a long time. So maybe first, just start off and tell us about the product design studio at Shopify and what you guys do there.
00:03:22 · Aaron Epstein, Marvin Schwaibold
[00:03:22] S0: I've been a big fan of your work for a long time. So maybe first, just start off and tell us about the product design studio at Shopify and what you guys do there. [00:03:29] S1: I work with a team of very talented designers. We've been there for the last year. And between between us, we basically run an initiative at the company to redesign and and touch the most important surfaces we have. So from anything related to Sidekick, which is our AI infrastructure layers that basically manage our entire admin to the mobile app, which we call the green app, and everything from admin and and admin dashboards, we we look at and and and work with. Quite recently, we have been working with a lot of new AI infrastructure that the engineering teams have built for us. And, yeah, it's just been a really exciting exciting last year. [00:04:10] S0: Yeah. It's it's actually really interesting because Shopify is, like, two decades old or something at this point. Right? 20 years old. 20 years old. Yeah. And so we are one, I think, actually. Yeah. We're in a new era now where AI is changing a lot of things, and and it sounds like a lot of the work that you're doing is is actually to modernize and bring it into a a modern era, which is through design, but also the experience itself. Right? Like Yep. What does the design team and your and your product design studio actually work on there? [00:04:35] S1: Are you
00:04:35 · Marvin Schwaibold, Aaron Epstein
[00:04:35] S1: Are you [00:04:35] S0: just, you know, in Figma and canvases and designs and passing them off to engineers? Or or how... What is the design function like that that you manage there? [00:04:44] S1: At least at the moment, there's almost, like, two parts of this big initiative that we're taking. Part of the organization of the design team has redesigned the entire admin experience. This redesign starts in Figma and with polishing interfaces and bringing that into the web. And the other part of the organization, the sidekick team of Shopify, is working on automating and manipulating a lot of the Shopify interfaces via the chat so that you can use chat, Sidekick, or AI infra to basically manage your store and automate a lot of what it means to be a merchant online. And that's like... They're basically two almost controversial, paradoxic sectors of the company, but they work really well together. So you're building really beautiful new UI, but you're also using new UI to basically generate AI info and AI workflows, and that's, like, in in incredible to to see. And a lot of that actually translates very nicely back into the mobile app and is up leveling the mobile experience as well. It's a lot more conversational and a lot more talking to Sidekick about your business than having to manipulate your business via via the interface.
00:04:44 · Marvin Schwaibold, Aaron Epstein
[00:04:44] S1: At least at the moment, there's almost, like, two parts of this big initiative that we're taking. Part of the organization of the design team has redesigned the entire admin experience. This redesign starts in Figma and with polishing interfaces and bringing that into the web. And the other part of the organization, the sidekick team of Shopify, is working on automating and manipulating a lot of the Shopify interfaces via the chat so that you can use chat, Sidekick, or AI infra to basically manage your store and automate a lot of what it means to be a merchant online. And that's like... They're basically two almost controversial, paradoxic sectors of the company, but they work really well together. So you're building really beautiful new UI, but you're also using new UI to basically generate AI info and AI workflows, and that's, like, in in incredible to to see. And a lot of that actually translates very nicely back into the mobile app and is up leveling the mobile experience as well. It's a lot more conversational and a lot more talking to Sidekick about your business than having to manipulate your business via via the interface. [00:05:54] S0: Yep. And previously, before joining Shopify, you were building your own product studio with Molly, and you have incredible motion and animations and interactions there Yeah. That I always found to be really inspiring. And maybe you can show us some of that and and talk through where that came from.