Episode 26 transcript ·
Nathan Curtis on AI, Design Systems Architecture, and Staying Aligned Beyond Figma
This transcript was auto-generated and may contain the occasional robot-brained mistake. The audio is the record of truth.
Brad: [0:12] All right. Mr. Nathan Curtis, hello.
Nathan: [0:15] hello. Brad. How are you?
Brad: [0:16] I'm doing great. Uh, let's dig into it. What has you waking up excited these days?
Nathan: [0:21] how my professional life has changed over, like, the last two years, just the way that our whole field is doing design systems different, and I feel really empowered to build things a lot more. And so I've been building stuff
Brad: [0:35] Wow.
Nathan: [0:35] architecting stuff more. I sort of drifted from the team leader, driving design system success, like organizing the whole mission into, like, strict architecture and building tools, and it's been a lot of fun to, continue to live on the edge between designer and engineer in our space. Yeah.
Brad: [0:54] you just went through a metamorphosis, uh, of such where you've been in the weeds working in a certain capacity for a really long time And you're taking that, all of that hard-earned experience and now moving it to a different place or wielding that or pointing it in a, in a different direction,
Nathan: [1:14] the fact that our tools are in a place and our technology, particularly with AI, uh, is in a place to, to build and realize ideas so much faster and connect dots and make things so much faster has me really invigorated, to,
Brad: [1:28] That's wild to hear from you. That's wild to hear from you. cause I feel like, well, we need to, we need to go here, but it's, it's, it's empowering, but also as people who really care about, you know, quality and consistency and, like, all of, like, that stuff, you know what a giant mess it can make as well. So, so we should go there. But I, I love to hear that, that you're excited about this, that you feel empowered to move into a totally new role, Like, are, are you nervous about that? Or do you feel like even though it's, like, a new chapter…
Nathan: [2:03] I don't think so. There's a number of things, like my world is, particularly the last three years, is building tools to communicate design intent through to engineering to make component libraries. And so, like the specs tools, as it were, um, really have taken a different shape, and the kinds of customers and consumers of the data have taken a different shape. But I'm… the confidence thing is it's still riffing on a lot of the patterns and building blocks that I already had in my head. and at times it's forcing me to be more deliberate and explicit, and often through that journey, exploring where I actually understand it quite as well as I thought I did. and so that's humbling, but
Brad: [2:44] Yeah. Yeah.
Nathan: [2:45] And, but the other thing is it's enabling me to really spring or break through borders that I have never, like, thought to spring through because capability-wise or tool-wise or just time-wise, I didn't, I couldn't put those
Brad: [2:58] Yeah.
Nathan: [2:59] for us. And that, that is really exciting to me.
Brad: [3:02] I love to hear it. That's so cool. It, it sounds like you're, you feel like you could do more effective work at the right layer because you're not, having to repeat yourself. It's, it's like you are, you are in m- this is design sy- you're describing design systems at a career level
Nathan: [3:20] mean, even there are places to grow. Like I'm, I've been in this career a while. I've been doing design systems what, twenty, twenty-five years. The, the
Brad: [3:28] Well-
Nathan: [3:29] design systems for that
Brad: [3:30] What year did your… For the good people who don't who don't go all the way back, like what year was your book on component-driven design?
Nathan: [3:39] Yeah, like my book, "Modular Web design? uh, was published in 2009,
Brad: [3:44] 2009, everybody. 2009.
Nathan: [3:48] So it, and it included two parts, and it's, it still mirrors who I am today. The first half of the book was about how to decompose design into smaller parts. I didn't call it atomic design, but it was effectively the same i- kind of ideas. And the second half of the book was like, okay, you've got a library. How do you run it? How do you govern it? How do you document it? How do you, like, deal with, Like… these features and, and decompose things that you're reusing? And so that was 2009. I, my first formal design system I worked on was 2006 at Sun, uh, sun.com, and so that's where my formal journey from being an information architect just making experiences into really working in design systems happened.
Brad: [4:29] It's incredible, and you are here in the year 2026 saying, "I feel invigorated."
Nathan: [4:38] Yeah, like, I mean, one axis that you could look at it as, like, I feel like I've
Brad: [4:42] Yeah.
Nathan: [4:42] visual styling, UI structure, props and, uh, configuration and so on, but I'm still challenged by concepts and composition,
Brad: [4:51] That's beautiful.
Nathan: [4:56] towards that. And another thing is, like, I'm now working on how to incorporate motion into design systems more, and that's never a challenge that I've tackled. And so there are concepts in motion that are completely foreign to me, but I'm learning an entire new space, and that's a lot of fun. And, and I think that mirrors, like, what AI unlocks for people, because now we can scale and differentiate and explore territory in design systems that, frankly, 97% of design systems don't do motion, barely if at all. Like, they
Brad: [5:25] Mm-hmm.
Nathan: [5:26] maybe their button scales when you press on it, like, kind of thing. But, like, as you're thinking about the choreography of different pieces and you're thinking about different kinds of springs and what they mean, and, like, that's all new to me, and I think that's new to a lot of people in systems. And, uh, being able to use AI is now starting to unlock a lot of those doors.
Brad: [5:44] that's one of the things that I, I wanna get at this with you. Have you been hearing people, design system teams specifically, feeling threatened by this moment and like, uh, uh, "What's this, what's this doing?" Or, "Wait, no, this is taking away… I'm, I'm the one that, that makes the buttons and sweats those details." And like I think what, what you're describing is What can happen when you're free from that just kind of… That's a means to an end, right? That's, that's… I, I usually talk about this through the lens of respect, right? It's like, what's, like, a respectful use of someone's time, talents, and abilities? Like, is it the, the sweating the border radius values? Like, obviously, like, you need that to be sound, whatever that value is. But it's like, is that the best thing to be having to do again and again, or, or sort of dwelling there? Or are there areas like motion or just the, frankly, the next generation of UX, for instance, is, like, there's all of these places that is maybe a more fertile and more respectful use of people's time than just kinda having them compare… Holding up design, holding up code, and saying, "Are these things the same?" Which is what we have been doing for, like, a freaking decade. Yep.
Nathan: [7:07] first of all, I'll say it would be naive for people in this moment to not feel a threat uh, there are companies that are undergoing massive amounts of change and are making a lot of, triggering a lot of that change based on assumptions, instinct, guessing. and so, you know, you have these mass layoffs, you have the, uh, teams morphing how they're doing their work, and it's because we're all in this space where we're just trying to understand the lay of the land, and some of
Brad: [7:36] Yep.
Nathan: [7:36] layoffs probably are premature. I think there are a lot of teams that are, uh, let's say swinging too far into adopting all the new tools and not understanding what they're leaving behind from the tools they have that still do what they need to do better.
Brad: [7:51] Yeah.
Nathan: [7:52] so when you talk about craft and, uh, sweating the details of a border radius, like I do see that teams that are already mature, most of the teams I tend to work with happen to have larger enterprise level design systems. I'm biased towards design systems that are multi-platform as opposed to just single platform. So like, all the stuff I say carries certain biases. they already have mastery of a lot of those things, m- they're still undergoing change on what those things are. They're still rethinking, "Well, how should we, prescribe an intent via the tone of the button in certain visual ways and using characteristics now?" Are they using shadows more? Are they using sophisticated gradients as outlines of borders, like borders to buttons? Like, yes, they're doing more sophisticated things
Brad: [8:36] Yeah.
Nathan: [8:36] the tooling's enabling them to do that.
Brad: [8:38] Yep.
Nathan: [8:39] the sophistication of expression is increasing, but the need to decide things, the need to record things and implement those things and verify that you've implemented those things, those things haven't changed. Um, and we're still, I think, y- years away from all of that stuff just going from a of design intent by someone who doesn't understand systems, and then they get what they want on the other side, including all the systematic choices and architecture underneath. Like I, I, I don't think anybody should be threatened by that in the immediate term. And if you're removing systems because you wanna make those choices, that's not a change because of AI, that's a rejection of system thinking.
Brad: [9:20] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, and I think you're gonna find a lot of people finding out the hard way as they kind of go down these roads and eventually go, "Man, uh, we're out here kicking up a bunch of dust. We have a bunch of similar but different things, and who the hell made this one that's floating out here and getting us sued or, or whatever?" And I think that, that you're right. It's like, it's like so long as the concept of a company or an organization where you're trying to organize more than one person to go, "We're gonna go here and not here." Like, so long as there's still groups of people who are operating as a group, there's going to need to be the ability to have agreement, to make decisions, like to, to share things. We do this, and we don't do this, and we need to do that work of figuring out what are… W- where we're trying to go and what we're trying to do and what we're trying to build. That's the part that is just like so lo- Uh, this is why things like vibe coding and all of that is like I think that there's this like pent up, "Oh my God, like I could just do whatever I want, and this is awesome." And in many respects, it does get to like, well, what does that mean for the shape of companies long term and like all of that? They… You could go macro level economics there if we want to, but also, so long… You're still going to have companies, groups of people who are all trying to coordinate, orchestrate, make something happen. And when you arrive at, "Oh, we all can't just vibe coder ourselves into these seven different directions. We all need to have an agreement." And where do you store that agreement? Like how… What does that look like?
Nathan: [11:08] Yeah.
Brad: [11:08] I
Nathan: [11:08] I mean, thinking metaphorically, I, I see a lot of, uh… across multiple teams that I'm working with, it's as if we've created these behaviors to align on a shared understanding of where we're going, and it's like we're always or- or like together, uh, individually orbiting that shared space.
Brad: [11:27] Yeah.
Nathan: [11:28] of AI, like makes you feel so empowered, and you can start solving more problems, and you can
Brad: [11:34] Yeah.
Nathan: [11:34] going so much faster that it triggers the risk of you're just gonna escape velocity of that orbit, and you're gonna go not just towards another planet, but a whole another sol- solar system. I do see people like exiting like that from the collaborative space that others are on. I haven't seen this person in a while, or why are they even doing it this way? I guess we need to do it another way. And suddenly collaborative glue that was holding us together or the gravity, I guess, in my metaphor, that was holding us together And that's-- AI is not necessarily… That, that's not a solution. That's not, uh, like you're creating problems that you need to solve rather than solving problems that you had.
Brad: [12:08] Yeah. Uh, it's, that's an, it's an interesting lens, I think the story you just told is such a testament to the fact that this is a, a general purpose technology. And I think that this is the thing that we are in a collective moment of trying to understand what that actually means. Because what you just described is a real phenomenon that's, that's happening. And then also,
Nathan: [12:34] different
Brad: [12:35] y-
Nathan: [12:36] directions. yeah.
Brad: [12:36] yeah. And what I'm, what I'm seeing is another application of it, which is we can take a diverse group of people on a phone call, on a call like this, and kinda go through, "Here's what I'm concerned about. Here's what my goals are. Here's what my values are. Here's, here's what I'm seeing over here." And, and to bring all of that together, and historically we'd be like, "Wow, that's a great meeting." And now we're actually able to, like, act on that stuff, so the stuff is actually, like, this glue that's actually moving everybody closer together. Or I'm taking, uh, my product work, my own product work, and I'm firing off GitHub issues and poll requests to multiple repositories that I, I have access to at the same time, and they're all cross-linked, and they're all… So it's like there's this, oh wow, you can use this to, like, a bunch of people are just gonna go off to the races and, like, never be seen again or g- chart their own paths and systems be damned. And that very same technology could be used to kind of b- bring, bring people closer together and collaborate more closely and create shared understanding and shared, you know, uh, like, agreement and all of that stuff. It's, uh, like, really fascinating.
Nathan: [13:54] I was just on a call this morning with a, uh, let's call it the design lead of one of the design systems teams that I'm working with, we had an agenda for a half an hour, and it was just like all the different areas that are s- creating separation. Do we need multiple Figma files 'cause now we have too many collaborators in the same one? Do we need to… You now have collaborators creating patterns and view templates that they didn't, never created before amid all their components that they have. How do we bring those together? Oh, we have people making a prototyping toolkit that is beside Figma and a different way of expressing design. How do we keep those things together? And it was just, y- you look at everything that we talked about, and it was really how do we sustain the gravity to align these things and keep us all orbiting those as different people build different parts of the bigger system?
Brad: [14:43] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. What do you feel… 'Cause that, you, that brings up a really important tension that we've always seen, which is the, you know, here's the pattern police and here's the standards, and here's the, the people who are the wet blankets coming in to, to thwart creativity and invention and stuff. So, like, given what you just said, how do you see those kinds of attitudes? Which I've never… You know, like, there's a caricaturized version of that pattern police, but we've also seen a fair amount of it where it's just like this is the right way and this is the wrong way, and y- you just described quite well this, this pull or all of this new… Like, what, what does that mean for the literal DNA of what a design system needs to be?
Nathan: [15:33] Yeah, like I know Ben Callahan, who we both know, talks a lot about culture, but I think
Brad: [15:37] Who's that guy? Sorry.
Nathan: [15:39] No, Ben's great. Um, but there's a dimension of the culture in which the design system exists uh, you could look at as, as a scale of flexibility or autonomy or the ability to be creative and innovate, however you wanna depict that, versus
Brad: [15:55] Mm-hmm.
Nathan: [15:56] governed and having closed sets of choices that you shouldn't expand beyond. And things like AI, things like prototype, things moving out of Figma into prototyping where you can really express more quickly divergent things. uh, even within Figma's the, um, slots capability, I th-
Brad: [16:14] Mm-hmm.
Nathan: [16:14] some teams adapting to that and shifting along that scale to become more flexible. I see other design system teams that I work with, people are writing about, uh, those slots are too open. Like it actually created more problems than it solved
Brad: [16:30] Yeah.
Nathan: [16:30] people can, oh my God, put whatever they want in a card, and we don't want them to do that. And I'm like, "Oh my God, we totally want them to do that." Like, it challenges the, the, the culture of permissiveness that
Brad: [16:42] Mm-hmm.
Nathan: [16:43] has. And, uh, some design systems will hold on tighter to that than others. each has trade-offs, each have good and bad points, each have reasons for being on that s- point in the spectrum
Brad: [16:54] Yep. But I think that the people who skew more towards the lock it down, uh, terrain are gonna have a harder time these days. That's, that's my, uh, prediction. Uh, you know, not, not saying that it, that there isn't validity to it or continued validity to just being like, "No, you, you need to use this stuff as is," but I do think that you have a much bigger battle than just yelling at three teams. It's like…
Nathan: [17:21] live in that space at all, like being pattern police and being a strict governor, and we, we used to call this with one of our stakeholders, um, the no storm, like instead of snowstorm. They're just a no storm. "No, no, no, no, can't do all these things." We're like… "Oh my God, I don't wanna… I can't work like that." But I can imagine a future where there is a, um, large corporation that has a very strong brand, and they're going through a rebrand that is going to change very specific yet fundamental aspects of their visual foundation. Wouldn't it be great if everyone else had implemented that entire component library and system that they had in a manner that all they had to do was centrally change a few things, and they essentially imprint that new choice across a wide swath of territory because they had a more closed system?
Brad: [18:12] Yep. Yep.
Nathan: [18:12] absolutely business value in that,
Brad: [18:15] Yep.
Nathan: [18:15] at
Brad: [18:16] Yeah.
Nathan: [18:16] of other things, for sure. But brand consistency, uh, rate of change of a major change, you know, all those things are positive consequences that people look for out of a system.
Brad: [18:27] Yeah. I think, I think that there's, there's certainly something to that, and that's certainly been the, the, the reason why we're like, "We want you to be, like, actually connected to our system." Uh, you know, yeah, you download the new version of the package, you get the new brand, or you download the… You know, you get this and you get all this stuff for free. I do think that this moment is very fascinating, and again, it's a very double-edged sword, because in one respect, yep, installing that package and using that thing and putting these tokens in, like that is… You could hang your hat on that. And what I'm seeing is this new emerging non-deterministic way of arriving at, it's not the same place, but gesturally speaking, is it indistinguishable? Yes, at this current moment, but, like, it's also Kind of inventive or, like, it captures the spirit of something, of a visual language, of brand expression, of stuff like that. But it's just arrived at at a brand new and totally different way. And so that, that, like, you lock down the system, you create these connections, and this is how-- this is the pipeline of how you get-- uh, how you evolve, uh, a, a visual language through software over time. And all of a sudden, like, uh, it seems like this, like, new way is kind of being born that does not follow that same pipeline, and that could be bad in certain respects. But it's also very interesting in other respects, where it's just like, "Oh, yeah, here's this, like, internal tool that sucks, and it's gonna be a giant pain in the butt to adopt the system directly." It's like, I don't know, just throw-- say like, "Here's the, here's the brief. Go ahead and turn it into our thing rather than this old crappy thing."
Nathan: [20:22] You talked, uh, through a number of different sort of dimensions of that, but one of them was precision that you get out of determinism, and like, this-- I feel like I'm in this, mind-bending place with AI because, uh, it's all predictive. Like, uh, I-- for those that don't know, I have a master's degree in statistics, and so I am all about predictive models. I am all about understanding variation and understanding, a degree of precision. We call it, like, p-value is a degree of
Brad: [20:51] Mm-hmm.
Nathan: [20:53] p-value of .01 or .05, which means like, okay, you're, you're pretty convinced that this is good enough. and I see that kind of playing out like you talked about, like, uh, coming from a non-deterministic place and delivering our designs in a way that are, are indistinguishably good enough, and I
Brad: [21:11] Mm-hmm.
Nathan: [21:12] to that. Uh, there's speed to that. but I, I'm also a math guy. I have a degree in mathematics as an undergrad as well as statistics too, and math is the study of truth. is
Brad: [21:22] Mm-hmm.
Nathan: [21:23] of
Brad: [21:23] Mm-hmm.
Nathan: [21:24] you can prove, And so I got a real problem with people creating agentic tools give away precision that is easily achieved. So if I have a bunch of design intent, and I know all the choices that we made, and they can b-be all enumerated and very specific, and it costs you why would you use an agent to crawl a Figma file, spend 150,000 tokens, and at the end of it provably hallucinate, overconfidently un- make some other decisions that are in contrast to the exact things you just crawled, and frankly miss a lot of signals because you're looking in a sea of data and find where the signals are, and you miss those things.
Brad: [22:12] Yeah.
Nathan: [22:13] you use predictive models to do something less precise that costs more money takes- 20 minutes can do something in 30 seconds that is mathematically verifiably proven the right answer? that's me getting on a little rant, but it gets at these two extremes of how you think about using AI.
Brad: [22:35] Yep.
Nathan: [22:36] I am not willing to be an AI maximalist, to use it for everything, when we still have better things that we can use to solve some of the problems. without a doubt, AI helps you solve so many other problems and solve problems you would never thought about actually solving before because you didn't have the capability. So this isn't to say AI is wrong, but I wouldn't use it for everything when you
Brad: [22:59] Yeah. When, when all you have is a hammer. Uh, that makes a ton of sense. I'm very curious to hear your answer to your question, which is, why do you think people are doing that?
Nathan: [23:10] Because they're being told to. Or, like, this is gonna sound unbelievably arrogant and self-righteous. Because,
Brad: [23:17] Hmm.
Nathan: [23:20] They have aversion to tools they didn't build themselves because they don't understand necessarily how they work. To them, they might be a black box. To them, they might be complicated enough or their intent, the tool's intent not communicated clearly enough it, they can't come to a point where they say, "That's a good fit for me." And you know what? That's okay. Like, I don't know how to like do brain surgery. Um, I'm not necessarily gonna go and cut open somebody's head either. But like, I don't know how to do that, and there's, uh, I'm not gonna necessarily try to learn all the tools to do that. But know if that's a good metaphor. That might be a really crappy one. but the point being like, I, I need to approach these things with an aspect of humility because even the tools that I build that frankly, to other people on my-- that are teammates, sometimes feel like a black box. It's too much for some of my teammates. But other teammates are like, "Oh my gosh, I just saw all the wrong things I did because I ran it through that tool." great. Let's correct them. Let's be better. Let's improve. Let's use it to
Brad: [24:19] Yep.
Nathan: [24:20] that
Brad: [24:20] Yep. Yep. Yeah. Yep. Yep, yep.
Nathan: [24:22] I don't know. Like, I guess I just see a lot of people feeling like the future needs to be maximized in terms of its agentic workflow to minimize or remove the human aspects of making choices at the expense o- sometimes of actually tools that we can build that don't require agents at all.
Brad: [24:43] Yeah, it's a, it, it's an interesting lens. I do think that your initial answer of we're being told to, I, I also think that there's, flipping that on its head, I think that there is a, a moment of curiosity and exploration that people, even people who have come from more of a structured appreciation of, you know, the other way of doing things, it's like, "Ah, here's this. What happens if we do it this way?" that's an interesting place as well, because that, that kind of curiosity and exploration feels good, but of course, there's, there's risk with that. Uh, and then I, I also think just from a brass tacks perspective, and this is, like, really coming true for me, is the ergonomics of it, the UX of it. Like, I have ADHD, and going through and, and having to change out of a context in order to, to do something… Like, I'm, I'm, like, really finding a lot of value is I'm like, "I want you to… I'm looking at a singular thing, and I want you to go update the Notion task, update the GitHub repo, change my branch, move over here, create a folder, do this thing," and I'm going to, like, be talking all the while and, and I'm able to be, like, locked in. And so it's very interesting because you can design these things, even though it's just, like, a flat interface now. You can basically say, "My instruction is the same as, like, saying, 'Hey, Google, turn on the lights.'" It's like, "Hey, Google, go run the specs workflow," or "Hey, you know, go run this deterministic process." That, that is, I think, s- uh, a place where I would like to get to, is, is where that stuff is interpreted as such faithfully and reliably. It's like, how do you design the experience of this so that we get the best values of this, like, non-deterministic, weird prediction machine, and the best values, the best parts of deterministic workflows and things that it's like, I always want two and two to equal four, and I want to run it through this formula always to arrive at that. Like, please don't make two and two equal seven. Like, like, don't go and invent that. Use this thing. This is the math part. I love how you said it. Like, you, like, through your degrees, you have this, like, very interesting perspective on…
Nathan: [27:27] Jekyll and Mr. Hyde-ish
Brad: [27:28] Yeah.
Nathan: [27:28] thing sometimes, but,
Brad: [27:30] Do you, do you actually feel like you're, like, switching between those modes, like, in real time? Like, in a, in a meeting or something?
Nathan: [27:37] I mean, ultimately I'm a stats guy. I love dealing in the var-- the nuance of the variation and the lack of certainty that we have with things. Um, I find that the, um, that brings out the best in me. It makes me more curious. It makes me more humble and more willing to, um, understand that what I thought was truth actually wasn't, it was just a bias
Brad: [28:00] Yeah.
Nathan: [28:01] Um, so I'm, I'm at the heart a stats guy, but I'm still a guy that's gonna pick math when math is, math is relevant until it
Brad: [28:11] Yeah.
Nathan: [28:12] that, oh my gosh, we need to go quantum with something, and then I don't know what the hell quantum physics is. Um, so the, uh, the thing I was thinking about when you were describing, um, your experience was, uh, sometimes how to y- control the conversation, 'cause there are opus tasks, there are sonnet tasks, there are haiku tasks, and like if you choose the wrong thing… My, my biggest problem with AI is, um, when I ask it to do a very direct, simple thing, which is like, "Hey," equivalent to, "Tell me what the tokens are, the change for the alert on which elements when it's an
Brad: [28:48] Mm-hmm.
Nathan: [28:48] error, or success message."
Brad: [28:51] Mm-hmm.
Nathan: [28:51] that is a mechanical task. And suddenly, like AI's like, "Well, but the focus order or the heading to the description might be inverted, and you might wanna start thinking about the motion when this thing slides in from…" I'm like, "I didn't ask that question."
Brad: [29:05] Yeah.
Nathan: [29:06] you're in
Brad: [29:06] Yeah.
Nathan: [29:07] space. But
Brad: [29:08] Yep.
Nathan: [29:08] relevant questions. Um, and so timing, the depth, the duration I wanna spend to answer certain things based on the workflow that I'm in. And if it's me, I typically have like three or four Claude windows open running simultaneous tasks, and that can get a little bit chaotic mentally
Brad: [29:24] Yeah.
Nathan: [29:25] I can empathize, like the, that each person approaches those conversations in different ways
Brad: [29:30] Mm-hmm.
Nathan: [29:31] different things out of their tools, and wants to go at intentionally different speeds or different depths or different durations to solve a problem. And to me, that's okay. I think the problem that my tools are trying to solve is time something changes in Figma across an entire Figma file, how do we signal that change in a very precise way immediately?
Brad: [29:52] Yep.
Nathan: [29:52] that's what agents are gonna want. They're not gonna wanna hunt and peck and inspect via MCP all these tiny nodes and
Brad: [29:58] Yeah.
Nathan: [29:59] all this differentiation across 100K of JSON data. They're
Brad: [30:02] Yeah.
Nathan: [30:02] know that for warning, we just changed the yellow token to be one level shade lower.
Brad: [30:08] Yep.
Nathan: [30:08] it needs to know.
Brad: [30:09] Yep. surprise, surprise, it's using the right tools for the job, and also i- in the case of the weird and inventive and non-deterministic one, trying to corral it into, slapping it on the wrist. It's like, "Please don't, please don't go here. Please don't rock that boat. This is, this is math territory. S- stay out of this." But also, I kind of appreciate your perspective on this, but just not right now. Like, I think that there's a lot to the UX of, of how we're all interfacing with these things, but I think that, like,
Nathan: [30:42] Yeah.
Brad: [30:46] a, a very weird thing to, to say, I think, is that I have seen so much value in, like, a consolidated, like, window. This simultaneously, like, excites me and scares me, like so many things about AI, is I'm like, I like having this single point of entry or the single place where I'm communicating with something, and it's all connected, and it's just these things are, like, trickling out. They're being woven in together and coming back to me through the same thing. I'm like, that feels good. That feels natural. That feels, that feels a- amazing. But at the same time, like, that… Does that mean, oh, these other things don't matter anymore? Kind of far from it. It's like we in, in, in any case, we're able to just, like, kind of have this command center view that historically, for my brain at least, would just short-circuit me, and I'd be like, "Wait, what the hell was I trying to do?" And so now I'm able to just, like, stay in the place where it's just like, do this and do, like, the seven chores that are around it. Including writing a bunch of non-determinist, or, or deterministic code, and then let's chat when that's in place, and then we can kinda… I, I don't know. It- there's, there's really something to it. But, like, experientially, as someone who's been using a computer for nearly my entire life, and I'm sure you're in a, in a similar boat, it's like this feels like a pretty radical overhaul of, of how we talk to computers.
Nathan: [32:21] Yeah. and it requires adaptability and humility to, to go through periods of change that are really uncomfortable. Uh, and yeah, it makes me really uncomfortable. I yell at Claude when it's taken, like, five minutes to do, like, a stupid mechanical thing. but also I appreciate that today I got a ticket for-- Like, part of the work that I do now is creating a schema that, the multiple platforms all have as a data structure to implement their components, fact that it needs to be unbiased across platforms, and Figma is essentially a fourth language to web iOS and Android.
Brad: [32:56] Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Nathan: [32:57] I got a ticket today. We had just finished a big chunk of layout, uh, schema work, and we got through absolute positioning, and we're using terms like start and end instead of left and right, and Figma's constraints model is left behind in its translation. somebody on, uh, working on iOS was like, what's the deal? Is this Figma bias?" They're always, like, skeptical because of where we're starting from with some of our ideas. axis alignment property on iOS is center by default. And I'm like, "I haven't built something in iOS ever." Like, I'm a web guy. Like, I could have asked AI that, but that was, like, on the very long tail of properties. And so that's still that bias crept in. That I'm even that far on an edge of cross-platform relationships helps me continue
Brad: [33:45] Yeah.
Nathan: [33:46] you gotta-- That, that's really uncomfortable for someone to call me out when we're-- We have a skill, and it's supposed to-- It has criteria and gates it runs through to unbiased decisions per platform, or across platforms. Like we, we run our architectural decision records through that skill. We missed one. It's leaky. It happens.
Brad: [34:06] Well, yeah, 'cause you're, 'cause you're using it as an opportunity to expand your horizons and to learn and to, uh… Like, there's, there's all sorts of stuff to, if you're an interested person, if you're a curious person, these things are just curiosity amplifiers, where it's just like, "Ooh, tell me more about this," or, "Here's… What, what's that weird edge case that-" slips between the cracks of cross-platform stuff. Hell, like, yeah, we've done a bunch of clo- cross-platform systems over the year, but, like, I would never consider myself to know a lot of the inner plumbing of it. We're often just collaborating with the native developers, and it's like, "Hey, what, what shape do you need this stuff in?" kind of thing, right? So, so no doubt you're able to get a lot closer than you ever did.
Nathan: [34:57] I would have never imagined two years ago that we'd be generating specifications that live outside of any tool, including Figma, and that we can change them predictably, and they're unbiased across platforms, and they're, as far as the design intent that we can think of trying to convey through them, complete. okay, behavior, accessibility, motion, those are green territory for us to do. But, like,
Brad: [35:19] Yep.
Nathan: [35:20] that we've always been doing, running out of challenges, and that's
Brad: [35:23] Yeah.
Nathan: [35:24] uh,
Brad: [35:24] Yeah.
Nathan: [35:25] there's like a data structure that, that can house all that stuff.
Brad: [35:29] You're just the right person to do that work. I'm, I'm really excited. what does this look like for you as, like, this as, like, a product and you as a, a, a person creating that? Like, like, what does that look like from, uh, how you're situated or organized?
Nathan: [35:47] Well, the, the tool that I'm creating is, uh, a natural n-next step from the Specs plugin that I did three years ago.
Brad: [35:55] Mm-hmm.
Nathan: [35:56] the… What the Specs plugin does is it evaluates a Figma asset and, uh, generates its anatomy, its properties, its, uh, layout variation, its, uh, essentially visual variation across, uh, various configurable properties and so on, creates inventories of styles and that kind of stuff. But it's, it tries to derive everything that it can out of a Figma component. so- As Figma's gotten better, uh, but slowly, like Figma's model of data that it can use to ascribe design intent, uh, to a component is moving too slow, but it's moving. It's still moving. but really shifting from presenting it on a canvas to presenting it in a structured data form that an agent's gonna be able to consume really fast. When I… And I was inspired like a year and a half ago when somebody said, "I took a screenshot of your canvas specs and gave the screenshot to AI to build the component." I was like, "Oh my God, they're like evaluating an image that has all the visual specs." And I was like, "That is not the way to do this." so, uh, I have sort of fortified the tool. Um, it still works as a plugin, but now it works on the command line too, and it will
Brad: [37:02] Yeah.
Nathan: [37:07] you set it up one time to say, "Process these 50, but not these 200 other things that are corrupt in the file." And
Brad: [37:13] Mm-hmm.
Nathan: [37:14] redo it like in less than 60 seconds once a day or
Brad: [37:17] Yeah.
Nathan: [37:17] once an hour,
Brad: [37:18] Yeah. Yeah.
Nathan: [37:19] often you wanna do it. And so you have all the data now. and so to me, that kind of repetition is really interesting to the consumption of, of those decisions by the engineers and the agentic systems and workflows that they're building. Two other things it's having me think about is, well, what kind of format are agents and humans gonna wanna s- have to solve different tasks? so the kinds of things I'm working on now are, first, additional things that Figma can't carry. Figma is good at visual, really good or fairly good at properties, but incomplete, somewhat good at layout structure. nobody uses its motion, nobody uses its behavior, and it's incapable of accessibility. So if you think about all those attributes, Figma is varyingly good at those things. And
Brad: [38:06] Yep.
Nathan: [38:07] like I have this blog post in my head, like living on the edge of Figma, what do you do about the things that Figma does not as well or poorly or not at all? And how do you merge those ideas with everything you can derive from Figma into what might be not one document, but a interconnected set of assets?
Brad: [38:24] Yep.
Nathan: [38:25] does that need to take for someone building a React component? How about a contract that you can auto-generate of the prop types? 100%. You don't need an agent to derive that. You can produce that. How about a Tailwind-based set of styles ascribe to Tailwind's philosophy of how to build class names and, and how to have that work? You can generate that. How
Brad: [38:45] Mm-hmm.
Nathan: [38:46] a component MD file that has prop tables and other characteristics and layout in markdown form that can, a human can read too? Yeah, you can generate that. And so there's a lot of different things you can project from Figma into shapes that are further along and closer to the shape that some consumer on iOS or Android or wherever is gonna
Brad: [39:08] Yeah.
Nathan: [39:09] that stuff to be shaped as.
Brad: [39:11] Yeah. Yeah.
Nathan: [39:12] and the other… So I'm thinking about additional concerns like accessibility to behavior and motion. I'm thinking about, um, how to project things into the shape that the consumer wants, human or agent or both,
Brad: [39:23] Yep.
Nathan: [39:24] and, and how to version those things. And ultimately, like, people wanna get rid of Figma. I, I'm really frustrated when I hear people be like, "Yeah, uh, we should ditch Figma and go into prototypes." And I totally believe in prototypes. You and I have spent a lot of our careers trying to figure out how to inject prototyping into the design process off the static canvas. But there's the baby and bathwater of it all, because what is Figma awesome at? It's a strongly typed visual database of all your design intent for certain ca- categories of design intent. It is awesome, and until you have a better tool to serve as a database of a lot of those tool choices, why would you throw that away? Why wouldn't you broaden your toolset to solve more problems in interconnected ways rather than throwing out the toolset actually fits many scenarios really, really well just because it doesn't fit other scenarios? to me, shortsighted.
Brad: [40:20] Yeah.
Nathan: [40:21] trying to think about the relationship of, of Figma to other tools and how to, um, carry the design intent in a way, particularly, again, 'cause I'm cross-platform. If I was just building a React catalog, oh my gosh, I'd just be working in straight code the whole time.
Brad: [40:34] Yeah. Sure.
Nathan: [40:36] the design ideas. But when you're building across f- at least five outputs, uh, web, like say a React, iOS, Android prototyping toolkit, basically web, that has a far lightweight, far more lightweight package and includes a lot of experimental stuff, plus the Figma library, that's five different libraries you're publishing. You gotta have your design intent separate from those things, as opposed to thinking that AI's gonna all of those things together without any hallucination or
Brad: [41:05] Yeah.
Nathan: [41:06] That…
Brad: [41:06] Yep.
Nathan: [41:06] that, the, that's where I'm working, and that's sort of where the space, the things I build fit.
Brad: [41:11] you kind of almost implicitly told your own journey of, like, thinking about Yes, Figma is the source of truth," and then it, like, kinda goes downstream, and it's this direction. It's… That's the workflow, right? what you described is, like, this is… kind of doesn't have it all. it's covering some of this stuff, covering other stuff imperfectly or poorly, and then this other stuff is, is absent, and in certain respects can never be present because of just the, the literal DNA of, of what the thing is. So, the Figma source of truth camp, I think, is having a hard time right now, or the people that are, like, used to this stuff, like, only going in this direction. now all of a sudden you have other ways of, of doing this. And I think that th- this is one of the other things that we're having a really hard time understanding in this moment, is the idea of, like, pluralism or, or plurality as just, like, here are different groups of human beings that are organized in different ways, that have those different cultures. Again, rigid, flexible, all of that stuff. For that React-only company or that, that place that doesn't have, like, a full-time staff designer, it's like, well, here's the shape of a, of a toolkit. if you're in a place where there's, like, dozens upon hundreds upon thousands of people, like, using these tools, probably doesn't make a sense to, to throw the baby out with the bathwater, like you said, just, like, burn it all down and jump into the brave unknown. But for, like, other places, they have a different shape. And what if different human beings have different needs, and we need to be able to evaluate the, the tools and technologies that we reach for to serve the problems for the specific shape and configuration of people that we're working with? What if, what if that one right way of doing things was never really actually the
Nathan: [43:16] So yeah,
Brad: [43:17] one right
Nathan: [43:18] one right way Because of all the different constraints and dimensions of how people and organizations are different.
Brad: [43:25] Hmm.
Nathan: [43:25] and so yeah, like, does Figma fit for everybody? No. But, like, is there-- Should product designers and system designers use the same tools and solve all their problems with the same s-set of steps? Oh my God, no. No. So when a VP, like, starts saying everyone should be using, prototyping for everything, you are really gonna start handcuffing a lot of people that solve problems with better tools that they already use and, and, uh, potentially put constraints on ways of doing things that are going to erode rather than create value.
Brad: [44:01] And it, and it, and really what it comes down to is, I think, like, a real reckoning with… I think, uh, there, there have been dynamics at play that make me sad over the course of maybe the last decade or so, where I've seen
Nathan: [44:16] Yeah.
Brad: [44:20] just live entirely inside of the walls of Figma. And now it's like, and, and it's like that was never the case, but that's what happened. That's, like, what ended up happening. And, and so the… in many respects, it's like the reintroduction of like, "Hey, there's actually, like, a bunch of things that you can do. You could just remember Post-it Notes, and remember," you know, like, all of these other kind of fun things that weren't just living in an art board somewhere. Like, it's, it's like there were, there were different activities that we would do, and then it just, like, all kinda just got centralized, and now it's like, I think that a, decentralization is happening. And I think that, like, for Figma's own sake, I think that they were really trying to do everything they could to, like, get people into their, into their, uh, world, as a, as a business does. And now it's like, oh yeah, like, all this shit needs to play with each other. All of this shit needs to be compatible with one another. We actually, like, have no choice but to, like, work, uh, with and be connected to, to one another.
Nathan: [45:31] I mean, that's a real testament to Figma's point of view, and God, if they turned it off, I can't imagine the backlash. But Figma is a really open environment. The plugin API, the REST API, people build all sorts of top of it. They
Brad: [45:44] Yeah. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Nathan: [45:45] data, and they… was shocked when somebody said, "Yeah, we, uh, created a backdoor into Figma's plugin API through Claude to just connect through whatever the browser socket something or other it was." I was like, "Oh my God, what's Figma gonna think of that? Are they gonna turn it off?" But it didn't. So there's an inherent openness to those things, despite the fact that, yeah, it's already a super complicated product. And for them to con-continue glomming on more and more super complicated stuff, they're at the long tail of features now, as opposed to the core cases. Like, I don't know where they go, but, uh, credit to them for remaining so open and having such a good relationship and trying to help people solve problems.
Brad: [46:27] Yeah. And I think that that's, it's testament to what really any tool needs to do these days. Um, and you're seeing just a whole new generation of stuff being born, and I think that the more people… The, the old mechanics of, like, let's get people in here. We built, you know, a better light bulb over here, and we're going to, like, protect it. It's like you, you really need to be thinking in terms of a broader ecosystem and interconnectedness out of default.
Nathan: [47:01] the old companies that, uh, sort of the dead companies behind us, I'm thinking like Envision, I'm thinking, AOL, like they're walled gardens. Like they, they weren't interconnected, and that
Brad: [47:15] Yeah.
Nathan: [47:15] their downfall
Brad: [47:16] It's, you know, at a, at a more existential level, perhaps it's the introduction of this stuff that is ultimately the, the manifestation of the old Stewart Brand information wants to be free, and that technically happened with the, the web and with, with, you know, the open web. But also, it's like there's, there's still kind of these, like, little islands, and there, you know, some, some things. And now because we can just, like, connect everything together so much more and so, so much faster, that the incentives for cooperation, collaboration suddenly become a lot more urgent. To, to, to live in our own island, to compete, to say, "No, this is mine," versus more of, like, a sharing, attitude. I don't know. It's, uh, it's, like, very, very interesting, but it's like, it's, it's clear that the pace of technology is facilitating something that allows things to get out faster than they did before, and I think that that really is going to shape how human beings operate. And like, like, what, like, what's value, right? Just like you were talking about your Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. It's like, what mode will yield more success? And obviously, it's going to be, like, a, a balance, but, like, as time goes on, I feel like it's harder and harder to be like, uh, this is, like, the one right way of doing things, or we can push all the other out, This world is getting smaller and faster and more interconnected by the day
Nathan: [48:58] I'm curious, like, to throw it back to you, 'cause I, I think about these things as a consultant, as someone who has thought about and written about and taught a lot of people about design systems.
Brad: [49:09] Mm-hmm.
Nathan: [49:10] AI has encoded so much of not just all the stuff you and I have written, like all this knowledge about how design systems work, that it's kind of a threat to us as knowledgeable experts in a way. And, the value of the ideas that I have now dispersed into these models that can just convey those things without provenance, attribution, whatever. I'm curious how you think about, the role those systems have as your designer or engineer is working, and they need something alongside them to guide them,
Brad: [49:43] I
Nathan: [49:44] versus the role that we continue to play, at least for some unclear period of time. You know,
Brad: [49:50] mean,
Nathan: [49:50] about that?
Brad: [49:52] a- absolutely. But it's like that gets at, like, well, why are you building the tools that you're building, right? Is to continue to…
Nathan: [50:00] Uh, I'm driven to share. Like,
Brad: [50:02] Yeah.
Nathan: [50:02] for my writing. Uh, I charge enough for the tools to make it so that I can working on them, but I'm
Brad: [50:10] Mm-hmm.
Nathan: [50:12] massive profits out of them. Like,
Brad: [50:14] Yep.
Nathan: [50:15] the work.
Brad: [50:16] and that gets to the rub, and I think that this is the, the, the moment in time that's unfortunately being laid bare, which is just, like, capitalism in general, uh, is, is ultimately, like, the weak link in all of this, because I think that a lot of people have the strong desi- desire to share, to express themselves, and to want to help and do things, and we're often present, or prevented from doing those things because we gotta freaking eat. We gotta feed our families, and we're all trying to find stability. And then that ends up being like, "Ah, yes, I have this thing called intellectual property that I need to hold onto and hoard, because that's the thing that feeds my family." And it's, like, a very hard place to be because it's like we, we ultimately… It's like, well, what's that IP for? Oh, it's to help people. Well, what if we just get to the helping people part? And, like, the more that people get helped, right, the more that that stuff scales, the better off everybody is. And if everyone was given permission to just operate that way, guess how much better we'd be. So, so it's like it gets in the way of, of, of What those dynamics of, of just like capitalism do, I think, is ultimately says I need to be very mindful about how, how much I share and like where's the threshold and what's the thing, and how much do I hold back, and I don't like that. I don't like that dynamic whatsoever. It's like I just want to feed my family, make sure that they're stable, and I want that for every human being on the planet. And so it does, it gets to the point of, of like I don't wanna ha- I wanna be able to share freely. I wanna be able to share with reckless abandon. I wanna help people and maximize that, and that's ultimately a better world than me with a bunch of money. You know? I just want enough to, to, to be stable and, and feed my family.
Nathan: [52:19] I think, yeah, I, I can, uh, identify with a lot of what you're describing, and I, I think about, perhaps less directly value that I can impart And the
Brad: [52:28] Yeah.
Nathan: [52:29] uh, hopefully I, I play my little small role in the community to build some tools and write some blog posts and help people learn and stuff. like, I remember you, you made me think about also, like what you don't disclose or you talked to, or you alluded to that boundary and, uh, Jared Spool, who's, been in our space for a while and run conferences and, and was, uh, kind enough to invite me to some of his conferences, and I gave a talk and I talked to him ab- beforehand. I was like, "I hate giving talks." I was like, "I literally wish I could never give a conference talk." I love giving workshops because of the interaction and the interplay between the smaller group of learners and your ability to connect and see the change that you're creating with them.
Brad: [53:09] Mm-mm.
Nathan: [53:09] Uh, but with talks, it feels so detached. And I was like, "But I have so much to say, and I wanna fit it all in." And he goes, "Don't fit it all in." I was like, "What do you mean?" He's like, "Deliberately omit things. Remove, and be pretty ruthless with what you remove." And I said, "Well, why would you do that?" And he goes, "Well, first of all, you have like a time limit, and you have a clarity limit and a endurance limit of the audience and all that." And he goes, "But you also have ability to like, they're gonna ask questions on the edge of what you presented, and You're gonna seem really when you have the answer already locked and loaded to
Brad: [53:43] Yeah.
Nathan: [53:44] just because you didn't sort of cross that boundary in your talk." And that, that gets at some of the value that I'm thinking about around the blog posts you write, the tools you make, really, I've been able to then parlay that into a sufficient amount of credibility and,
Brad: [53:59] Yeah.
Nathan: [54:03] the humans really aren't paying me, the corporate entities are paying me, and
Brad: [54:07] Yep.
Nathan: [54:07] like that distinction.
Brad: [54:09] Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. And that, and that dynamic is, is what we've been through, and that I think continues to be a way. It's like we're, we're able to, to… It, it feels kind of like… Well, it, it feels kind of like patronage, right? Where, you know, in the days of yore, where it's like, "All right. I'm the pope. I'm gonna give you some money to paint the ceiling, and, uh, and, and off you go." And in a lot of respects, I think that that's, like, what the kind of work that we've historically done is, kind of feels a bit like that, where it's like I'm gonna be doing this work that is for the greater good. But also, like, you know, there's, there's a way of, of underwriting that a little bit, and I think that that's, that's interesting. I do think that there's, like, a lot more opportunity now for more people. I've, I've never really liked being put on a pedestal. I think that the both of us, we've always appreciated the little hat tip here and there. You know, that, that recognition I think is something that all humans desire and crave, and it's important to keep that in check and not have that turn into, like, ego fest. Everybody just wants their work to be valued, right? And more people- Can do that. And that's always been a frustrating thing is, is I'm sure you've gotten this question, right? It's like, "Oh, like how do, how did you like get to the point where you're at?" Or, "How are you like doing this stuff?" And it's like, well, through you writing post after post after post and doing, doing it. It just kind of lather, rinse, repeat of this process of just you just share, and then you share again, and then you share again, and then you share again. You get excited about things, you learn things, you put things out, and you do it not necessarily to, first and foremost land a client that could then help justify doing more of it. You do it first and foremost because you're compelled to. Right? Or do you feel that way? Like…
Nathan: [56:06] I think so. I, I think that there is legitimacy to the grind and the consistency, but also to finding your voice and being able to, understand and feel confident in your own voice. Like, you and I have very different voices. but I think they're both really valuable, and they contribute to a greater whole of how people think about these things, um, in really productive ways. And I get far more, energy when somebody, just mentions something from a post that I read, or like today, someone submitted a bug report for my tool, and I'm like, "That makes me feel like what I did mattered."
Brad: [56:46] What? Yeah.
Nathan: [56:47] doing matters
Brad: [56:49] Mm-hmm.
Nathan: [56:49] difference, I run towards those things, and
Brad: [56:52] Yeah.
Nathan: [56:52] me to do more. It's not because I wanna, be the coolest conference talk person. I, I like-- I don't wanna like show myself on-- Like, me on stage, it's not about being on stage, it's
Brad: [57:02] Yeah. Yeah.
Nathan: [57:03] find value, uh, conveyed w- and, and, uh, when I feel like what I do matters.
Brad: [57:09] That's, that's beautiful. What advice would you have to have more people follow that instinct?
Nathan: [57:17] I hope this doesn't come out the wrong way. The-- What I try to do with my writing, for example, is find the distinct idea that I feel like hasn't been shared before, or a particular point of view about an idea that hasn't been shared before, but also then couch it in a real-world story. Uh, and you could say, "Okay, so you have a formula for writing your posts." Yeah, 'cause it, I think it works because, uh, most of my posts begin with a You know, three to five paragraph hook that is about me in some silly meeting and having some s- aha moment or reacting to some collaborator in a positive or negative way, or, um… And that kind of realness then can lead into, like, the point of value or the understanding, uh, the idea that you have, and being able to describe that. So it connects emotionally. I try to connect emotionally with the reader through my own voice in the way that I sometimes have really long sentences, or sometimes I have, like, really short sentences that, like, have a really direct, uh, phrase or something like that, because that's actually how I'm feeling. That's what's going on in my head. And so being able to, discover that through writing. Like, if you read my book from 2009, you'd be like, "Oh my God, you're sen- you're, you're so loquacious." And I still am way too wordy with the stuff that I write times. But, like, able to do through practice, find my own voice, and find, find that, and that gave a platform for people to soak up the ideas, I think. Um, and, and so if I was to give, uh, um, advice around using writing and blogging as, don't write the system success story post. I've literally saved them in a folder called System Success Stories, and they describe how people created their token libraries, and then created their component libraries, and now they have a token-infused catalog of components that is their design system. Uh, that's the story that everybody tells. Instead, like, what narrower thing, what more spors- m- more specific thing is gonna help us move our corpus of community knowledge much
Brad: [59:18] Yeah. Yeah.
Nathan: [59:18] Move that boundary out more. Talk about how to use easing to- uh, like a motion design token thing with easing and springs and choreography. That's what I need to read, man. There's not enough stuff on that.
Brad: [59:30] Yeah.
Nathan: [59:30] the boundary.
Brad: [59:31] Yeah. Yeah. I we're increasingly going to be like latching onto that. So all to say it's just like people are here. They're living. Y- you know, so many people are just constantly looking over their shoulders like, " Would this make Nathan Curtis proud?" Or wh- whatever. Like, "Am I doing this right? Yes or no?" And it's, and it's like,
Nathan: [59:50] thinking that.
Brad: [59:51] I think so. I, I, I could prove you wrong there. Uh, I, but I do think that like there's a lot of second-guessing. There's like a lot of like, "Oh, shit." Like, "I couldn't possibly write because this person's already written it better than, than I could," and so on and so forth. So it's just like, just, know that just by way of you having a unique experience on Earth, you have valuable things that are worth sharing. I don't know. Call me biased. Call me old-fashioned.
Nathan: [1:00:19] We all are biased. You are old-fashioned. What's next?
Brad: [1:00:24] Like, 'cause this is a really strange moment, and so it's difficult to- predict the future with any degree of like, "Oh, yeah, I could see where this is going." But, like, if we are to be having this conversation three years from now and, and I were to say, like, "What, what surprised you about
Nathan: [1:00:47] would be really surprised in three years the only way that people describe their components was in a Markdown file. I would be really surprised. would be really surprised if in three years, design system component catalogs included only 40, quote-unquote, "core components" made by only a select group of central people.
Brad: [1:01:10] unfolded?"
Nathan: [1:01:10] Like, uh, I e-expect instead richer descriptions of components that span a variety of formats to describe them and combine them in those formats and data in interesting ways. and I expect our design systems to spread into different people making many different classifications of things that we have only danced around today
Brad: [1:01:35] What would you say?
Nathan: [1:01:35] components. I'm calling them… There's a class of things I'm working on called compositions. I expect page views, templates, patterns, like what the… And actually m- patterns beyond just a chunk of the UI that's well styled with tokens. Like patterns of
Brad: [1:01:52] Yeah.
Nathan: [1:01:53] patterns of sequences, patterns of information architecture, patterns of content. Like all those different kinds of recurring things, I expect systems to have a much richer array of concerns or classes of problems that it solves and enables people to reuse. And so I'd be really surprised if systems look as, quote-unquote, "simple" as they look today.
Brad: [1:02:17] Yeah.
Nathan: [1:02:17] not.
Brad: [1:02:18] What do you think about a lot of, like, the, the generative UI stuff and just, like, more ephemeral stuff and, and just the fact that, we historically have been the gatekeepers and taste makers for how a thing, an experience emerges onto a screen and how people move through it, and they're beholden to our world? What happens when
Nathan: [1:02:43] Who
Brad: [1:02:43] that is no longer the case? The people use our software.
Nathan: [1:02:47] what world are you talking about?
Brad: [1:02:48] I'm talking about a world where I'm like, this page that has 17 different sections on it and 14 columns of text and the three tool tip overlays and seven modal windows, uh, is
Nathan: [1:03:06] page, Brad. That, that is nice. You got a lot going on.
Brad: [1:03:10] And I'm just like, "How about I just want you to look like this from now on?" And it does it.
Nathan: [1:03:16] not sure. Uh, I feel like taste is a vague and abstract thing.
Brad: [1:03:23] Mm-hmm.
Nathan: [1:03:24] people taste through, descriptive terms, and let's call it, verbal prose whatever,
Brad: [1:03:33] Mm-hmm.
Nathan: [1:03:34] lots of gaps, uh, and is nonspecific. I think the human's ability not just to fill those gaps with instinctual choices, but also call out those gaps and ask them to be filled. Like, Brad, what is they? is the world? Like, you, you suddenly described in a much richer way this page with all these bells and whistles and tooltip overlay
Brad: [1:03:59] Mm-hmm.
Nathan: [1:03:59] or others. Um, you know, suddenly that our ability to speak in a more structured way and think about our v- how we verbalize our ideas, uh, I think is gonna have to improve a lot. I'm not-- I don't wanna live in a world where AI fills those gaps for me without me understanding how they're being filled and being able to perceive what those gaps are that it filled. I
Brad: [1:04:24] Yeah.
Nathan: [1:04:25] space. uh, Dan Brown, my former business partner, and I, 10 to 12 years ago, had this moment where we were asking our staffs can you please write your emails and, like, Slack comms with better structure? Can you think about, like, the clarity of the simple and sort of algorithmic stuff that you write? Like, we didn't say it in that kind of flat and really boring tone, but we wanted to help people describe what they needed in clearer terms, so they could communicate more clearly.
Brad: [1:04:55] Yeah.
Nathan: [1:04:56] And like a year ago, when I started doing, uh, architectural decision records for the first time, and I started having AI scaffold them and then fill in a lot of the blanks of them, and then I would know where the blanks are that I needed to nuance about them and add more clarity and so on. Suddenly, the, that shell and that template, that Mad Lib became so visible to me that I wanted so many design conversations to… Can you just make it like an architectural decision
Brad: [1:05:21] yep. Yep.
Nathan: [1:05:21] Tell me the
Brad: [1:05:22] Yep.
Nathan: [1:05:22] tell me the problem, tell me the a-alternative to the
Brad: [1:05:24] Yeah.
Nathan: [1:05:25] what the recommended solution is, tell me what the consequences are, and help us make a decision.
Brad: [1:05:30] Yep.
Nathan: [1:05:30] suddenly, all these design meetings that should have been Five minutes long are still an hour long because they don't have that sort of structure embedded into them. And like,
Brad: [1:05:40] Mm-hmm.
Nathan: [1:05:41] that AI is helping us realize and communicate m- stronger with that structure, and I don't wanna give that up with of ephemeral verbalized taste-like cues of, make it more spacious."
Brad: [1:05:55] Yeah.
Nathan: [1:05:56] mean? Like, let's talk about visual contrast. Let's talk about the negative space. Let's talk about, you know, let's start weaving in more deliberate terminology
Brad: [1:06:04] Yeah.
Nathan: [1:06:05] about how we describe our, our wants and needs.
Brad: [1:06:07] no, I, no, uh, no, I think that that's fascinating because I think, like, what you're describing is, like, you, you appreciate a, a more structured language, and that gives you clarity and helps you understand things in that when information comes at you, and you're able to transmit it using that structure, it reaps good results.
Nathan: [1:06:34] But again, I have to approach this with humility. I remember in, like, around 2004 when I was working at Nextel, which merged with Sprint and eventually dissolved, uh, into a non-telecom. But I was working with this person who was in charge of the content design team. I was describing an information architecture challenge, and at the end, she just goes, "You're, like, talking to a lawyer." And I was like, "I'm not sure that's a compliment." And
Brad: [1:06:58] But I think that, I think that that's, that, that's it, though. It's like, you are wired in a way that you prefer things to be in a certain way and to be ordered in a certain way, and that, and that's, that's,
Nathan: [1:07:13] value them that way,
Brad: [1:07:13] you value them that way, right? And then there's other people who are like, " Give me the spacious vibes, man." what I think is really interesting about this moment and when we come about, uh, when we talk about the empowerment not just of, you know, designers and developers and how they're now interacting with and shaping digital experiences, but the users of the software, it's like, you remember, like, the user style sheets and stuff, right? And, and the ability to just kinda provide those site-level overrides and those things. I think that the fact that we can now just be like, " I freaking hate doing my taxes," and like, "But present it to me as a game, and I'll be into it. I'll do it," or, or, or whatever. I know I've blown your mind here, but it's like this is…
Nathan: [1:08:02] do my taxes as a game, Brad. I'm
Brad: [1:08:04] The, you can do that now. You can literally do that now. And the thing is, is that behind the scenes is everything that you're saying. Back to our conversation earlier about, like, deterministic, non-deterministic, it's like the interface of this stuff I think is, like, a lot, a lot squishier, fuzzier- More open-ended that I don't think that, like, a lot of that, like, sameness or structure needs to be inflicted on everybody. It's, it's kind of one of those, like, oh, maybe here are some, like, smart defaults, but, like, you could kinda choose your own adventure. But ultimately, that, that handshake, however the person is experiencing with it or, or interfacing with the computer, so long as it hits that API or that database a certain way, and the things get captured in a certain way, it's like, well, who gives a crap if it looked like, a weird MySpace page versus, uh, something that's just, looks like a… Uh, y- you get the, you get the idea, right? It's like we could have these, like, hyper-personalized UIs. So it's like, what does that mean for design systems?
Nathan: [1:09:11] even for one person, it depends on the moment and the need
Brad: [1:09:14] Mm-hmm.
Nathan: [1:09:15] sh- should you be delivering a strict schema for all your accessibility requirements for every component, where everything about accessibility is compartmentalized into very concrete, explicit properties and hierarchies? No way. We are nowhere close to that. But could we do focus order if we already know the names of all the layers? we could do that. So even, like, thinking about the level of structure that, uh, fits the task, uh, um,
Brad: [1:09:42] Yep.
Nathan: [1:09:42] to purpose effectively. Um, and a lot of those things, uh, may long live in Markdown files because it is good enough, but other
Brad: [1:09:52] Mm-hmm.
Nathan: [1:09:52] aren't, and, uh, that's okay.
Brad: [1:09:55] I think, I think it's good. It's like there's this, there's this almost kinda like, there's like a rigid structure, but then there's this kinda like warm, kind of weird, fuzzy layer wrapper to it all that just, that's like looser, more pliable. And it's these things kinda like traveling together that can end up helping tell a, a, a richer story, or just, like, help people get the, again, extract the good bits from this new crop of technology while still making good use of the hard-earned structure and deterministic stuff that has got us this far.
Nathan: [1:10:32] I mean, that's a trick you and I play, I assume as consultants, is people get grounded into their sides of black and white, and often
Brad: [1:10:41] Mm-hmm.
Nathan: [1:10:42] that to travel the expanse of gray and understand we're gonna end up in fuchsia. So like, uh, how do you
Brad: [1:10:50] Yeah.
Nathan: [1:10:51] of break down that, that strictness, that rigidness we were talking about before to,
Brad: [1:10:55] Yeah.
Nathan: [1:10:55] the plane?
Brad: [1:10:56] Is there one thing that you've learned about- Like, you bring with you this deep store of experience and, and expertise, like, borne over all of these different engagements. Like, is there one thing that helps you kinda lock into their specific stew? Like, the, the… Or, or is it, like, really just like a, you have no choice but to, like, do the, the hard work of just, like, getting in and closer and having a, a shitload of different conversations with a bunch of people, and then that becomes known or it… Or do you, do you, like, kinda come in and be like, "Hey, what makes you weird?"
Nathan: [1:11:34] Yeah, like, uh, I-- this comes from a position of privilege, I think. But, um, I'm at the point in my career where the choice to decline engaging is the first choice to, to consider. Um, when you see an opportunity, whether it's with a teammate or a potential collaborator in your current job, or whether to switch jobs or take on a new client, of saying like, "I can't," or, "I shouldn't," " I'm not gonna grow as fast taking this opportunity relative to that opportunity," and being able to
Brad: [1:12:06] Mm-hmm.
Nathan: [1:12:07] So I think saying no, but also as you start to engage with somebody, the other thing is the early signals that you can perceive to understand the terms of engagement, and I mean, almost literally one of them being how a company chooses to engage with you, like to form a contract, to form the, uh, how they're gonna pay you and, um, how easy they're gonna make that. 'Cause the best clients make that, like, effortless. Like, the fact that realize how to get the best value of a, out of a consultant is to not have them focus on communicating with procurement,
Brad: [1:12:42] Yeah.
Nathan: [1:12:43] that's smart. There's business value out of that. And there, there are sort of… That's a microcosm of how, like, just design system collaboration with partner teams or product groups trying to express design ideas, like there are those kinds of implicit contracts and You could call them vibes, but like to me it's, it's more how are we going-- what are our terms of behavior and how are we gonna engage with each
Brad: [1:13:05] Yeah.
Nathan: [1:13:06] And I am drawn to the people where those terms are, match my own value system and, and way of working.
Brad: [1:13:13] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. if they're on fire, in the process of just getting you in the door, kinda, kinda red flags. But if they're like, "Here's… We know we're bringing you in here for these reasons, and we can kinda co-create, like, how you're gonna be there."
Nathan: [1:13:29] yeah, or unless they're-- if they're a government entity, and this is like top secret clearance stuff, I get why you're being opaque. I'm not cleared yet. But most of this stuff isn't nuclear bombs and terrorist attacks. I mean, most of this stuff is like design and screen so somebody can like buy a plane ticket or,
Brad: [1:13:47] Yeah.
Nathan: [1:13:48] purchase a, a, a wine cooler. I don't know, something silly like that.
Brad: [1:13:52] That's, that's your real dream, is to open your own wine cooler business?
Nathan: [1:13:56] No, my real dream is to, um… No, I'm-- frankly, this is gonna sound stupid. I feel like I'm living my dream. I wouldn't change my career for anything. Like I, I've
Brad: [1:14:03] Amazing.
Nathan: [1:14:05] and I hope I get to do these silly puzzle-solving challenges for another few years before I have to kick it.
Brad: [1:14:11] for, for… 'Cause there's, I think, kind of a new generation of people getting into this kind of work now, and we've kinda talked about that, and you talked about, you know, the, the privileged position of being able to, like, turn down gigs. Like, what, what advice would you have for this kinda new generation of people who are getting into this world or setting out on their own to help people and places, get better design systems in place?
Nathan: [1:14:41] The things I find myself telling those that I advise, uh, often, um, are things like, run towards the stuff that's gonna get you the most energy. Uh, think about the opportunity cost relative to other things that you could do instead, um, and what, uh, how you're balancing those trade-offs. uh, also, I'm incredibly impatient. Don't waste your time. If there's a dead end or a thing isn't working out, life is too short to just coast along and with it and not create something that you're proud of or create the next iterating version of yourself that is gonna be where you wanna end up.
Brad: [1:15:22] Yeah. Yeah. No, I think, I think that that's well said. I, I think that's well said. Like, fo- following your energy, I think that a lot of people think that this line of work, a- and it's true that, like, there are certain activities that come with this terrain, and there's things that you do. But ultimately, it's like, well, do you want to be doing those things? 'Cause if you, you aren't interested in doing those things, or you're more interested in a specific technical solution, um, I was just having this conversation with somebody who was, like, getting into the world of design systems consulting, and they're, like, looking to get their foot in the door, and it's like they also have, like, some really interesting philosophies around kind of a specific way of doing this stuff, and they've, like, thought deeply about it, and it's, and it's really impressive. And I'm like, "Well, here's the thing. Do you want to be out there sharing this solution? Or are you more getting into design system consulting, which is- You're kind of showing up going, "What's the problem?" And even if you have this, this specific solution burning a hole in your pocket, you kind of got to know when that's appropriate or when that isn't, 'cause, like, that might not be what they want or need or I don't know. So, so it's like there's this kind of like vague, like really knowing kind of why you're running towards the world of design systems consultancy, I guess, versus, versus like
Nathan: [1:16:54] the…
Brad: [1:16:54] I'm trying to do a very specific type of project.
Nathan: [1:16:58] I remember, um, you made me think about a related, um, that I had with Lou Rosenfeld from Rosenfeld Media, the
Brad: [1:17:05] Lou.
Nathan: [1:17:06] and He wrote the book, Information Architecture for the World Wide Web, which is why you and I are having this conversation, which led me to information architecture, which led me through into design systems. And, um, he gave me advice once w- before I wrote Modular Web Design, and he said, "Blog first." be able to describe problems and solutions, to describe the experiences you have and the beliefs you hold and the principles you abide by. You know, break it down, man. Like, start talking about those different ideas and see if that kind of stuff is gonna come together into a book. And you know what I did? I totally avoi- I, I was like, "Nah, I'm gonna just write the book." And it was too long, too dense. Like, you know, It was n- not a ending that, like, you… I should've built more to that. And I feel like design systems can feel the same way. You look at somebody else's book, or you look at somebody else's system, and it's this rich array of all these different things, and it's scaled to solve all these problems. But, like, if you're starting from zero, or if you're starting from a much, uh, smaller place, you gotta figure out the steps and how those steps are gonna start fitting together into a bigger whole
Brad: [1:18:16] Yep.
Nathan: [1:18:16] that's what capital D, capital S design system is really gonna be, feel like you experiencing over time, and it's not gonna happen overnight. And every once in a while, I've only had one that went truly sideways and failed. And it wasn't my fault. It wasn't my fault. I tried to stop the… I sh- I, maybe I shouldn't tell this story.
Brad: [1:18:34] It's…
Nathan: [1:18:35] have I told you this? Like, uh, it
Brad: [1:18:36] I don't know.
Nathan: [1:18:37] three months in, and the front end developer still on my team didn't have access to GitHub. And then it was about five months in, and I was like, "Listen, UX director, this isn't gonna work. Like, your culture is, like, rejecting it. All of its antibodies are, like, attacking this," and all sorts of other stuff too. paying. I was like, "Stop paying us. Fire us. Like, this is not working." Month four, month five, month six, then the UX director, the engineering director, and the product VP all got fired. Like, it was such a bigger cultural problem.
Brad: [1:19:09] Yeah.
Nathan: [1:19:10] uh, fortunately, we weren't left holding any bag. Like, they were like, "This wasn't your fault." Um, it was a bigger thing. But, like, d- sometimes the culture or sometimes the conditions that you find yourself in don't afford you to, the potential to actually succeed and create
Brad: [1:19:26] Yep.
Nathan: [1:19:26] hopefully you can short circuit it before it wastes everybody's time.
Brad: [1:19:30] Yeah, that's a, a telling tale, what's hard though is that a lot of times that doesn't become apparent until hindsight. You know? U- until you're, like, on the other end of it. You're like, "Woo."
Nathan: [1:19:41] Mm-hmm.
Brad: [1:19:46] is, like, follow things that, like, energize you or interest, or, or interest you, you do need to subject yourself to a bit of hard or discomfort or, like, whatever. Even if you're not, like, a political person, you gotta, like, play that game. Even if you're kinda more in the weeds or you gotta get in there, you gotta get that contract, you gotta, like, do all of, like, that stuff that might not be your wheelhouse, that's not the main thing that's exciting you, but it's like, it's a part of the game. And I think that that's, that's a hard thing for a lot of people to do because it could be… It, it could… That stuff can consume you, and then you find yourself totally on a different path than the thing that is exciting. So it's like checking in with yourself. It's, like, being very intentional with that stuff. Yes, I know that I'm going through all this rigamarole so that we could do the fun stuff or, or whatever, but some people just kinda get pulled by a fast-moving current at the expense of their own interests and enthusiasms and curiosities. So it's like, it's just, like, a weird thing that you need to contend with, and you really have to, like, fight for and advocate for the things that are exciting to you. Or if you can't find that in a gig, which has certainly been the case for me, I'd love to hear if that's the case for you, but it's like, to go, "Okay, this ain't the thing that is, like, hitting all of my buttons, but this little nugget here, I didn't, I didn't think I was gonna find this to be interesting." But, like, sometimes it's, like, the relationship between two people and I'm like, "Oh, this is gonna be, like, my fun for this gig. This is gonna be my, my fun for the project that I'm going to be excited about working on, even if everything else is, like, kinda bland."
Nathan: [1:21:32] Yeah, I, I really appreciate some of the, the leaders I've been brought in to help establish a design system in their orgs, and the degree to which enable, like, the people that are gelling to find their way and form their stuff, even if it's not necessarily the vec- the direction, um, that, that they expected things to go in, and they sort of
Brad: [1:21:52] Yeah.
Nathan: [1:21:53] other directions and end up in other places, but that it still ends up creating sufficient value in the general direction that they expected it to go, but they're hands-off. Like, I, I really have been blessed to, to have some of those. and I mean, like, I even recall, like, the project we worked on kinda together recently where I wasn't available, but it also wasn't the ideal project for me. But I was able to say, "I am available for this, and would it help me or help you for me to just participate like X and Y?" Like, "Do you want me to hang around and give some input and be a little bit more distant from everything?" And I think it, for the very limited amount I was able to participate, created a little bit of a difference, but it
Brad: [1:22:33] Yeah.
Nathan: [1:22:34] wasn't necessarily a cookie cutter thing,
Brad: [1:22:38] Yep.
Nathan: [1:22:38] okay.
Brad: [1:22:39] Yeah.
Nathan: [1:22:40] charge. I wasn't, uh, tasked with any particular domain, but that's fine. Like, I'm still creating a bit of value, as it
Brad: [1:22:47] Yeah. and you did. You absolutely did. But it is, it is good. It's like there's, yeah, here's the thing that, like, I've shaped for myself, my, my offering, my normal thing, or here's, like, the, the way I'd prefer to help, and yet there's still the, "Sure, I'll help you, load this couch into a moving truck," or something. It's like, like not something you're doing every day, but you could still be helpful in just weird, varied ways. And I've enjoyed, like, being that, like, amorphous puzzle piece for different places. It's like, "What, what are you struggling with? Do you need a lot of help? A little bit of help?" Like, weird kind of helps.
Nathan: [1:23:24] that's another piece of advice too, is how can you put yourself in such a diverse and rapidly changing array of relationships and, and contexts so that you can pick up all the patterns? Like, part of what you get when you consult with me is, like, I've worked on over 100 design systems. I've seen and I can feel the nuance of the boundaries, and patterns, and cultures, and, like, feature sets, and architectures, and all that kind of stuff. And so, like, I come equipped with that, but that's also because, like, I was drawn to work with Brad and these other few people. Even though I couldn't draw, I still learned and, and observed and, and saw how they interacted and how they leveraged their own strengths and, and all that kind of stuff. And putting, uh, myself in a position to be able to bounce between those things, I think also really helped,
Brad: [1:24:09] Yeah.
Nathan: [1:24:09] be in
Brad: [1:24:10] Yeah.
Nathan: [1:24:10] learning one way with a few collaborators for a
Brad: [1:24:14] Yep.
Nathan: [1:24:14] time. That,
Brad: [1:24:15] Yep.
Nathan: [1:24:16] me, wouldn't have been good.
Brad: [1:24:17] Yeah, yeah. And it's good to, it's know thyself, because you get a lot of, like, depth and, and rich knowledge from going, going deep and, and with, like, a, a, a singular goal, and then there's also real value in, in breadth. And so, yeah, just kinda knowing what gives you energy and what feels exciting at that time and, and moment. I, I too like the variety and the ability to learn from- A bunch of different people all at once that, that really is helpful, and I've enjoyed that. And so if that kind of breadth and curiosity for a lot of different kinds of experiences is something that you crave, then well, then consultancy is a, a pretty damn good way of, of doing that. But then I, I also really admire, and I'm sure that you feel the same with the teams that you've worked with. Some of these people have been doing their thing at that same place for, like, 15 years, and you're like, "Holy shit." Like,
Nathan: [1:25:15] there, there's a respect to
Brad: [1:25:17] that's
Nathan: [1:25:17] some of
Brad: [1:25:17] what I'm saying. It's like, it's like, it's amazing. Like, I have, like, the utmost respect for somebody that's like, "This has been… This is my job. Like, this is what I do."
Nathan: [1:25:27] 2011's a long time ago, 15 years. I can't imagine that. But, well, actually, I worked with an insurance company. I can imagine 15 years. Um, like, the, it's also that, like, in the roles that you choose, you have to know what you're seeking and what you're not. I'm not seeking being the figurehead of the successful system. Like, I've worked with some design leads over the years that have worked it for years, and they are the leader that has taken this thing and grown it and scaled it to that thing.
Brad: [1:25:56] Yep. Yep.
Nathan: [1:25:56] to them, they're, they're the, the hub of all that success. I don't need that.
Brad: [1:26:00] Yeah.
Nathan: [1:26:01] uh, but it's g- I really admire a lot of the people that have made that kind of change within what can be a really chaotic environment,
Brad: [1:26:08] Yeah.
Nathan: [1:26:09] for some people, that's the jam. It's not my
Brad: [1:26:11] Yeah.
Nathan: [1:26:11] some, it's definitely the jam.
Brad: [1:26:13] I think that there's something to that, like, longevity in something. In your case, a vast and varied experience, but a longevity nonetheless, that I think is, is going to also be something we increasingly value in this age where everything is immediate. It's like, oh, when you find out that, it's like, people have been on this ride for, like, seven, eight, nine, 10 years, and there's, like, a lot of reps in there. I think that we're, we're going to suddenly realize this, that value in those, like, longer efforts. That's, that's what ultimately breaks through that just hype-y, noisy stuff. It's like, nope, we've been focused. We've been doing the work. We've been iterating. We've been improving. We've been, like, thinking deeply about this and through the lens of a changing landscape over time. all of that rich infrastructure and all of those decisions and all of that agreement and all of that, that richness that comes with the territory." So
Nathan: [1:27:18] Yeah.
Brad: [1:27:19] Here's hoping at least, or we'll all be dead.
Nathan: [1:27:21] Hey, man. S-someday. Someday
Brad: [1:27:25] No, that is true. it has been a real pleasure finally getting a chance to, to like, kind of work closer to you to like see how you operate. It's like, it is really wild to, to have this similar but totally different style kind of to it. And so it was really, really fun to be able to, to work together and, and work a bit closer and get to swap notes and all of that stuff. That was, that was really a treat. And I also just appreciate your longevity through all of this. Like, the fact that you're able to be here kind of carrying this stuff through and, and still finding lots of things to be excited about and enthusiastic and interested in. It's like, it's awesome. So I'm, I'm glad that you're continuing to have a good time.
Nathan: [1:28:14] Yeah, you too. Don't stop.
Brad: [1:28:16] Yeah. Uh, well, before we wrap up, uh, the only other structured question on the show is, is what music would you like more people to know about?
Nathan: [1:28:26] Oh, gosh. Um, I am not a music aficionado,
Brad: [1:28:30] That's okay.
Nathan: [1:28:31] you know, like, maybe I'll talk a little bit about Frostapalooza. When you put on Frostapalooza in 2024, I believe, in Pittsburgh in, in September, was able to go because I live in Ohio, so-- Or grew up in Ohio, so I went home and then came back and, and hung out, uh, at your gig and enjoyed the show. But it made me-- It was among-- amid a time when I was starting to learn how to play the piano uh, not just learning music. I've never done instruments before. And so I haven't really d-dove in much to it, but I still occasionally do, and I'm playing the same song over and over. it's called "On the Nature of Daylight" by Max Richter,
Brad: [1:29:08] Okay.
Nathan: [1:29:09] pretty solemn piece that once you hear it, it's in, like, so many movie soundtracks, like Arrival, that it'll sound very familiar. I don't know. It's, uh, like, since I'm learning to play it, it's got an increasing level of sophistication, but it also has very recurring measures, and so on.
Brad: [1:29:26] Oh, wild.
Nathan: [1:29:30] but how it's, like, helped me on my journey of learning how to play piano because of how I've been able to layer on the techniques as actually the piece itself becomes more and more complicated as it progresses. it's, it's been, uh, a lot of fun. But that and also the other, uh, song was "Melancholy and the Infinite Sadness," the classical sort of
Brad: [1:29:51] Oh, yeah.
Nathan: [1:29:52] the Smashing Pumpkins double album from '96.
Brad: [1:29:56] Oh, yeah.
Nathan: [1:29:57] anyway, those are the, those are the tunes I'm hearing,
Brad: [1:29:59] Beautiful. Oh, that… Beautiful. That's incredible. I love… I, I'm really excited to listen to that as you describe it as, like, it sounds like as the piece unfolds, it gets more complex, more nuanced, or there's more to it. So it's like, it's like starting at closer to, like, a 101 level, and then, like, ending up in, like, master's degree territory.
Nathan: [1:30:20] Yeah. It's a pretty-- The M-Richter piece is pretty straightforward. Like a, a pianist would be like, read that once, and I'll know how to play it." It's not, uh, "Mary Had a Little Lamb," but it's not also-- it's not Beethoven or Mozart.
Brad: [1:30:34] sure, sure.
Nathan: [1:30:35] it's-- it, uh, tone is, is good.
Brad: [1:30:39] That's amazing. Oh, that's exciting. I'm really, I'm really excited to, to know that you're, that you're digging into that, that world, and, you know, math, statistics, all of that stuff. I mean, there, there really is so much correlation between these things and, and it is just kind of equal parts, art form and, and technique, and there are rules and, structure and rigidity in certain respects, but also not, and it's, it's… There's a really cool game board to play on. So, oh, that's really, really cool. I'm, I'm really glad to hear that. I feel like in, in, in some small way helping just kinda, like, poke that, that fire, poke those embers a little bit. That's, that's awesome. okay, and then last thing, like, where could people follow along with what you're up to? Where, where do you hang out? What would you, uh, like to point people towards?
Nathan: [1:31:30] Uh, I'm on-- mostly posting on LinkedIn and writing on Substack about, uh, the Specs tools that I've been building, uh, which you can find them, uh, on Figma, but also just at Specs plugin and the, the Specs repo that I publish stuff through. me there, and let's, let's, let's chat and keep sharing ideas.
Brad: [1:31:50] Yeah, amazing. Well, thank you so much for coming on, and thanks everybody for listening. So, see you later.
Nathan: [1:31:56] Thanks,