Cornell says designers should resist cleverness when it makes an interface harder to understand. He recommends keeping the first-time user in mind, since familiarity from working on a product can make confusing choices seem obvious.
The Best Product Designer I Ever Worked With
Speaker
Alex Cornell, Director of Design at Meta AI, talks with Peter Yang about product design, building apps at Cocoon, Substack, and Linear, and how AI may change interfaces.
At the start of a product, Cornell likes long, open conversations followed by focused design work. For Cocoon, the team began with the loss of a dedicated place to connect with close friends and family. Their early idea of ambient updates gave way to a focus on sharing photos and having private conversations in relevant groups.
Cornell describes adapting Substack to mobile as a translation of an established product, with writers' needs shaping decisions about how their work appeared. At Linear, he had room to refine its mobile app without an arbitrary release date. He also found that filming a design, such as a logo effect made with canola oil on an iPad, could make it resonate more than a static image.
Cornell compares generative AI to a fast-moving boulder, making long-range predictions difficult. He still values North Star design alongside tactical work, as long as the goal remains within reach, perhaps one to three cycles ahead. A future direction can guide current product decisions while teams learn what works.
Cornell recommends studying a wide range of products, copying interfaces to learn from them, and doing as much design work as possible. Repeated practice builds execution speed, while copying and exposure help develop taste. He says the gap between what you admire and what you can make can narrow through sustained work, though your judgment may keep evolving.
Takeaways
- Check whether a first-time user can understand the interface without explanation.
- Begin new product work with open discussion, capture the ideas, then turn them into designs quickly.
- When adapting a product to a new platform, account for the needs of its core customers.
- Keep a near-term North Star that can shape decisions shipping now.
- Develop design skill by studying, recreating, and repeatedly making products.
Mentioned in this talk
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What was claimed 14
- role atAlex Cornell is Director of Design at
Meta“Alex Cornell, Director of Design at Meta AI.”
YouTube Unverified1 source· Talk
- foundedAlex Cornell founded Cocoon
“My co-founder at Cocoon and I would do that at the beginning.”
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- metricCocoon: Four years spent developing the app
“You spent four years on it, right?”
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- featureCocoon: Designed for close friends and family to stay in touch and share; included flight tracking in messaging.
“Cocoon was designed for your close friends and family.”
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- featureCocoon: Broadcast sharing with interaction and conversation kept direct and private.
“Any interaction or conversation should be direct and private.”
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- featureCocoon: Initially centered on automatic ambient updates for one group, including location updates.
“It was more of an ambient updating app where you could monitor what was going on with one single group of people.”
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- acquired
“We ultimately got acquired by Substack during the pandemic.”
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- metricCocoon: Team considered a subscription-style business model toward the end
“We moved the model to a subscription-style business, where you could unlock certain things.”
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- built
“When I designed the app, it was before Notes. It was just the inbox.”
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- featureSubstack mobile app: Provided a reading experience designed for readers and exposed them to more writers.
“The app is designed to make the reading experience really good for readers.”
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- built
“They didn't have a mobile app and they wanted one, and I was brought in to bring that experience into a mobile context.”
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- usesAlex Cornell uses Midjourney
“Midjourney replaced browsing with a hybrid of creating and browsing.”
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- featureAI: Prompting and viewing generated output can combine creation with browsing.
“That handoff is enough to make trying things out fun.”
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- featureAlex Cornell: Recommends learning design through exposure to work, replication, and practice.
“The three categories are exposure to lots of work, replicating as much as you can, and practice.”
YouTube Unverified1 source· Talk
