🤿 mad scientist

Every time I open up Twitter it feels like someone is talking about the new design tool called Paper 👀

So this episode is a behind-the-scenes with their founder, Stephen Haney.

He shares his vision for the future of design, gives a nifty demo of the product and we also go deep into:

• Paper's strategy for AI

• Why designer's DON'T need to learn to code

• Why design files are more about alignment than handoff

• What he's doing differently this time around after Modulz

• Why shaders are a big deal for designers who want to stand out

• How the role of design is evolving (and what that means for tools)

• + a lot more

Listen on YouTube, Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts 👇

So I’m writing this on the plane home from Config London and I’ll admit… at design conferences it’s pretty common for people to walk up and tell me how much they love the podcast 😅

But this Config was a first for me…

Because I had multiple people say they’ve been using Inflight with their teams and loving it. And boy did that hit different 😇 

You can kinda think of Inflight like an async CRIT. Once you share what you’re working on anyone can weigh in using video. We then organize everything into a Granola-style report to show you next steps.

Also ICYMI I’ve officially joined as a cofounder!

So my goal is to give you the unscripted behind-the-scenes of what it’s like designing a new AI product from scratch in today’s (crazy) landscape.

If you want early access I’m letting Dive Club listeners on first. Each week is a new batch and you can get on the list here 👇

🎓 KEY TAKEAWAYS

The age of alignment

I talked to a lot of designers at Config London and there’s a clear trend emerging…

More designers are having backend engineers scaffold a UI and then the designer lands the plane in Cursor.

Yesterday I interviewed the full design team at Raycast and all of them have started adopting this workflow just in the last ~6 months 👀

Once I hit send on this email I’m about to do exactly that during my flight. It’s a fun way to work not gonna lie…

This has a pretty profound impact on the way we think about design tools.

Historically we’ve pushed for Figma as a source of truth—organized, documented, and ideally mirroring production. But when the final chunk of design is done in code that value prop vanishes.

Stephen says the real role of a designer is “problem space exploration”…

That’s a big focus for Paper and as AI accelerates iteration our files are only going to get messier 😅

This is also why Stephen says the real result of a design file is “alignment”.

When you (and everyone else on the team) can explore ideas 10x faster how do you ensure that everyone is moving in the right direction?

It reminds me of one of my favorite articles from 2025: Strategy is compressing from David Hoang.

I don’t believe you have to code to succeed moving forward as a designer…

But if that’s the case then your ability to ideate with AI and drive alignment internally becomes an even more essential part of your role.

Meet the Dive partners 

I made a list of my favorite products and asked them to come on as sponsors of the newsletter/podcast. They said yes 🥹

The #1 way to support Dive Club is to check them out👇

Framer​ → How I build my websites

Genway → How I do research

Granola → How I take notes during CRIT

Jitter​ → How I animate my designs

Lovable → How I build my ideas in code

Mobbin → How I find design inspiration

Paper → How I design like a creative

Raycast ​ → How I stay in flow while I work

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