🤿 end to end

As one of the fastest growing companies in the world, Lovable is scaling their design team by tapping into the Dive Talent Network.

So I interviewed their Head of Design, Nad Chishtie, to learn everything I can about how to get hired as a designer at Lovable.

This is easily one of the most practical conversations of the year. I’ve been looking forward to sharing it with you for a few weeks now 🙂 

Some highlights:

• A breakdown of a recent design hire’s portfolio

• How to avoid getting your portfolio screened out

• How to crush the later stages of the hiring process

• How you can win Nad over with side projects alone

• What to do if you’re not confident in your visual skills

• The 2 things Nad cares most about when hiring designers

• + a lot more

Watch on Youtube, Spotify, Apple or wherever you get your podcasts 👇

🤝 WITH MOBBIN

Big news: Animations just launched in Mobbin 😎

So you can see how world-class apps use motion to guide, delight, and create seamless experiences.

It’s just another reason why Mobbin is an absolute cheat code for your entire design team. We use it all of the time and I can’t wait to start sending animation ideas to the rest of the team.

Click the link to check it out today 👇

🔑 KEY TAKEAWAYS

Key takeaways from a jam-packed episode with Nad

1 — Lovable is all about generalists

That showed up over and over in our conversation.

The single biggest trait Nad kept coming back to was the ability for designers to run a project end to end. Lovable only has one PM, which means designers own a lot of product strategy.

You’re talking to users.

You have access to all the data.

You’re empowered to decide when to build (or delete) something.

Until recently, their handbook literally said something like:
“You know you’re doing your job correctly when someone else tells you you’re stepping on their toes.” 😅

2 — Portfolio insights

1. Think about yourself as a brand/product.

   1. Nad pays close attention to his gut reaction in the first few seconds (exactly the same way he evaluates a company website). This reaction is driven by copy, visual rhythm, composition, and overall polish.
      

2. If you don’t have the craft skills to wow someone, do less

   1. One great tactic is to write articles that demonstrate your thinking. You don’t have to use the cliché portfolio template. Putting up subpar visuals hurts more than hiding them.
      

3. “I put the exact same amount of weight on side projects.”

   1. Not everyone gets to work on beautiful products with polished design systems. That’s ok! You can win Nad over just as easily with a well-executed side project. He’s simply trying to assess your skill and level of intentionality.
      

4. Overselling process can be a bad thing

   1. Nad really only cares about the work. The more you explain every detail of your process, the more chances there are for a hiring manager to latch onto something they don’t want. As Nad put it, “you can give signal on the wrong things”.

It’s important to understand where you are in the funnel. A portfolio isn’t the place for the hard sell. You’re just trying to get bumped to the next round. That’s where they’ll actually evaluate your process.

I pushed Nad on this to the extreme and asked whether it’s possible to move forward with nothing but a component playground (no text, process, project pages, impact, etc.).

His answer? “Definitely”.

3 — How to nail the interview process

Nad places a lot of weight on the quality of questions you ask in the interview. This is one of the clearest ways to signal product thinking.

He loves when candidates show up clearly having done their homework with formulated opinions about the product and space.

The full episode is jam-packed with practical takeaways like this. I took as many notes as any episode ever 👇

🤝 WITH FRAMER

If you’re still designing in Figma and rebuilding in Framer, you’re doing twice the work.

With Framer’s Design Pages, you no longer need to jump between tools. The last page I made for the Dive Website I explored entirely in Framer.

You can sketch, iterate, structure, and publish to the web all from the same place. 

Framer isn’t just a site builder. It’s a design tool for your entire workflow.

Start creating for free and use the code RIDD to unlock a free month of Framer Pro.

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

Thanks for reading! I'm working hard to bring you the best design resources on the planet 🫶

If you want to go even deeper you can always:

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