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🤿 unstable ideas
How to make the leap to staff designer 👀

The way to get promoted is to show that you’re already doing the job.
So what does it take to make the jump to staff designer?
I chatted with Kathy Zheng about her 6+ years at Github to find out.
Here’s what I learned 👇
FIRST A QUICK MESSAGE...
I use AI every single day but I never go to OpenAI or Claude or any websites like that.
Raycast is my portal to AI.
I can add attachments, build presets, and keyboard shortcuts mean it’s always at my finger tips.
It’s a big reason why Raycast has pretty quickly become the cornerstone of how I use my computer.
So if you haven’t tried it yet… I can’t recommend it enough 👇
TOGETHER WITH

💡 Working like a staff designer
Kathy says the the key difference for staff designers is their ability to steward unstable ideas from raw opportunity all the way to execution.
They’re not sitting downstream waiting to be handed the next PRD.
Staff designers are actively proposing ideas and shaping product strategy.
So let’s dive into some specific tactics you can use to demonstrate this level of impact👇
Pick an idea and own it
Nobody is going to Slack you and say “Hey, do you want to propose an idea nobody is thinking about yet and run with it?”
If you want the role, you gotta seize it.
And the best way to do that is to pick an idea that you care about and go all-in.
“What's one thing that you might want to push forward that you think would be really valuable and you want more people to understand that value?”
Don’t have an idea?
That’s ok.
Everyone has their personal feature wishlist. Find a product leader and ask what’s on theirs. Then offer yourself as a resource to help paint the future.
Go cowboy mode
If nobody is assigning you staff-worthy work, there’s a good chance you’ll be doing it on your own time.
“I spent a lot of my personal hours doing that kind of work because I was interested and passionate about it. I would spend evenings jamming on a design vision that I understood may or may never happen.”
If it wasn’t for Vincent going cowboy mode at Figma, today’s Config launch would look very different (full story in an upcoming episode 🤫)

Create an “aura of inevitability”
Vincent from Figma initially pitched visual search in a written PRD.
It flopped 😅
Only after he filmed a video walking through a functioning prototype did the tides turn. His ~3 min video went mini-viral internally and fundamentally changed Figma’s 2024 roadmap.
Not only is his story the perfect example of “meming” your designs…
It also demonstrates the power of high-fidelity prototypes.
When presenting “cowboy” work, it needs to feel de-risked… like it’s almost there and just needs one final push.
A great example is Soleio’s story from early Facebook…
But I’ll save that story for the full article. If you’re interested you can get the next five strategies here 👇
🦘 Making the jump to staff designer
This week’s episode is with Kathy Zheng who is currently the Head of design at a Web3 protocol called Optimism. But before that she was the first designer at Patreon and went on to spend over 6 years at Github.
The goal of our chat was to look at how Kathy grew as a designer while at Github and identify the specific milestones on her journey to reaching senior and eventually staff designer.
We get into the weeds about:
How the role of staff and senior designers differ
The traits shared by the best designers at Github
How to give your ideas a chance to become memes
How to avoid conversational spinout on your project
How to identify opportunities using systems thinking
How Kathy is growing as a design leader at Optimism
Specific techniques for storytelling and presenting ideas
🍎 Apple intelligence and AI maximalism

This article doesn’t fall in your typical bucket of “design resources” but I think it’s important to zoom out and understand what’s happening more broadly in our industry.
Apple Intelligence gave us a lens into what the future of designing products with AI might look like.
“there are always sets of buttons and options shaping what you ask… nowhere can you put in a raw prompt and get a raw output back.”
This article is my favorite dose of perspective yet. I highly recommend taking ~5 minutes and reading 👇

Tomáš Sebastián’s designs have been blowing up on Twitter lately.
His secret? Bringing them to life with Jitter.
Thankfully he’s a grade-A human being and just open-sourced a ton of animation source files that are legit.
If you’re looking for ways to level up how you showcase your work then this is the perfect resource 👇
🤖 Ask Jordan Singer about Figma AI

I’m recording next week’s episode live from Config with the one-and-only Jordan Singer to talk about Figma’s new AI release.
So… what should I ask him?
You can either reply to this email or leave a comment on his tweet before 11amPST ✌️
🤿 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👇
🧠 Ideas you might've missed
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📺 Episodes you might've missed
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![]() | Designing with a founder mindset |
![]() | Designing a startup from 0 to acquisition |
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:
See you next week 🤿 — Ridd
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