Oh, it’s so possible now to build all these ideas pre AI. There was so much work that you did not communicate all of the the depth of it to a client to sit in front of a computer screen day in and day out building these digital tools. That’s not a valuable use of human life really. And to have AI kind of step in and then take some of that stuff out, I think it’s great for for people. And to be honest, it just pissed me off. Welcome to Beyond the Brief. On today’s episode, I’m talking to Travis Weerts, a man of many titles. Be a designer, developer, artists, or even maker. Travis has built many things over his career. From AI radio stations to room visualizers, voice agents for airports, Australian Open activations, and even a running app that started as fitness motivation for Travis, but ended as a protest against Spotify’s investment choices. He’s made some incredible things which is why I wanted him on the show because for years a lot of creative work has died in pitch decks. He had the idea but had to sell the vision to make it real. Travis argues that those days are over and that he’s seen a build first mentality where it’s much better as a sales tool than just the idea itself. In this episode, we talk about the future of agency work. how his role is changing due to AI, but what happens when the people with taste can finally build the thing before a committee has time to kill it. So, let’s get into it. Travis, how are you? Good, man. How you going? Good. Welcome to the show, episode 3. It’s good to have you on. Um, I I I said this before to you. I feel like we should have crossed paths earlier. You seem like someone who’s doing very cool things creatively with a lot of different technology. I guess the title that I’d probably give you from what I’m looking at from afar as creative technologist. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but it seems it seems the kind of thing that you do. Yeah, I think so. I hope so. It sounds about right. That’s good. So, I guess for viewers, um why don’t we start with a little bit of a backstory? uh where you’ve come from, what kind of work you’ve done over your career, we can kind of hone in on some of the brilliant things that you’ve created, of which there are many after doing some research and yeah, we’ll just see where this conversation goes. Yeah. Cool. I guess first of all, yeah, likewise, I I don’t want to rehash it, but I feel like yeah, we should have crossed paths sooner. It feels like Yeah, if you’re a brother from another mother or something, working in the same space, same kind of definitely thinking the same similar ways. So, it’s good to finally Yeah. meet and have a conversation and catch up. Well, hello. Yeah. Hi. I I won’t belabor it too much going too much of my background, but creative technologist was my latest sort of job title. I never really thought of myself in in those terms or with that title necessarily, but once it was sort of bestowed upon me by my elders, I was like, you know what? I I I think that’s that’s it. I I’ve just always been into the tech space, design space, creative space and I’ve sort of had a little bit of you both I don’t know left left mind think left brain thinking and right brain and kind of both and trying to find I guess the the juxtaposition of those things you know from I sound like I’m going way back now but even at like my earliest memory is like in in this space is like spending me my nights in Barnes & Noble in the programming section like reading the O’Reilly books and stuff like trying to figure out how to build apps that I was deploying and like AOL. That’s how that’s how much I’m going to date myself here. Pre-S Stack Overflow, you know. Oh, Barnes & Noble was Stack Overflow, man. But yeah, I I’ve just always had like a fascination for it and then decided to yeah, study computer science even though I absolutely wanted to go to art school. Uh but my my parents you know right looking back rightfully so like said maybe let’s not do the starving artist thing even though I’m still somehow feel like I’m doing that. Yeah. And then I freelanced for almost my entire life and got got some amazing opportunities to to do stuff. Just super lucky just I don’t know being passionate about what you’re doing and just saying yes to projects just leads to more work and more work and there’s nothing yeah complicated about it. And yeah, I did that for a really long time. That’s a short story. Went from small mom and pop projects from or indie bands all the way to some incredible opportunities to work for brands I never even dreamed that me as a little freelancer whatever get to to work on. So you you when did you arrive in in Western Australia? How long have you been here for? About 10 years, I think. I think. Okay. Nice. Nice little aside, but how how do you find it to the rest of the world in terms of creative opportunities and creative projects and creative thinking? I have got I I feel like I’ve gotten to do even more incredible projects in in since I’ve Yeah. been in Australia. Like just Yeah. The the opportunities that I’ve been given is just amazing really. I find it great. Really? Yeah. Great. I feel like WA kind of always gets this this rap compared to like Sydney and the eastern states and stuff, but I don’t know. something in my experience at all. Yeah, I think there’s a lot and and you’ve had quite a career I think. So you as you’re saying you kind of started out freelancing and you’ve worked at different agencies around town. I think you’re at dilate for a bit and then VML if I’m right and you worked at the start for a bit. I don’t know. You might still be there. I don’t know. No, I I I’m now freelance. I’ve decided uh I’ve been working towards getting back I guess to my roots a bit and and is that just because it’s a it’s about sort of creative freedom you know finding the right project and and and something that sort of feels right for you and where you can you can just dive in 100% or bit more free what is the what is the desire there yeah absolutely that you just nailed it yeah at VML I was there for maybe five six years and it’s changed names a couple times but it’s not important it’s it’s it’s a little bit more I’m not sure what you know about VMO or not, but it’s a global agency kind of thing. And I had never been in that world or knew much about it. And coming into it, I I definitely felt like a fish out of water a little bit. I was, you know, I’ve got my digital background. And and then going into sort of more classic, not I hate to use the word classic because it makes it sound old, but traditional advertising style. Yeah. Where everything is campaign based and you’re constantly pitching ideas. It was fascinating. It felt like you were living in an episode of Mad Men even still today. Rapid creativity, right? It’s like come up with a great idea. Go. It’s not It’s not that easy. It’s really hard. Except that that last bit like the go bit never really happened. It was more like here’s an idea. Okay. Now, let’s go on to the next idea and the next idea and the next idea. And Right. Right. Right. I I like as a a person that likes to build and design and see ideas through like that was just really frustrating I think. Yeah. Like you’re just kind of throwing these things out and not not being able to see the tail end of it. Exactly. And then it goes to some other team that Yeah. gets to how how those sorts of businesses are set up to serve those types of engagements. But I guess as a freelancer now you can you can have the idea, you can craft the idea, you can deliver it, see the performance and Yeah. And there there’s a joy that comes from making a thing and putting that thing out into the world. And I just missed that. And so I especially in this new world that’s been emerging, I was like, it’s so possible now to build all these ideas with, you know, little effort or or less effort, I should say. It’s not that like I’ I’d classify it as a different kind of effort. Yeah. Yeah, it’s uh it’s still a lot of work, but it’s just it’s deployed differently and and it’s amplified, so you can get more done. Totally. Yeah, that’s really cool. Uh so, you know, you’re you’re a builder, it seems, and and I think product is something that probably comes pretty naturally to you then. So, the idea of seeing things through and you know, starting with an idea, shipping something and seeing it grow and improve is probably pretty alluring. You seem to have done a lot You seem to have done a lot of that. So, um, I want to touch on that soon and start talking about some of your brilliant products. But what I really want to touch on was something you just raised around the the changing of the creative process where, you know, you you’re playing with these new tools. You’ve you’ve gone freelance because you you’re sensing a sense of possibility. How did you when did you first start playing this this technology sort of LLM to boost your own sort of workflow? And what was that journey like to where you are now? I I can’t remember the like the the very first time. I can kind of remember maybe around the midjourney one point the first version of midjourney seeing it. Yep. And I think right at that same time I was also kind of seeing the I guess this emergence of more public facing AI products. I think there was there was one from I IBM that could read the sentiment analysis in a body of text and then I was like oh we can we can do really cool stuff with that. and and then seeing the the image generation and I just started playing with it at at that point like little weird ideas that went nowhere and just experimenting mostly just in this spirit of play really like for example the IBM one I started wondering if you could like I don’t know build a body of text from a bunch of people and display the emotional side of that text in an form of a an interactive like painting where’ that get to that sounds Cool. It it we we there was a project that came in at VML for Murdoch and they wanted to display some of it some of that thinking. It didn’t end up looking like the visualization that I played with and built, but that idea went on to they’ve got a new techn I can’t remember the name of it, a technology center that they’ve opened, new building, and they’ve putting in some displays. And that idea ended up being on one of those displays around crowdsourcing emotional analysis art. I can’t even remember what the name of it was uh that they put on it, but Yeah. But it started with a lot of day. Yeah. Hey, cool. Let’s try this thing. And then, well, there’s this idea that that might work for let’s pitch that. Yep. Yeah. Yep. Yep. Kind of seeing seeing a twinkle of capability and then saying, okay, well, how can I use this and how can I be creative with it? Yeah. I love that. So what followed after I remember the early days of Midjourney and it it kind of blew me away like I saw the really early research papers from Google. I think it was Google Deep Mind where they had like here’s a cat and it was just like a pixelated graphic of this is what a machine thinks a cat looks like and I remember that absolutely blowing my mind it kind of this fuzzy pixelated cat right this is incredible technology imagine what we could do with this you know and then mid journey comes out and everything you know even that that was really exciting you can do a lot with this but the quality you know you get this really creepy looking totally glitched Why did they get that hard that they trained it on? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that’s a whole separate issue we can talk about, but yeah, just seeing the progression of MidJourney was amazing. I just as an aside, you know, I was playing with it at a a company I was I’m sort of a shareholder in which is Menus and we were using it to generate food photography for our menu designs. Nice. Because it was it was much obviously, you know, startup you’re bootstrapping. It’s much more cost effective to generate photos. And the quality just blew my mind. This is this is really this is it now. What are we going to be able to do with What version of Mid Journey was that when you were I’m going to say three or four. Yeah. Okay. Up to now eight now I think. I’ve lost count to be honest. It was 2022 I think. So yeah. And that Yeah. A lot of fun. So uh what else you know how have you progressed from creating artworks to building the things you’ve you’ve built today? What what what else followed? I I I guess it was just kind of more of that and and when I look back over I don’t know last the last few years just continuing that spirit of play learning a little bit more and then once you once I kind of developed enough trust or maybe more trust in myself than I knew what the hell I was even doing you start to I don’t know evolve and grow and like it’s like you evolve from just chatting to an LLM oneonone to then realizing I assign this thing to a task and or or an agent. And I guess you just get a little bit more systematic in your thinking or how do I how do I not just have singular conversation, but how do I kind of put these things to work in areas that are within an application? How do you support the the the where I feel like it’s really really great is sort of those behind the scenes tasks that are just laborious and boring and it’s a bit of a churn like going through and I don’t know analyzing records and making sure that you know you remove all the false positives and just stuff that happens in any application. I guess I moved from playing, experimenting, having fun and slowly it’s starting to creep its way into my real jobs, my real work. Yeah. Slowly slowly taking over. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. How do we get And so you mentioned before you’re in Barnes & Noble and you’re you’re you’re reading programming books. So, have you always been engineerminded or or development-minded with a flare for creativity or where where on that kind of left and right do you sit, do you think? I I I I don’t know. But my answer would be if if I had a screen recording of what’s on my screen, probably over 70% I’m staring at consoles and terminals and rainbow colored code and and like and I’m like, how did I get here? This is not like the trajectory that I was supposed to be on. Um I I yeah I’m very I get excited by the design and the the product that you know is possible and the experience that’s unlocked on the other side. Yeah. And you feel un unlocked right like do you feel it’s not that you don’t want to work with other people because a lot happens through collaboration right it’s brilliant but you do you feel like you have these ideas you can now realize them. Yeah, totally. And you can get them somewhere before you show other people, right? Then it’s just an idea. Yeah. And and the interface to doing that right now is just text on a screen. That’s where you spend most of your time. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Absolutely. it it a lot of you know the ideas that I have kind of live in that prototype space and it’s just getting an massaging an idea until it’s at a point where it’s sharable or I even know how to communicate what the idea is it’s polished enough that maybe it kind of makes sense. So were you building prototypes beforehand without this technology? So you’re comfortable enough in dev tools to you know spin something up and deploy it all that kind of stuff. Yes, but it’s changed like the I think in the old paradigm pre pre AI AI you sort of had to get a client’s buy in on the idea before you could even move into building the prototype stage. Like that was it was it cost too much to even do that 100%. And the idea is the thing that you sell first and then if that works then you get budget to actually realize it. Yeah. Yeah. And the amount of times that those ideas died before they were even given, you know, the first bit of life support. Yeah. Was Yeah. Yeah. Just crazy how many times in ideas shut down and and I get it. It’s expensive. But then there was right around that period where uh I was experimenting with uh I don’t know coding with AI for the first time outside of just like the you know co-pilot where it kind of fixes your syntax and stuff but really using it as a build tool. it it occurred to me like I can just and this was during VML when I was sitting there in my job was just to put slide decks together and I’ll never forget and I was like wait a second I can just stick a link on this slide deck now that they can click on and it can go run the thing that I’m trying to say you should do and there was a noticeable step change in like how many of the ideas that I submitted that had a link on it or you could go and do the use the thing how many of those ideas got through the door versus the ones that did not. And then I was like, “This is valuable.” That’s powerful. People need to see things. You know, it’s hard for the general to to visualize an idea, but to if you if you create something and share, then they’re much more likely to get buy in, right? That’s that’s really cool. So, you started out just introducing things and it started to take over because it converted better. Totally. like a sales strategy. Oh, it was and I felt like I un sort of magic trick or something like Yeah, cuz like the the folks at VML uh you know, hats off to them. I always felt like I had the most like uh what’s the the word yeah imposttor syndrome cuz I was just like this digital designer developer but then in this sort of creative space and all of their ideas were just next level everyone that’s coming out of that agency. Yeah. And I was like, I learned that I could lean back on some of that development background and put some links in there and maybe get a couple ideas through where I was always felt like I was putting ideas up against these uh these folks who were juggernauts brilliant at like putting the best pitch deck together possible, which wasn’t necessarily my my sweet spot. Creativity is hard. It’s so hard. And I I got a lot of respect for people that can do that. Well, I’m I’m probably similar to you and that I think where my strength is is I can I can be creative but not at that level, but I can realize things. So, if I get a slither of something that that’s I can I I can build that. I know how to make that a thing, you know, and and then from there you iterate. And so, it’s it’s funny the point you rais around it’s it’s the cost collapsing, right? So, this is a transition that I I don’t know how all agencies are going to navigate this, but you’re right. It’s much more cost effective to just make something now and share it with them. But if you don’t have budget to do that, how do you do that? So they have to look at their their cost structure, you know, how do you you know is you you have a continuous retainer to just generate ideas. So it’s like the business of agency has to change around this technology because absolutely you by the time you’ve you’ve had you can have an idea and by the end of the day you’ve got a really strong prototype, you know, and you can share that with the client the next day and say, “Hey, what do you think of this?” Yeah. And if you if you’re going to do the other way around where you’re going to create, you know, a pitch deck for a week, the cost of that is more than actually producing agree totally. And and I’m using this technology now to skip the deck all together. I just make websites. So my proposals, contracts, everything is just a full website because it’s what the technology is good at and it’s it’s much easier to do. So I mean like the actual proposal itself and stuff is is what? Wow. Yeah, complete website because it’s just a lot it’s a it’s a lot easier for agents to understand, you know, web structure and, you know, components and you know, all that kind of stuff rather than I got to design a slide deck in, you know, Google Slides or whatever. I’m always what what program should I use for this? And and you know, you know, using something like using browser use in any of these tools is awful. So the time is is just crazy. So yeah, it’s it’s an interesting time I think especially for larger businesses where I think you you’ve made the right decision where you can just be really nimble and say I’m just going to do it like this, you know, and and see how it goes. Okay, cool. So that that’s great. So what happened what happens next? You’ve you you’ve you’ve played around with a while. You you have VML. You’re creating more things in your proposals. What what led to the next the next transition? there was a a specific idea that I was really passionate about and it got through the gauntlet of creative director decisions and stuff and and I just came became abs absorbed with the idea really and wanting to build out the product and I think through that process like something something kind of shifted where I was like like you just said I’m just going to go and do this my way and and start building up because I’d done freelance before and I was like you know I could probably do this again and I guess little by little I just started saying yes to uh you know uh referrals and little projects here and there and to I guess build out a kind of a support network and then um kind of moved from full-time to half time to a quarter time until I could make that that move and yeah all all along still just kind of experimenting with ideas trying to figure out what my workflow might look like how I and uh I guess cost effectively produce actual shippable products and also just having fun and trying new tools and you know I feel like I’m preaching to the choir here. Carve out a whole day just to play with new tools. Yeah, man. Tell me about it. That feels like it’s a job in and of itself these days. Yeah, I’m I do find it sometimes hard to keep up. But I think if you niche down right like there’s so much I’m not going to I’m not going to pay attention to it all because I can’t. But like if you you know I want to focus on this. There’s enough going on bubbling away in that one little space that you can kind of keep track of it. Yeah, man. I feel like that that’s you to a tea. Like I feel like you are keeping on top of it all. When I follow like your the stuff you share and stuff on LinkedIn, I’m like that’s a gym. I’m going to take that. I I’ve downloaded P pencil today. Yeah, Pencil’s lovely. Yeah, this I mean I I I that’s what I want to do as well is share this stuff, you know, like I don’t I got no I don’t want to hold on to anything. This stuff is moving so fast, you know. So I wrote an article the other day about my own harness. I built a a harness for agents to build software and yeah, I just I just basically put everything in there that I that I created within a blog post and you can point your agent at it and it will more or less build it for you. And I thought, well, why not, right? Because things are moving so fast. We’ve already moved on to loops. So now I’ve I’ve built a gentic loops into it. So you just keep going and just share. I just think it’s the right way to go. So even even I read the I I I had a bit of a poke around your your website la uh last night and by the way amazing website. Yeah. Well, where did you find the time to go and build that in amongst other things? But well that was that was rapid quick. So yeah. Well it doesn’t look like it. Oh thank you. But that article like e even that like that is such a nugget man of gold. Getting to that idea that like you could build out agents that could harness other agents and Yeah. Yeah. I I guess work together and work through a process. Yeah. That feels like super forward thinking and it makes so much sense after reading it’s like oh the way you’re thinking about approaching using your agent is like running a a team. Yeah. Yeah. it. Well, they are they’re just like they’re just like people and you know it’s like if you gave a person a job, right? If you hired someone, you you probably want to give them a job description. You know, we used to do that with prompts. You are a this and this is how you think, right? So, you give them the job description and then you you want to make sure that they’re doing that. So, job. So, you go check in on them and say, “How’s it going?” You know, off the rails a little bit there. We want to focus on this. So, you’re guiding them through and you’re giving them the tools that they wanted to, you know, use for their jobs. So, you they get access to web browsers and whatever. So it’s basically just the same lessons we’ve learned over you know our own our own businesses applied to these things. And I was finding that like you know I kept getting this feedback from people when they’re using them was like oh they’re not very reliable or they go off and they do this and you know it’s like well yes because you haven’t given them context and you haven’t given them a set of rules. You’ve got Yeah. Like exactly your fault bad leadership. If you give them all the context for things and then you you create a set system for a workflow that you want, you can even enforce it so that they can’t they physically have to stop and go, hey, what do you think for you to ingest as a human? Learn it. Happy with that. Not great. Before we move on, right? So, it it’s not a new theory, but it seems to work really well. So, yeah, I’m just trying to imply that stuff and and share as much as I can. So, I’m interested to learn about you, though. So, you have you have a lot of ideas. You’ve se you’ve created a lot of products. I see things that you’ve posted online and I’m super impressed by them. I love Oz FM. Thanks, man. It’s so cool and I want to talk about is it musical drones? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Let’s Zingo look see looks really cool. So, you’ve got some really cool ideas, right? There’s like four products there of varying levels of, you know, they’re different industries, they’re different ideas. Have are these all you are you partnering with people? When did you It’s a There’s quite a a portfolio of products there. Yeah, it’s so Lookie is that one specifically is myself and one of my colleagues from VML, but everything else with the exception of there’s one that’s called Aayuki that’s also another different colleague from also from VM VML. But yeah, the other things are just little hobby experiments and it gives gives me space to to play and evolve and learn and Yeah. Yeah. Uh, so, so you just come up with these ideas and you know what would it take you to go from an idea to sort of a rough cut of a product that you you put out there. So, musical drones that I’ll start there. Well, quickly for viewers, what is it? What does it do? Because it’s quite a cool concept. It’s hilarious. So, just explain it a little bit. Yeah. I’ll go back to the very start. I I was uh so I’m 44. I was trying to motivate myself to run more, exercise. I’m getting to that point where there’s a noticeable difference of when I am working out versus not. Anyway, I decided to create a running app just to track myself just to see if I could just to see if I could get AI to even make my own running app. And and I and I did. It was super simple. Uh and I would always listen to Spotify while I was running. And my my uh my partner, she actually came up with this idea and she was like, “Well, what if you could make it so that if you stopped running, the app noticed the the lack of movement or your speed slowing down and the music stopped.” And I was like, “Oh, that that’s that’s it. That’s genius.” Like that that is as simple as that. A running app where you hit go, you start running, if you stop, the music stops, and when you start again, the music keeps going. And and I just thought that idea was amazing. So I tried to see if I could get AI. I keep pointing over here like my AI lives over here on my laptop. There’s there’s Jeffing away. Yeah. Yeah. And and so I kept prompting to see how far I could if I could get a a workable prototype of of that running and and and uh worked it out. It worked. And then uh I guess right around that time uh but I didn’t do anything with it. I just kind of left it on the shelf so to speak. And um maybe a couple months went by and I read this news article about Spotify and what uh the owner of Spotify was now spending all of our subscription money on. And to be honest, it just pissed it just pissed me off. Like I don’t usually get passionate about stuff. Like I I’m pretty placid, pretty peaceful, whatever. But just the thought of like this dude spending almost a billion dollars on AI powered Sorry, for those that don’t know, Mr. Spotify is now spending or has spent I say our money I I don’t know that for sure but where did he get his billion dollars from on uh investing into uh AI powered military drones and yeah again so the idea just pissed me off and and I was like oh I’ve got this running app and I know it’s connected to Spotify because you got to hit the button to connect your Spotify account and I was like screw this and uh something about that news story and drones and a running app that was connected to Spotify, something clicked and I was like, I wonder how hard it is to run away from like if you were out on, I don’t know, the battlefield, how hard would it be to outrun one of these crazy ass modern drones that unzones you down? Yeah. And then I So I asked myself like, could I simulate that within the running app to give it some kind of I don’t know, gamify it a bit. And turns out you can. you can, you know, figure out the speed of one of these drones and you can mark your location and and kind of predict how long it would take to get to you. Yep. And and then it just like clicked like there’s a there’s a a reason for this app to maybe exist now. Um if you go download it, it doesn’t even work anymore. It it’s a app. It was I just submitted it more as Yeah. more as a protest to say, “Hey, this is happening than anything else.” And then it doesn’t work now because I had to apply for a larger um API, what what’s the word? More users allowed onto the platform. So you have to apply to Spotify to to make your case. And I just said, “Hey, you know, this is this is an app that you know is against what you guys are doing.” And I addressed it to Mr. E himself. And lo and behold, the app was denied. They did they they weren’t on board with the idea. Surprise, surprise. Um Oh, that’s incredible though. So, uh, I think is partially the thing that impresses me about that is like you’ve you’ve drawn a parallel between you’re currently working on something, you’re playing around with it, it’s just sitting there and you you wouldn’t be able to get to the point where without this technology. So, you’ve used, you know, I don’t know what you use cursor or whatever to build something. Yep. And it’s just sitting there. But then you’ve drawn par you’ve seen this thing and you’ve connected the two. So, is that creativity something that you’ve always had or did that your time at VML just really supercharged that connecting this with that? Yeah. Bingo. Yeah. I learned a few tricks from the folks there that put those decks together that they Yeah, it’s about finding that cultural moment that people are, you know, recognizing and then seeing if there’s a connection and then that kind of gave it a narrative which otherwise it would just be a shitty version of Straa. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It’s not something that people people would latch on to in a viral way, right? It’s there’s no, as you say, narrative to it. Yeah. Okay. Well, that’s super cool. I I love that. Thanks, man. What about what about Okay, so OFM, let’s just quickly touch I want to touch on a couple of these and we’ll just see where we go. But like I could talk to you all day, it seems. Of FM, tell me about that and tell me creatively how you’re using this technology to sort of grow grow this and build this and design this cuz I’m really interested to hear how you are using this technology from a design sense, not just a build sense. Yeah. Okay. If even if you are, you know, there the there’s so many tools out there. I have this theory that or not theory actually, I’ve tested it. I don’t think they’re very good at design like really good design, but they that’s what I wanted to ask. Well, let’s go there. Let’s go there first. I I I’ve been using pretty much every tool that comes out. I was reasonably critical of Claude design um for a number of reasons, but like I’m not a It depends on what kind of design you’re talking about, right? So, I I like to think of myself as a product designer. You know, I used to do branding a long time ago. I’ve I’ve done a whole bunch of different types of design, poster design for gigs way back when, album covers and stuff, but um you know, I used to do Yeah. Yeah. identity design and then you know you know basic websites all the way through to you know now apps which are more user flow-based you know and design in that sense is all about you know thinking about complex user needs across a pathway you multiple pathways that a user could take and all the things that could go wrong and how much do you put in front of a user and how much do you take out to make it a really seamless experience right and then you have to take into consideration all of the the guidelines from the app stores like Apple and and Google have all these Apple human interface guidelines, etc. And you really have to have a lot of experience in using these tools to know what works and what doesn’t and know when to use a certain interaction and when not to. Y and so my experience with all of these tools has been that they’re awful. I I’ve not used a single. Spot on. Okay, we’ll we’ll touch on it. Hey, there was one out there that was just amazing, but well, I say that in the past. So, I I I will touch on Fable, but yeah, by and large, they’ve been terrible. And any attempt to build some sort of system around them still hasn’t been great. So, the the best results I’ve had was shipping from shifting from, you know, just an infinite canvas where you’re just blindly working with these tools and saying, “Design me this, design me that to the thing that’s worked is context.” So I’ve shifted my workflow to be really heavy requirements first. So you spend as you’ve said a lot of time in text and you are elucidating ideas. You you know you’re getting the system to grill you on you know what should this be what shouldn’t it be and often times you riff enough where you might change your idea but doesn’t matter. You’ve just got to get through it and and once you have a really detailed set of requirements, you feed that into an agent’s context and you say, “Right, these are this is all the functionality that it has. This is how it all needs to work.” And part of that can be design. I have used all these different tools like impeccable. I’ve used a bunch of different, you know, design skills and anyway, I I don’t think they’re all that they’re very good. But what does work is at a basic level sort of a standard set of primitives. So like you give it, you know, a description of the style, you know, it might be bubbly fun, blah, blah, blah. Uh you give it the colors, you give it the fonts, you might give it some reference images to draw from, but then you give it the requirements. That’s when it starts to get a lot better. So using tools like pencil, you uh you can talk to your codebase. So you basically tell your agent, look at this feature and create a flow that addresses all of the needs of the users in the in, you know, the Ps. And it does an okay job. It’s not bad, not great. And there’s still a lot of flow problems. You know, that’s inconsistent. I would change that. There’s no offline state for that. Too much text and they way overcook it. Um, but I will say, and this was even before it got banned the first time around, Fable 5 was another eye opening moment for me because it not only designed the flow in the way that I expected, it actually improved things. So, it understood the requirements and it improved a particular flow on a product I was working on where I thought that’s actually really smart. you know, it it kind of was like, whoa, I’m dealing with something else here. And now it’s it’s been it’s just been turned back on and I’m just I’m I’m this poor thing. I’m abusing it. But it’s it’s getting there. I again, I wouldn’t say it’s it replaces senior thought because you have to have everything in your head anyway. You need to understand what you’re building. If you just hand this off and you go, you do it, you do it, you do it, you do it, you’re going to get rubbish. So you you have to collaborate and and and that takes time. But I see a world where the this technology gets very good because you’re seeing the progression. Mhm. And I think as designers we have to acknowledge that and say okay well it we can’t be too elitist right like I saw this backlash for the open claw app. I don’t know if you you follow Open Core the they’re an open s they’re still an open source bit project they weren’t ladyb given hundreds of millions of dollars by open so they’re still just supported by maintainers and they they released a mobile app and I mean it wasn’t very good the design looked really sloppy and they just you know obviously it looked five coded basically and designers on on social platforms just raked it over the coals and I thought it was really sad because you know firstly it’s open source so if you if you don’t like it, design something better. But don’t don’t be don’t put yourselves in a position as a as a a group a culture like as designers where you you become you have this elitist viewpoint. You should try to help people because this technology is only going to get better and there will come a point where that mid tier of designer just gets wiped out. Well, unfortunately I’m seeing I’m seeing the trajectory. But if you’re using it to get to that higher tier where you’re doing more of the thinking and you know what good is, you’re going to be fine. and people are still too busy to do it themselves. So anyway, that was just a little bit of an aside, but I think that yeah, FA Fable was great. Um, I haven’t tried it myself yet, but I’ve seen like the stuff on social media and it just Yeah, it’s good. It’s it’s hol holy cow. Like is I can’t believe it’s gotten this far. Um, but I’m always like a little skeptical like some of the stuff you see shared like, okay, how much of that really was made by Fable versus did you have to coach it along, etc.? Yeah, I think you’re right. As a deep deep user of it, you know, I see all the posts where, you know, it’s some hype video and and most of it’s nonsense. I’d say don’t have the time to reply them all to them all, but it is pretty impressive. I’ve seen the like the examples and stuff where they say that they prompted to make like GTA 6 or something and it’s just like it still takes a lot of work, you know, as you’re saying before. It’s a different kind of work, but it’s still a lot of work. There’s still a lot of craft involved, which I like. Yeah, totally. But anyway, what about you with Yeah. your your approach to using it for design and and and Ozafan? I guess first of all, the design on Ozen is is terrible, but I uh it was it’s just sort of a a hobby project uh just to see if I could pull it off. The original idea like started as actually back at VML there was a can’t remember the name of the band. One sec. Uh Chick Chicita the not the Beeies. Damn it. Um, it’s just stuck in your head. Yeah. Now I can’t I’ll never forget it. It’ll come to you if you keep talking. Yeah. Anyway, so there’s this project. They had this this huge famous song Chicka and they way back when in the 70s. Abba. That’s who it is. ABBA. Yeah. They they had put it out in the 70s and they gave the royalties away and they said and they gave it to UNICEF. A little bit of Yeah. love and history and Yeah. Abba history. Then UNICEF actually came to VML and said, “Hey, the biggest donation that we ever received from anyone was that song because the royalties from that song Yes. came in at in the millions.” Wow. And they were like, “Can we do something like that again? How could we strategically encourage more artists to do the same?” you know, is there a Taylor Swift out there that has a, you know, not a massive hit, but you know, a mediocre one that she could give away and, you know, help a lot of people in need. And so that was the brief. How could we encourage more artists to do the same? And I had been experimenting with seeing if I could get AI and voice AI to run a fictitious radio station just just for fun. And and I’d connected it also to Spotify. And I just wanted to see if I could rebuild that sort of ‘7s California uh you know, beach radio vibe and if I could get a DJ to come on and talk about, I don’t know, relevant news topics, even introduce the next song, know the last one that was played, take live callers or or chats or whatever. And so there was that idea and I was like, Abba, maybe there’s something here where we could promote artists that are giving away their music and stream it through that. And so they love the idea. Cool. Let’s let’s let’s do it. But then the war in Ukraine Ukraine broke out and UNICEF’s focus kind of shifted a bit. Blah blah blah blah blah. But then that idea I was like, “Oh, I’ll still go and build it and to still make a AI powered radio station for fun.” And uh so it changed names a couple times and it just kept working on it and and then it got to the point where I was like, you know what, I’m just going to release it and put it out there and it’s free and it runs off of Soundcloud and you can play with it and turn DJs on and Yeah. Very cool. Yeah. And so what is your pro what is your process for building something like that? Is there any sort of tips you can share for viewers where you go from an idea to a product, you know, as a designer? Yeah. What what how do you go about it? what do you actually do because it’s a cool idea and it’s and the output the output’s funky too like it’s actually quite you say it’s not a good design at this great I think it’s fun so um how do you what’s your approach to that sort of stuff so just start simple this is going to sound so basic but just start talking to AI about it even like you know here’s kind of the rough shape of the idea here are the features that I wanted to have it’s very similar to what you were just describing and establishing that PRD here’s the requirements and you kind of start there and although I I don’t think I was doing it back Then quite like that I hadn’t quite evolved to even that level of thinking like start with that plan document and that becomes the you know the whole the Bible the source of truth the you know the defining thing it was a bit more like can we make this feature can you make a connection to this platform connecting through this API here’s a documentation for Soundcloud’s API okay cool now we have a connection next thing how do I get a button on the screen that you can Hit next and it goes to the next thing. What is a good delivery mechanism for Yeah. figuring out when a DJ should come on and how does it know the context of what was last played? Just talking to it about everything and it and kind of following its suggestions and then leaning on I guess my prior experience a little bit and saying, “No, maybe we should do it this way.” Yeah. Yeah. That’s good because have but you have a you have a level of sort of professional experience in these types of things anyway, right? So it’s like you you’re brute forcing it, but you’re brute forcing it with like a lot of knowledge already. So as you say, I’ve got to you know a little bit. Yeah. the the average for the average person, you know, I speak to a lot of designers where they’re not from this world, you know, they’re not they’re not built and and I keep I keep making the point that designers need to be builders, not developers, but builders because you need to actually see the thing. You have to create the thing to see all the edge cases and stuff and sometimes I get blank faces where they’re like, “Well, I don’t want to do that. I just like designing in my I don’t I’m not a developer.” It’s well, I’m trying to figure out ways to to help people understand. It’s it’s it’s quite straightforward. You just have to, as you say, you just talk to it. And, you know, I’m I I actually talk. You know, I use Whisper Flow and and I just talk to my machine and my wife thinks it’s really weird. But if you and you if you saw some of my prompts, you think, “Oh, God.” If you don’t know, it’s the perfect technology to just feel stupid. You just you just talk through it. If you don’t know something, you just go down these rabbit holes. Totally. And so that has that been your progression in the last like six to eight months or so? Like just constantly? For sure. Like I I I think yeah, it was I think it was just born out of that spirit of play and never trying to get too serious about it and like like you said, not not being fearful of, you know, saying something dumb to it. And I’ve just learned that you can just bring your natural language to it and um it’s amazing at figuring out and inferring what you meant. And the more the more that you give it, the better. It’s not it’s not like you need to define everything perfectly or you know you see like a lot of stuff on social media where people are trying to slog their perfect prompts that are like it feels like they’re trying to sell some system that’s like this is perfectly written and has all the definitions needed like that’s a thing like there’s a syntax or something to AI and that’s that’s not that’s not the case. Couldn’t agree more. There’s no such thing as a perfect prompt. Yeah. And it creates this perception that like you’ve got to be Yeah. uh knowledgeable in all the prompting and prompt engineering and even that like I I get it. There’s there is totally a role for prompt engineering and there are some dos and don’ts, but it just makes it sound harder than it is. And yeah. Yeah, I think you’re right. It’s it’s not as hard as as as people think it is. And on the prompt thing, it’s like if you if you wanted an app and you hired an engineer and you basically just sat down with it for five 2 minutes and said, “Right, I want an app that does this, this, this, this, and this. And it’s got to do this, this, and this.” and then you said off you go and they disappear for I don’t know a month or two months they come back and here’s your app and you go ah it’s awful it’s not what I wanted you miss that’s not how it works you have to collaborate and work with Right so I think you’re right there I have a bit of a a side question for you I’m I’m interested in your I’m interested in your your approach to this or what your thoughts are with this anti-AI sort of sentiment that I see within certain communities especially with regards of creativity and and just what your thoughts are on it because I I certainly empathize with a lot of the dra defractors and and the issues, but I also see that you can’t turn the switch off and I do think that some of the concerns are overblown and I see it as a as a as a tool more of an additive tool to be more creative. So from you know you and you and I think are quite similar. So I was very interested to hear what your your sort of thoughts are on that. Is it doom and gloom and and and what would you say to the concept of, you know, this stuff, these companies sort of scraping everyone’s data and spitting spitting it back out, iterations of it? I I’m I’ I’d like to think that I’m generally a positive person, so I try to to not go to the doom and gloom. It’s definitely like always a thought and in the back of my mind like what does it mean if this becomes easier? I’ve built my life around learning this this skill. What does that mean? But I don’t think it’s doom and gloom. Like if I look at my own just personal experience over the last couple of years with it. It’s been absolutely positive. I I I I hear the concerns and and and there’s a big part of me that totally resonates with the anti- AI movement. Don’t get me wrong. Like I I I and I’m starting to ask myself like when is the right and wrong time to use it? for example, even on Oz FM, uh the very one of the very first iterations on it, I had cloned uh David Bow’s voice uh just out of out of fun. And then I sat with that for a while and I was like, you know what, I I don’t think that’s the right thing to do. And so I I’ve shifted away from that. And but there’s also the I guess the environmental concerns and how much power we’re consuming to to produce stuff. Like I think about some of my prompts that I let through and I’m embarrassed to admit this, but like you know there there definitely some tasks that I could do that I’m giving off to AI at a micro level that like come on man like I don’t need to be doing that but you just sort of do and it becomes part of your thinking process and but yeah it’s it’s interesting you ask that because that was actually one of the questions I wanted to bring up with you was like what have you been noticing this sort of anti-AI sentiment? Yeah, I I really have. Thanks for sharing that, by the way. It’s good to get your feedback. I I’m definitely seeing there is there’s people that just don’t want to bar it at all and they’ll they like change careers. Yeah. You know, they don’t want to do it. And fair enough, you know, you’re free to do whatever you want. I think some of the energy sort of concerns are a little bit overblown. I have a different opinion on energy usage. But I think that energy usage in itself is not bad and that the quality of life goes up if you if a society is using more energy which means that the focus should be on energy generation clean energy generation and efficient energy usage. Yeah. Uh and and you know if you’re going to say oh energy usage is bad well where do you stop? Where do you draw the line? Like you want to go wear leaves and live in the forest. Well I’m sorry. Energy consumption is a part of modern society. So it’s where do you where do you use it? how to use it, the water usage, you know, most people get that wrong in the sense that they think that these data centers just consume so much water, but it’s a closed loop system most of them. So once they get it once, they more or less they don’t use as much, right? And so it’s you see these stories that just get to be they get perpetuated in media and and I think that there’s this anti- sentiment just comes in and people just start to passively absor sort of read it and take it on board. So I think that’s less of a concern for me and I do think these things would be a lot more efficient. Right? So the the average the human brain uses like I think it’s like 20 watts or something consist consistently compared to the power usage of these models. Right? So you think about what we’re able to do with our little meat computer compared to these tools. And you can see there’s a lot of optimization right where this is the worst it’s ever going to be. And we’re already seeing that with like Chinese models. They they’re optimizing these things. They’re getting them faster and faster and faster. So it’ll get a lot better. it have become more ingrained and less of a concern on on that side of things. So that that part I’m not too worried about. The the creative, you know, copyrighting sort of concern that’s that’s real. I they they I mean these companies have just scraped the web basically with no attribution and you know you just generate you know was when open had their image generation tool and everyone said make me a studio jibli image of this. Yeah. Somehow Open AI kind of endorsed that and pushed it and made it just took off. Yeah. And and then they made it harder to do, right? And then the models get so nerfed because you can’t do anything with it because it triggers all these safeguards. Yep. That it’s there’s a fine line there. So I I don’t have the solution to that. I I don’t like it. I think there needs to be a better attribution model or some way that people, you know, it’s like if it’s like streaming, right? if you it’d be great if you streamed audio that everyone that contributed that got you know continuous streamed money but but the system has to change that’s a different conversation the entire system needs to change to support that sort of thing so yeah that is a concern for me and I I try not to and to your point where you this is I really like what you said where you said I I experimented with it but I’m not going to steal David Bowie’s voice I felt bad and that’s the right way to be I think to make a conscious decision to say, you know what, I’m not going to do that. And I think that’s the way that we should approach it until there is a better solution. But I don’t think just shutting down and just not using it is yeah, it’s to use that phrase just throwing the baby out with the bath water. Like when when you think about the the positives that’s come from it like I’m sure you can appreciate this like pre AI there was so much work that you did not communicate all of the the depth of it to a client that you were you know you would slave over doing stuff and and that’s not fair on the developers or the designers really that’s not like a to sit in front of a in my opinion to sit in front of a computer screen day in and day out building these digital tools that’s not a valuable use of human in life really. Yeah. And to have AI kind of step in and then take some of that that that stuff out, I think it’s great for for people and yeah, people’s livelihoods that outside of work like the the amount of time that it sort of gives you back I think is absolutely worth the you know the the stuff that we’re going through to get it there. Um uh I agree with that. Some people some people derive there is some people derive great pleasure in in the in the in in you know if you’re talking about development right the actually writing the code you know they’ve spent their whole career doing that and that’s what they want to do and that’s a really challenging position to be in because that role is dramatically changing where they now have to become orchestrators they have to understand a system to know where the risk is in the system to make sure the agent doesn’t screw it up because the economics don’t work anymore you know a client’s not going to pay you the the the rate of the the old way, it just doesn’t make any sense anymore. So, what can you do with the time you get back? And that for me is the really exciting part. And it’s about I think it’s about being more creative and starting podcasts and Yeah. doing doing the things that you always wanted to do. Really? Yeah. Yeah. We’ve got more time. So, I’ve got I’ve got agents writing PS right now. I I I saw the coolest job title on that note about engineers the other day and this guy had it on his LinkedIn and he put vibe coder audit auditor. So like vibe coded abs auditor and I was like that’s it. He’s got plenty of work. Yeah. You always want that person you know looking over your shoulder that’s got the experience that can say oh I don’t know about that one. Yeah. Let let me help. You know open open claw could have used that. So, is there is there anything else you wanted to uh convey? Any anything you wanted to share before we finish up? I mean, yeah, not really. Just don’t be afraid of it. You know, experiment, uh, play, uh, and and and see where you get some of those ideas that you’ve always had in the back of your head that you never thought would see the light of a day. Give them a shot and, you know, it might you might be surprised. Yep. Yep. All right. Well, great. Look, I tell you what, it’s been an awesome conversation. Thanks so much for your time. I really appreciate it. We should we should catch up outside of this. It’s been really good. I could talk for hours. Yeah, same, man. Cool. And enjoy your weekend. Thanks to you, too. All right. See you.