Hello, hello. All right. Welcome to the design panel. If you're not familiar, uh if you haven't met me, I'm Darrin. I am the uh only product designer on Bluesky right now. Um hopefully there will be another one soon. Check out our careers page if you know anyone looking. Um yeah, as of tomorrow, it will be uh my one year anniversary at Bluesky. So very excited. Um yeah, I'm I'm very passionate about uh building social media that is equitable and uh really values the uh user control of of people. You know, I I grew up with social media and I'm uh I'm very like upset with how it has evolved over time to just like kind of capture your attention at all costs and become part of that attention economy.
So that's something that I'm very passionate about and a value that I hold dear to me as I'm designing for Bluesky. Um but yeah, we have an awesome panel uh planned for you guys today. Uh I am very grateful to be on the stage and share it with these amazing builders and designers. Um I think design is really at the intersection of art and technology as well as psychology, and I think their work really exemplifies that on the platform. Um I have one more topic. Um yeah, if you guys want to just do a quick round of intro uh and then we can get started.
Uh hey everyone, my name is Dame. Uh I built an app called uh uh Anisota. It's a weird social media interface for Bluesky and the Atmosphere uh themed around moths and other weird things like that. What's up everyone? Uh my name is Peter Montalou, and I'm a creative technologist and full stack engineer from Denver, Colorado. Uh I work for a company called Hovercraft Studio, where I do web and experiential experiences for companies like Nike, OpenAI, and Google. Uh and on App Proto, I've been building AetherOS and Beacon bits for the last six months or so.
Uh I'm stoked to be on the stage with all y'all. It's been a super privilege just to be here. Uh and I want to thank you, Darren, for bringing me up here. Thank you. Um hello, my name is Brooke, or you may know me as Brookie.blog. Um I'm the creator of PocketBlog. It's a blogging platform that makes it really easy to start blogging for anybody. Um I also created the UNme.at if you have been using that at the conference. Thank you. Um then I also work on standard site. So if you know about standard site, it's bringing um publishers together and really making it easy to distribute publications and documents across the Atmosphere.
Sweet. Um before we jump into the questions, uh I actually just want to see a quick show of hands. How many people in the audience are designers with the identify as that? Cool, we have a few. And how many are builders looking to upgrade their design skills? All right, sweet, most of the room. While you come to the right place.
And um Yeah, I'm proud of it because I it's something that I uh I had a vision for. It was something that I didn't feel like existed uh or was even really possible prior to the Atmosphere. Um it really was uh a way for me to try to uh reclaim social media to be something that I felt like worked for me. Um you know I've been chronically online for a long time and you know I took a long break from social media a couple years ago and decided I'd come back and see if I could somehow make it work again.
Um yes, I was really excited to try to build this uh this basically a social media interface for myself with the hunch that other people might enjoy it too. Um yeah, so Anisota is uh yeah, it's a social media interface uh that I think is more peaceful and more uh yeah uh weird and fun and bizarre. It has like game components to it. It's uh yeah, it's based off of uh the name of a moth. Um and I'm just really excited how it turned out. Uh it's it's getting better every month. And uh even at the conference, I put out a big release with uh finally a a brand mark and everything.
It actually looks looks pretty good now, so I'm excited. Okay. So it's pretty hard to top AetherOS getting name dropped by Paul on the stage yesterday. Uh but I think yeah, making beacon bits for the last few months, creating a 3D layer where people are interacting and having I don't know, their beacons just influencing something on a map and seeing like the collaboration between all that was really powerful. And at the end of this event, I'm gonna be finally unveiling what happens at the end of that event. So stick around for that. But yeah, it's just been fun to be able to mess around with 3D technology on mapping like that uh collaboratively.
Cool. Um so something I'm proud of uh building on atproto is pocket blog. Pocket blog is my my baby. Uh and it is pocket, not packet or pick it or whatever else you may think it may be. Um and basically um I the reason that I made it was because I wanted to start a blog of my own, and I actually haven't really had much time to be blogging on my own because I've been building it and it's been so wonderful, which is it's not a bad problem to have. Um yeah, I I think that really the main thing is I wanted something simpler to start blogging, uh, and something that feels like all of the tools that you need are really at your fingertips without having to really search too hard to find everything that makes running a blog possible.
I'm glad we set the str the record straight that it's pocket. I was asking around before the the talk, I was like, does anyone know how to say this? Um cool. So you know, social media has been around for you know over 20 years now, since like Web 2.0 has has existed, and a lot of the design paradigms have really been solidified at this point. I'm curious how you stay fresh in such a well-defined design space. Yeah, I mean that's a good question. Uh I've I mean I've been I started my career in design and I kind of took a winding roundabout path to get where I am today.
I I sort of merged off of design and went into sort of social media management, community management, that sort of thing. And uh I kind of I mean to some degree I I sort of stopped following like design trends and like what was happening and I just kept doing my own thing and I mainly started making art and doing things personally. Um yeah, when I went to when I went to sort of design Anisota and make it into what it is, I I did not really look at really anything that was in the industry or anything.
I was I my my core thesis with it is I wanted to make something that felt distinctly uh well and away from anything that uh was coming out of like Silicon Valley. Um, when I was making Anisota, I was reading books about moths. I was going out at night setting up light traps and mothing, and uh I took tons of inspiration from all of that, as well as things like uh you know, classic text-based RPGs and um tarot cards and things like that. And um what came about from all that is just kind of a weird amalgamation.
So I I think uh I think my big takeaway from that was just like oh there's some really interesting things that can happen when you let uh influences outside of like the normal spaces uh come up to the surface. So um yeah, I don't know, just look look look in weird places. There's lots of great inspiration in weird places. Yeah, honestly in this day and age you can vibe code something really quickly and it'll look like any other social app. So I think there's great importance to be more avant garde. Like look for things that are outside of that space and like seek it and absorb it as much as possible.
Um, I think obviously some app experiences aren't gonna work for everyone, but like if it works for you, someone will find the way you think and you'll collaborate and they'll enjoy what you're doing. Okay, so um when it comes to design for me, it's really like simplifying things down to the basics and the essentials. So I usually will start with an idea. Um, and it's usually much more complicated than it needs to be. So if I feel confused at all, I'm I'm trying to look and see like you know what can I take away from this to simplify the process and how can I make it like as understandable as possible.
I really try to think of things from like a user experience sort of perspective. And like all the time, like I'll build something and I'll get frustrated with it, and I'm like, this is just too hard. This is too confusing. And I'll be like, what needs to go? You know, like just cut something out and and make it easier to do because so many platforms these days are like just so overwhelming with like layers and layers of of like interface, all to do one simple thing. Like I don't know if you've I don't know if I'm allowed to say this, but I don't know if you've ever been like on Instagram and you're like just trying to find like a post that you've liked.
You have to go through like like six menus to find a post that you've liked. And that seems like such a basic feature. All that you do on Instagram is like stuff. So I would like to see my likes, you know. So really just like if it feels like too many steps to do something, how can we reduce that and get it down to as few steps as possible. Definitely often the the most beautiful or like the the simplest option is the most beautiful and elegant one to move forward with. So what um are there any specific problems with social media today that you think uh can be solved through design?
Yeah, I mean, I think I mean I think a lot of things can at least be partially solved through design. Um I mean, I think uh one of the biggest things is um just the fact that you know historically with social media, everyone has been funneled through one client interface. So Facebook is used by billions of people all around the world in different cultures and communities and things, and they all have different needs and different desires and wishes and preferences and things like this. Um like design can definitely solve some things. Um there's also like some amount that you can't you can't funnel everyone through one particular thing and it won't work for necessarily everyone.
Um so I think some of it just comes down to having to have uh very specific um you know people in mind as you're designing something. Um but also think that yeah, we're just uh there are a lot of things that fundamentally I guess over the past 20 years we've realized are not maybe the healthiest patterns to be seeing. And some of those things can be pretty pretty easy, like easily changed in the sense of whether it's removing things or whether it's um changing the framing of something and um and some of it just comes down to experimenting and figuring out like yeah, what is uh if this particular thing is not working and is making people unhappy or is not healthy or good for society, can we can we flip that on his head and just try something incredibly different?
So um, yeah, so I think design definitely can can impact those things dramatically. I mean that's I mean it's to some degree the thesis behind Anisota is like if we could rethink how this looked from the ground up in a lot of ways, uh what might happen and TBD on what that is. I don't know. Yeah, I don't I don't really have a concrete answer for that, but I think uh Aaron Cassine's talk yesterday that started off the whole thing uh was incredibly powerful and it it got me thinking more about what could be out of that.
Uh and I'm I don't know what it is yet, but I I want to try and do something in that regard because it's it's pretty powerful. I think designing for app proto specifically brings a lot of interesting things to the table. Um something in particular that I've seen a lot of people sort of trying different situations with is for like authentication flow, registration flow. Um because of the nature of app proto, where you create an account and you can now suddenly log into all these wonderful services, it's really difficult to figure out how to explain that to the end user.
Like I know for most of us here it's a pretty understandable situation, but when it comes to people that are you know not used to being in the developer community, um it's a really difficult thing to communicate, and we see a lot of people you know writing a whole story saying like this is your everything account and you can use it at these places and atproto and all that stuff, and I think it's a really it's an interesting problem of how do we explain that to the everyday person and and make it feel approachable without like um bombarding people with like too many too many terms and and too many complex ideas because I if you do get an understanding of um like app proto and like your everything handle it does make a lot of sense but it's a really difficult problem to communicate that um with the everyday user.
Definitely I um I think in many ways there people who are drawn to atproto though because they're almost refugees from the current landscape of social media. Um I did a project in uh my senior year of college where we identified the addictive mechanics of social media and then we built an arcade that exposed each of those mechanics separately. And we we did an exhibition where um you know families would come in and like kids would start playing a game and they would they would love the game and then we we would like at some point during the game we'd reveal the the mechanic underlying the the game and then the kid immediately just like you know disengage and walk off.
And then the you know the parents who are with the kids were like, oh wait, no, hold on, come back, you have to learn this. Like you this is important. This is what's wrong with your phone right now. This is why you're addicted to it. Um that's definitely something that at Bluesky we definitely try to be very conscious of as we're designing. Um yeah, I think also the riff off of that for this next question. Um, are there any specific uh challenges or rewarding aspects of designing for a decentralized uh social landscape or on that proto?
Yeah, I mean I think the most rewarding thing is just it's so remixable. You can you can take anything and just like make it your own. You can you can give your own spin on things because it's so flexible and malleable and there's not really there's some so so many fewer barriers to being able to do different things. So it's it feels like you're in a sandbox and you can just like or like we're playing with Legos and there's just like so many different things you could possibly do, which can also be overwhelming. It's like what what exactly do I do here?
Um but I think it is one of those, it's kinda like when you get a when you get like a fresh notebook and you're like, Well, what do I what do I put on the first page here? Um and that's kind of what my journey was with making things in the Atmosphere is I'm just gonna start making random things and and see what happens. And you know, I did that for about a year until I and that's when I eventually was like, okay, now that I've made all these different things, I'm I'm gonna actually try to like hone in on something of all the different things that I made.
I want to hone in on one particular sort of niche and figure out like, oh, what how can I this is the thing I love. This is the aspect of the Atmosphere I love, and I'm gonna dive deeper into that because there's like so many uh different niches and parts of it, and um I think that's what's interesting. It really does feel like there's something for everyone, like journalists are doing things, uh you know, artists are doing things, content creators are doing things, um, which is just so fun. I don't know. I don't feel like I've ever seen a community that has been able to like reach so many different types of people beyond just like software engineers and developers and and those kind of folks.
So I think that's that's my favorite part. Yeah. Yeah, I I think it's pretty powerful just the level of interop that we get for free out of this. Um, but it's also can be super overwhelming for anyone who's trying to do something that much more complex. So there's like just trade-offs in knowing like what your product is, what you're trying to achieve. Um yeah, I think that just adds either to the complexity or the beauty of it, but uh it's something to embrace, I think. One of the most like wonderful things that I um like about the app proto, and um really just like applications on the Atmosphere is that since we're publishing these lexicons, it really opens up a lot of possibilities for communities to um sort of form around even just your lexicons.
So for example, with the U and Me at it's a very simple concept, very simple lexicon. But the first thing that happened when I like sort of put it out there and announced it is people were like, oh, it should do this, it should have a leaderboard, it should have um this, it should be you know verifiable between like each person instead of just one-sided. And the really cool thing about atproto is that that's all possible and I don't have to do it. So business goose, um, who's great made a leaderboard that shows all of your connections and shows the top people that are connecting, and it's really cool because like that's something that the community really wanted.
And like of course, if I had more time I would have loved to build that as well. But I also didn't want to overcomplicate what what it is and make it more confusing than it needs to be. So it's really great that I can just make something that's like the simplest like bare bones like piece of the puzzle. And then anybody who wants to can come and build something on top of that and and really extend the capabilities of the platform. That's awesome. Yeah. Oh you that's something that's really surprised me about this community is exactly what you said.
It's just like someone can have the seed of an idea and get it out there and share it, and then um someone else can just totally take that and riff off of it and build something beautiful and build it in their own vision, and then someone else can just take it from there. So yeah, another really great thing is like with um with standard site. Like we just built the lexicons and the documentation and put it out there, and now there's like all these different like programs that help people implement it, which is really great because we didn't really provide that.
We just said like, you know, here it is, we're using it in our own ways. Uh if you want to, you can figure it out too. But now we have like Sequoia and like which makes it so that anybody can really publish like their their static blogs to standard site and all these other um tools are being built on top of that, and all without us really doing anything other than being like here's the lexicon, you know, figure it out. Yeah, I remember when standard.site launched and there were a bunch of us at Blee Sky who were super psyched.
We were like, we had no intervention in this, it just kind of happened organically, and we love that. Yeah. Okay, here's another uh question here that's a maybe a little bit more controversial or you know. Yeah. So I think we're all surprised at how quickly AI has advanced and and you know, we're all I think exploring it in our own ways and incorporating it into our own workflows. Um I'm just curious how it's shown up in your own process and how you've incorporated it into your work at all, if at all. Uh yeah, no, it's definitely it's definitely very involved in my workflow.
Um yeah, I mean I'm I'm not a software engineer. I'm you know, I'm I'm an artist, a communicator, that kind of person. So like I'm well I have you know, like any good millennial, I have uh you know some knowledge of in experience making websites and HTML, CSS, that kind of thing. And I built some you know rudimentary software things uh and in other arenas, but uh prior to the Atmosphere I had never made a web app before. And so this was kind of like okay, I'm gonna, you know, I started working on my first little little tool, I guess I don't know, two years ago, and at the time there was no clawed code, there was none of that.
I was really like sometimes typing into the Claude chat bot and just being like explain this to me. What what do I do here? Like it couldn't really generate code bases or anything like that. So I was just asking it to like generate chunks of things and then I would piece them together like Lego bricks, and um whereas now it's like it's very incredibly uh I had a feeling it would get to the stage that it got to. I didn't quite expect it to get there this quickly. Um but uh yeah, I don't know. It's it's uh I still very much um there's still lots of elements of the process though that are I feel like uh reserved for I guess myself to handle.
Like I there's uh you know like the design piece is one of the things that like I don't really uh involve Claude with that much. Um I I think that that's one of the it's sort of the the layer of the app that um everyone sees and engages with, whereas the code is sort of all behind the scenes and um so yeah, the design component is one of the things I I guess I I just haven't really involved AI in very much, but um I'm sure there are ways to do that. Um but yeah, for me it's just mostly like oh uh help me plan out the architecture of this feature and then write code for it and and then off to the races really.
Yeah, so I've been coding since the late 1900s at this point, and I feel like I've gotten a lot under my belt, but uh it's I mean to say that things have changed is just an understatement. Um I think I always start with wireframes, I always start with ideas first uh and kind of flesh that out first, whether it's a story, whether it's an underlying concept. Um And then slowly but surely introduce AI elements to allow you to really flesh it out and build things that would take years and in months. But yeah, it's it's definitely a huge part of the process now.
A hot topic. I love that. Yeah, so I feel like with AI tools, it's really um it's really a fine line between like you know what is going to be actually helpful for people and what is like what we're calling AI slop, which is like stuff that we're just like, you know, are is this really like a good use of our like resources and like is this good like for the planet or like I don't know, but like I do think that there is a lot that is going to be very beneficial from uh from AI and a lot of um things that a lot of possibilities that this is going to open up for everyday people and for developers alike.
Um I actually started building PocketBlog before the whole AI craze, but I I don't think that PocketBlog would be where it is today without tools like Claude Code. Um I I've been like developing for a long time actually started coding on Roblox. I had a front page game back in the day and I had like millions of views. And like I bought my first computer with Roblox money, which is like amazing. But Roblox can't. They have a developer exchange program. So if you get paid Robux on Roblox, you can cash that out for real money. So I I bought my first computer with Roblox money, long story short.
Um yeah, like I really I I don't think that I would be where I am today without um without like being able to use these new AI tools. But I I did start like the dream was there before this happened. So I'm really thankful for what we have and I'm really excited to see uh like where this can move in a way that's going to be beneficial for everybody involved, and hopefully things will move away from the more catastrophic side. Uh which if we can we we're the ones that can make that happen. Um I think that it's really important for us to like put our best foot forward and be responsible with how we use these things and not take advantage of you know the power that it gives.
Thank goodness for Roblox. Thank goodness for Roblox. Um Yeah, I think something that's been really surprising to me is uh I used to be very anti-AI like up until like six months ago actually. And in in my mind, I don't have a technical bone in my body. I'm I'm a pure designer. Um up until recently, I was like, oh design is just like a developer thing. It's just like it makes them work faster. That's great. Um but what I've been really surprised by is it's it's uh comprehension of uh design has is been leveled up uh you know tenfold in the last couple of months and to the point where I can send a screenshot and just say, hey, what do you think about this this flow or this interaction, and it will give me really solid feedback as if it was from like a senior designer that I was working with or collaborating with.
So it I have incorporated it into uh you know my design process definitely with Figma. And I'm excited to see where it goes. I've been exploring tools with with actually designing. I don't think they're quite there yet. Um, but it's definitely a good uh collaborator in in feedback. So I'm excited to see how it evolves and and how it you know I'm definitely can then keep exploring with it. Um cool. We're down to our last question here. I think a lot of the people in the audience are um you know builders who are looking to really upgrade their design.
Do you have any recommendations or um advice for for people who who want to build beautiful experiences? Yeah, I mean that's a great question. I I guess there's really two paths. Well, and there's many paths, but the two big sort of broad groups that I think of are folks that want to actually learn like the nitty-gritty elements of design and like make that uh an actual like discipline and focus for themselves versus folks that want to um they they don't really want to be designers necessarily, but they want maybe you're a software engineer and you want your web apps and or apps and things just to look better.
Um I mean I think there's like there's definitely like a phenomenon we're seeing even in the Atmosphere where you know now that you know clawed code exists and it's much easier to build web apps and ship things. Um there's definitely I feel like uh a lot of folks are not really thinking about the design side of things and what you end up seeing is like user interfaces that look very very similar like you go to one website and it looks the same as the next and um so like if you're in that boat you're not trying to like actually go deep on design like I think there's some very practical things that you can learn to you know uh help steer these tools in the right direction so that the things that you are creating uh better reflect your own unique style or tastes or things and they don't just end up looking like vanilla whatever comes out of the comes out of the thing.
Um whereas if you're you actually want to go in deep into design, I mean I think uh a lot of that stuff hasn't changed. I mean I think it's you you have to be uh you know reading books you have to be looking at some of the great designers of the past and that work is still incredibly relevant and um I think you know for me it's uh a big part of the process is just regularly consuming uh good art and good design and letting that sort of absorb into my brain and influence and influence me because it it's kind of it it's very ambiguous feeling it's not like a very like it's not a s a switch you can flip it just takes a lot of like consuming lots of good content and good ideas and design so that on the other end something your own unique take on things flows out on the other end and it's not yeah it's not generic definitely um I think a good oh you're good uh I think a good designer just borrows from designs but uh to be a great designer you have to study from the world study movies games uh other media and other mediums that influence you to make a better design um and just keep your mind open like try new things try new applications don't stay rigid in one thing uh and it'll help you out uh the mind is like a parachute it only works when it's open those are really great points um I don't want to get repetitive so I I believe a lot of the same things the uh bit of advice that I would have is to really just like think about who your application is for and put yourself in their shoes and also after you design something think of the least technical person that you know and show them your design and if they're confused you need to start over so yeah that's really it you want to think about like who's going to be using your application first and then think about who you would want to use your application that maybe doesn't fit into that initial category of people and really design for them yeah I love that I love all of those answers.
Never underestimate the power of a user test too I feel like I've had so many assumptions from like you know heads down on on something and then I just put it in front of someone else and it makes no sense to them and I'm like oh okay back to the drawing board so that's a really powerful way to upgrade your even if it's just one person. Yes absolutely well awesome I think that's that's what all we have for you today. I I truly believe that anyone can be anyone who's looking to uh level up their skills feel free to talk to me or reach out to me or anyone up here and ask for feedback and ask for you know I I would be happy to look over anyone's work and their projects that they're working on right now and and give that feedback.
So yeah I just want to thank you all again for coming up here and uh sharing your thoughts.
Any other quick code? Yeah yeah