How to scale intent, quality, and artistry with Al | Katie Dill (Stripe)

频道: Lenny's Podcast
视频: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLvFTMtw4Jk
原文语言: en
统计: 共 13 轮 · Katie 13

[0:06] Katie

Good morning. Right after World War II, there was a massive building boom, the largest in history. In the US, people were coming home from war. There were new technologies, new construction methods, and buildings were going up like gang busters. The builders of that day drew on the style of modernism from the 1920s. That's really simple geometries, clean, bare surfaces, monochromatic color palettes, and no adornment. Now, say what you will about modernism, but the founders behind the movement had intentionality. There was a point of view behind the Villa Savois. There were principles behind the Bow House. But after World War II, with urgency to build and new construction methods, the style was essentially copied again and again without intentionality. The thinking got thinner and thinner, and all that was left were generic patterns ills suited to the context at hand. For example, we used to have banks that looked like this, signaling trust, reliability, and security. And then we got this. You're all too familiar with this reality because it carried on for decades until this day. Zombie buildings all over the place. Nothing differentiates them. Nothing says this is intentional. This is fit to purpose.

早上好。二战刚结束那会儿，出现了一场规模空前的建造热潮，是史上最大的一次。在美国，人们纷纷从战场回到家乡。新技术、新施工方法层出不穷，楼房一栋接一栋地拔地而起，势头猛得很。当时的建造者借用了 20 世纪 20 年代的现代主义风格：极简的几何形体，干净、裸露的表面，单色的配色，没有任何装饰。你对现代主义怎么评价都行，但这场运动背后的开创者们是有明确意图的。萨伏伊别墅（Villa Savoye）背后有一套主张，包豪斯（Bauhaus）背后有一套原则。可到了二战之后，大家急着盖房子，又有了新的施工方法，这种风格基本上就被一遍又一遍地照搬，背后却没有任何意图。思考越来越单薄，最后只剩下一堆通用套路，跟眼前的具体情境并不相称。比如，以前的银行长这样，传递出信任、可靠和安全感。后来就变成了这样。这种现实大家都再熟悉不过了，因为它延续了几十年，一直到今天。到处都是僵尸建筑。它们彼此毫无区别，没有任何一处在说「这是有意为之的」「这是为用途量身打造的」。

[1:41] Katie

They essentially show no care for the user and the habitants around it. No care for context or the brand. I think about this a lot. One, we're surrounded by them. And two, we're in another building boom now. The AI building boom. Everybody and their mother can build now. Teams of three can do what teams of 30 used to be needed for. But there's echoes of the post-war building boom. Similarities that are actually watch points for us. I want to tell you about these watch points and then we'll talk about how we can navigate them together. First, LLMs are really good at telling you the most probable answer, which essentially means that they're able to tell you what has been or is popular now, what has worked, what was in style. They're less good at telling you what's original or specific to you, your brand, and your users context. I'll give you an example. Can you guess what this brand sells? Software? No. Korean barbecue. Now this is I'm sure a very fine website but it has no character no context for the user or the context of the use which brings me to my second point than temptation of done. AI makes things feel finished really really fast all too often prematurely. I'll give you an example that I probably shouldn't admit.

它们基本上对使用者、对周围的住户毫不在意，也不顾及所处的环境和品牌。这件事我想得很多。一是我们身边全是这种建筑；二是我们现在正处在另一场建造热潮里——AI 建造热潮。现在是个人都能动手做东西了。以前得 30 个人的团队才干得了的活，现在 3 个人就能干。但这里面能听到战后建造热潮的回声，有一些相似之处，其实正是我们该警惕的地方。我想先跟大家讲讲这几个警示点，然后再聊聊我们怎么一起应对。第一，LLM 特别擅长告诉你最可能的答案，本质上就是告诉你过去流行过什么、现在流行什么、什么曾经管用、什么曾经时髦。但它不太擅长告诉你什么是原创的，什么是专属于你、你的品牌和你用户情境的。举个例子。你们猜猜这个品牌是卖什么的？软件？不是，是韩式烤肉。我相信这网站本身挺不错的，但它毫无个性，既没考虑用户是谁，也没考虑是在什么场景下用。这就引出了我的第二点：「做完」的诱惑。AI 能让东西飞快地给人一种「已经完成了」的感觉，而太多时候，这种感觉来得为时过早。我举个可能不该承认的例子。

[3:09] Katie

I have a microwave burrito for lunch all too often. I take the cold, hard rock out of the freezer, plop it on the plate, put it in the microwave. In 90 seconds, I go from hungry to lunch. I'm willing to overlook some pretty serious flaws. It's nearly inedible, but I'm so enamored by the speed of execution. The same happens with AI. You type in a sentence and boom, you have an interface. There's some nice little corners and maybe some drop shadows and it's good to be done, but an apparently polished state can often be misleading. Does it really solve the problem? Does it really differentiate? All the questions Claire Vu brought up earlier apply here. And the third watch point, this work is so easy to do, so quick that it often feels disposable and worst is treated that way. We sometimes let the responsibility of our decisions fall by the wayside and don't really think about the long term, like who's maintaining this. Anyways, all three of these watch points can come together to a world that looks a little like this, an actual place in Turkey. If we're not careful, our building boom could end up a little too much like the post-war building boom. The proliferation of patterns ills suited to the context at hand. essentially zombie UI. Zombie UI that's monotonous, vacant, or uncared for. We spend half our waking lives looking at screens. We want software that feels actually cared for. And that means has a little personality as something as simple as the Grockbot and the little animation and life that it brings. Or even these tiny details like actually having the date in the tab on the calendar. You probably clicked by this all day long, but that shows the builder cared about you. Or the understanding of context like the link agent wallet. It anticipates the issues that the agent could have while buying online and has the troubleshooting built in because they anticipate the context of the user even when it's an agent.

我午饭吃微波炉墨西哥卷饼的次数实在太多了。从冷冻室里拿出那块又冷又硬的「石头」，往盘子上一扔，塞进微波炉。90 秒后，我就从饿着肚子变成有午饭吃了。我愿意对一些相当严重的缺陷视而不见——它几乎没法下咽，可我就是被那个速度迷住了。AI 也是一样。你敲一句话，砰，一个界面就出来了。有几个漂亮的小圆角，也许再加点投影，看着就可以收工了。但表面上的精致往往很有误导性。它真的解决问题了吗？真的做出差异化了吗？Claire Vo 刚才提到的那些问题，在这里全都适用。第三个警示点：这类活太容易做、太快了，常常让人觉得它是一次性的，更糟的是，大家也真的就把它当一次性的来对待。我们有时会把自己决策的责任抛在脑后，也不去认真想长远的事，比如这东西以后谁来维护。总之，这三个警示点叠在一起，就可能造出一个有点像这样的世界——这是土耳其一个真实存在的地方。如果我们不小心，我们这场建造热潮最后可能会跟战后那场太像：到处泛滥着跟眼前情境不相称的套路，说白了就是僵尸 UI（千篇一律、没有灵魂的界面）。单调、空洞、没人用心打理的僵尸 UI。我们醒着的时间里有一半都在盯着屏幕，我们想要的是真正被用心对待过的软件。这意味着它得有一点个性，哪怕简单到像 Grok Bot 那样，一个小动画就带来了一点生气。甚至是这种小细节：日历在浏览器标签页上真的显示着当天的日期。你可能一整天点来点去都没注意到，但这说明做它的人在乎你。又或者是对情境的理解，比如 Link 的 agent 钱包（agent wallet）。它预判了 agent 在网上购物时可能遇到的问题，把排障功能直接内置了进去——因为他们预见到了用户所处的情境，哪怕这个用户是个 agent。

[5:24] Katie

These examples show builders that are care about their users and bring that care into the work. It shows the character of the brand and it has soul. We can do this with AI even though it can sometimes be the culprit. And I have four recommendations on how we can use AI to build products with care and soul. First one, you have to have a point of view. If you don't, AI will give it for you. And as we've already talked about, that's very likely to be generic and looking at the past. You need to define your brand. What is it for you? What is it for your users? Who do you want to be to them? And what do they care about? This forms the basis of your standards. And I'd say this in any era, but it's all the more important right now. When building is distributed, ownership is diffuse. We're all contributing to the products in more ways than we've been in the past. It's too easy to abdicate to AI. So, for example, at Stripe, we care a lot about optimism. So we put that into all the details big and small. The colors we choose, the way we write, what we write about, and the products that we ship to try to support entrepreneurs. Now, these details are so important to be aligned on because everybody is contributing and so much is changing.

这些例子展现的，是在乎用户、并把这份在乎带进作品里的构建者。它体现了品牌的性格，是有灵魂的。我们可以借助 AI 做到这一点，尽管 AI 有时恰恰是罪魁祸首。关于怎么用 AI 做出有用心、有灵魂的产品，我有四条建议。第一条，你必须有自己的主张。你没有的话，AI 就会替你给一个。而正如我们刚才讲的，那个主张很可能是泛泛的、只盯着过去的。你需要定义你的品牌：它对你来说是什么？对你的用户来说是什么？你想在他们心中成为什么样的存在？他们在乎什么？这些构成了你的标准的基础。这话放在任何时代我都会说，但在当下尤其重要。当人人都在参与构建，主人翁责任就被摊薄了。我们每个人参与产品的方式都比过去多得多，把决定权一股脑推给 AI 实在太容易了。举个例子，在 Stripe，我们非常看重乐观。所以我们把它放进了大大小小的每一个细节里：我们选的颜色、我们写东西的方式、我们写什么，还有我们为了支持创业者而推出的产品。在这些细节上达成共识非常重要，因为每个人都在贡献，而变化又那么多。

[6:48] Katie

And I'll give you an example of where that friction can show up if there isn't alignment. We were recently in a design crit looking at an advertisement. So, this is an ad we were working on that shows our brand, the parallelogram, with our users visuals. And as we were looking at this, we're like, "All right, cool. You kind of get what's happening, but some things are off." And in the room was a cross functional partner that was looking to move fast and get something shipped. Sure, you can't relate. And we had a discussion because they brought up a really interesting question. What's the quality standard for something made with AI? What a curious question. Why should that matter how it was made? It doesn't matter to the users how it was made. It matters to them if it's good or not. And so that is the basis of our standards. It's the output at the end of the day that matters and they care if it's good and so should we. So through that discussion, we've got alignment on what really matters here and what we're striving for and then walked away with 17 bullet points of improvements to be made. the frost a little bit here and there, softer edges, a bit smaller bubblers. And now we use this term as a verb to mean meticulous craft around the office called Pepsi bubbling. Now, we're not shooting for perfection. We're shooting to go one level deeper than what your customer could see. That meticulous craft will show up for them. And this point of view really drives the standards and drives the work, especially when there's agents involved. And so much more is happening on a daily basis. So how do you develop it? Frankly, it's all about getting really good at noticing. Notice what your users need and what they want, not just what they say. Notice what about the world around you signals good and great and meh. really take note of these things in the products that you use, but also in analogous situations so you can

我举个例子，说说如果没对齐，摩擦会在哪里冒出来。我们最近开了一次设计评审（design crit），看一个广告。这是我们当时在做的一个广告，展示了我们的品牌元素——那个平行四边形——配上我们用户的视觉画面。我们看着看着就觉得：「嗯，还行，大概能看出在表达什么，但有些地方不太对。」当时屋里有一位跨职能的合作伙伴，一心想快点推进、赶紧把东西发出去。这种人你们肯定都没遇到过吧。然后我们讨论了一番，因为对方提了一个很有意思的问题：用 AI 做出来的东西，品质标准是什么？这问题可真耐人寻味。东西是怎么做出来的，为什么会有关系呢？用户才不在乎它是怎么做出来的，他们在乎的是它好不好。这就是我们标准的基础。说到底，重要的是最终的产出。用户在乎它好不好，我们也应该在乎。所以通过那次讨论，我们在「什么才真正重要、我们在追求什么」上达成了共识，最后带着 17 条待改进项离开了会议室。霜感这儿那儿稍微调一点，边缘更柔和一些，气泡再小一点。现在我们办公室里还把这个词当动词用，专指精雕细琢的手艺，叫「Pepsi bubbling」。我们追求的不是完美，而是比客户能看到的再往深做一层。这种精雕细琢，客户是能感受到的。而这种主张真正驱动着标准、驱动着工作，尤其是在有 agent 参与、每天发生的事情都多得多的时候。那怎么培养这种主张呢？说实话，关键就是要练得非常善于察觉。去察觉用户需要什么、想要什么，而不只是他们嘴上说什么。去察觉你周围的世界里，什么东西代表着「好」、什么代表「很棒」、什么只是「还行吧」。不光在你用的产品里认真留意这些，也要在类比的场景里留意，这样你就能

[8:44] Katie

be inspired by art, science, and a broader point of view in the work that you create. Building your sense of taste and your understanding of the world around you and what's good and great can really improve your own standards that you will then need to scale. Which brings me to my second recommendation, which is encode your standards into the machine. It would be a wonderful world if every human had the shared understandings and could make the same decision. But the reality is is humans are not going to be a part of all of these decisions going forward. We are seeing interfaces built without a designer in the room. We're seeing agents finding problems and fixing them while we sleep. And we're certainly seeing generative UI built in real time for users. This is why design systems are having a moment again. And the system of yesterday is different than the system of today. In the past, you didn't have to write everything down because there was always a designer in the room to fill in the blanks. Now, we must enable distributed building and agentic construction and the decisions need to be easier to define. So, the object of design is no longer the screen. It is the system itself. Now, everybody knows Gutenberg created the first printing press. The lesserk known part of the story is the system he built around it. He didn't create just 26 lowercase and 26 uppercase letters. He created 290 unique characters, different widths, abbreviations, liatures. And the reason that he did this is because when he type set it and wanted it to be fully justified, he wanted to make sure that there wouldn't be the weird rivers and lakes of whites space that erode the beauty of the final product.

从艺术、科学以及更广阔的视角中汲取灵感，用到你创作的作品里。培养你的品味，加深你对周围世界、对什么是好什么是棒的理解，能切实提升你自己的标准——而这些标准，接下来你需要把它规模化。这就引出了我的第二条建议：把你的标准编码进机器里。如果每个人都有共同的理解、都能做出同样的决定，那当然是个美好的世界。但现实是，往后并不是所有决策都会有人参与。我们已经看到，界面在没有设计师在场的情况下被做出来；agent 在我们睡觉的时候发现问题、修复问题；当然，我们也看到了为用户实时生成的生成式 UI。这就是为什么设计系统又迎来了高光时刻。而昨天的系统和今天的系统已经不一样了。过去你不必把所有东西都写下来，因为屋里总有个设计师来补上空白。现在，我们必须让分布式构建和 agent 式构建成为可能，决策也需要更容易被定义。所以，设计的对象不再是屏幕，而是系统本身。大家都知道，古腾堡（Gutenberg）造出了第一台印刷机。这个故事里鲜为人知的部分，是他围绕印刷机搭建的那套系统。他做的不只是 26 个小写字母加 26 个大写字母，而是 290 个独特的字符：不同宽度的字形、缩写、连字。他这么做的原因是：排版时他想让文字两端对齐，又要确保不会出现那种怪异的空白「河流」和「湖泊」，损害成品的美感。

[10:38] Katie

Essentially, he was making it both extensible and opinionated enough that it could feel as good as handmade, although it was machine-made. This is what we should be aiming for as well. Now, the old system scaled consistency, but the new system needs to scale intent. We've been working on this at Stripe and, you know, have hit a few snags along the way. And so, we're we're figuring it out. But one of the things we want to do is we want to empower builders to go from prompt to production nearly instantaneously. Like many, we started with an MCP that understood our design documentation, but the results were not great. it wasn't specific enough and it wasn't driving the right outcomes. Three different people could put in the same prompt and get three different results. So since then we've evolved and now we have created a CLI built on our design system. It makes a harness that makes the AI far more obedient. Now it's where the builders are building and it consumes the documentation at the right time and place to avoid context rot. Now, importantly, the big difference between this version and a previous design system is it's not just components and atomic parts, but it's actually full templates and flows. So, the system actually knows what our product is supposed to behave like and how it all comes together. Essentially, it's far more opinionated than it's been in the past. We embed these standards into the means of production, which enables a more coherent product. But this is just the baseline. Christopher Alexander said, "A system can satisfy every rule and still be dead." This brings me to my third recommendation.

本质上，他让这套系统既足够可扩展、又足够有主见，所以尽管是机器印出来的，感觉却和手工做的一样好。这也正是我们应该追求的。旧的系统规模化的是一致性，而新的系统需要规模化的是意图。我们在 Stripe 一直在做这件事，一路上也碰了几次壁，所以我们还在摸索。但我们想做到的一件事，是让构建者几乎在一瞬间就能从 prompt 走到生产环境。和很多人一样，我们一开始做了一个能读懂我们设计文档的 MCP，但效果并不好：它不够具体，也没能带来对的结果。三个人输入同一个 prompt，能得到三个不同的结果。所以后来我们迭代了，现在做了一个基于我们设计系统的 CLI。它搭起了一套 harness，让 AI 听话多了。它就在构建者干活的地方，会在对的时间、对的地方读取文档，避免 context rot（上下文腐化）。重要的是，这一版和以前的设计系统最大的区别在于：它不只是组件和原子级的零件，而是完整的模板和流程。所以这个系统真的知道我们的产品应该怎么表现、各部分怎么组合在一起。本质上，它比过去有主见得多。我们把这些标准嵌进了生产工具里，让产品变得更连贯。但这只是底线。Christopher Alexander 说过：「一个系统可以满足每一条规则，却依然是死的。」这就引出了我的第三条建议。

[12:25] Katie

Refuse to confuse done with good. The filter is gone. It used to be. Quality filter was essentially built into every stage of the product development process, even before a project started. We've got 20 ideas and we can only staff one. And then we poked and we prodded and we pruned along the way and products grew somewhat methodically. Well, now we can build 20 ideas in a week. This is awesome in many ways and we can finally skip theoretical meetings talking about hypothetical products and react to the real thing in our hands. But the filtering that used to be throughout the process now needs to happen post build when it is a lot harder to say no. This is where the role of an editor comes in and it is ultra important in this day and age. Who is doing this in your organization? Who's looking at the end to end and understanding whether or not we're actually building a whole? It's a new behavior. We have to unlearn that built means done and that done means good. The most important thing I can say to anybody working on their editing skills is you have to experience it like a user would. Does it actually solve the problem? Is it actually attuned to the way the user thinks about things? Is it actually coherent? A lot of things look good in isolation, but then when you pull it to all together into the user journey, it feels a little disconnected and it's not just about saying yes or no, this is good or it shouldn't go.

拒绝把「做完」和「做好」混为一谈。过滤器没了。以前是有的——品质过滤器基本上内置在产品开发流程的每一个阶段，甚至在项目启动之前就在起作用。我们有 20 个点子，但人手只够做一个。然后一路上我们戳一戳、推一推、剪一剪，产品就这样比较有条理地长出来。可现在，我们一周就能把 20 个点子都做出来。这在很多方面都很棒，我们终于可以跳过那些空谈假想产品的理论会议，直接对手里的真东西做出反应。但以前贯穿整个流程的过滤，现在得放到做出来之后，而那时候要说「不」就难多了。这就是「编辑」这个角色登场的地方，在当今这个时代，它极其重要。在你们的组织里，谁在做这件事？谁在看端到端的全貌，判断我们到底是不是在做一个完整的整体？这是一种新的行为习惯。我们得忘掉「做出来了就是做完了」「做完了就是做好了」这种想法。对任何在练编辑能力的人，我能说的最重要的一句话是：你得像用户那样亲身去体验它。它真的解决问题了吗？它真的契合用户思考问题的方式吗？它真的连贯吗？很多东西单独看都不错，可一旦把它们串进整个用户旅程里，就会觉得有点脱节。而且编辑也不只是说「行」或「不行」——这个好，或者这个不该上。

[14:06] Katie

It's actually about is it even fully formed? How can we push this to completion? We don't want done to be the enemy of good. A very insightful article by Nabil Koreshi talks about what makes art great. And he says it's about the unexpected details, those little surprising things you're like, "Wow, I can't believe they thought of that." And then the deeper meaning that sits behind the surface or the continuous themes that tie it all together to a whole. These are the things that AI is not great at. But knowing what the gaps are in AI help us better navigate that and fill these gaps in. As Nibil says, one of the things that so offends us about AI slop is the sense that the details don't matter. The cup is green but may as well have been blue. An editor takes accountability for every decision, which is in many ways every pixel. I'll give you an example from this event. So my team had the pleasure of designing the event. Stefan worked on this fabulous opening animation. He and the team started with a 3D model of the scene and then they brought it into AI to help with the different animations. Now here's the first version. It's cool. It's, you know, fun to see the different little parts of it and it's nice the way it moves. But if you scrutinate, scrutinize it pixel by pixel, something feels off, right?

更要看的是：它到底有没有完全成型？我们怎么把它推到真正完成？我们不想让「做完」成为「做好」的敌人。Nabeel 有一篇很有洞见的文章，讲什么让艺术变得伟大。他说，在于那些出人意料的细节——那些让你惊喜的小地方，你会觉得：「哇，他们居然连这都想到了。」还有藏在表面之下的深层意义，或者贯穿始终、把一切串成一个整体的主题。这些恰恰是 AI 不擅长的。但知道 AI 的短板在哪里，能帮我们更好地应对，把这些空缺补上。正如 Nabeel 所说，AI slop（AI 批量生成的垃圾内容）之所以让我们这么反感，原因之一就是那种「细节无所谓」的感觉：杯子是绿色的，但换成蓝色好像也没什么区别。编辑要为每一个决定负责，而在很多意义上，这就是要为每一个像素负责。我拿这次活动举个例子。我的团队有幸为这次活动做了设计。Stefan 做了那段超棒的开场动画。他和团队先做了场景的 3D 模型，再把它导入 AI，辅助做各种动画。这是第一版。挺酷的，看它各个小部件挺有意思，动起来也挺好看。但如果你一个像素一个像素地仔细审视，就会觉得哪里不对劲，对吧？

[15:37] Katie

That's not quite the way it should move. It's a little jilted. You kind of want to get more of the scene, right? So he did it again and again and again. 56 times, 56 iterations later, he got to something truly beautiful. Now, it's got more realism. It's got a little bit of life and it's subtle differences, but you can sense the care. Now, what one of the things that so uh impresses me about this is that if he didn't use AI, he may not have built such a complex scene or he may not have tried so many different viewpoints. And while it wasn't one and done and certainly took a lot of wherewithal and scrutiny, AI opened the possibility space. Now, this brings me to my last and definitely my favorite fourth recommendation. Unleash creativity and artistry. Yes, AI can help us manufacture monotony, but it is also the greatest creative catalyst we've ever had. This matters more now because when everybody in their mother is building something, it is going to be harder and more important to differentiate. and the interfaces of today, chats, charts, CLIs. No way is that the epitome of great interactions in the modern era. There is so much more we can do and so much more we should do to make things feel generative, alive, responsive, dynamic. We can literally talk to the computers. So, let's branch out. It is time to invent new interfaces. It is time to invent new aesthetics. The best practices have not been written yet. We get to do that and now we have the tools to do it. It's just like when multi-touch made it possible to do wholly new interactions or the synthesizer allowed us to create totally new sounds. AI is allowing all sorts of new creativity. And we're seeing so much of this online. We're even seeing folks showing up the Stripe design team with way more interesting data viz. And we're seeing websites for restaurants with character and personality and people using AI to paint and create art

它的动法不太对，有点卡顿、不够顺滑。你会想看到更多场景，对吧？所以他一遍又一遍地重做。56 次，迭代了 56 版之后，他做出了真正美的东西。现在它更有真实感了，多了一点生气。差别很细微，但你能感受到其中的用心。这件事最让我佩服的一点是：如果不用 AI，他可能不会搭这么复杂的场景，也可能不会尝试这么多不同的视角。虽然这不是一次就搞定的，也确实花了大量心力、反复推敲，但 AI 打开了可能性的空间。这就引出了我最后一条、也绝对是我最喜欢的第四条建议：释放创造力和艺术性。没错，AI 能帮我们批量制造单调，但它也是我们有史以来最强大的创意催化剂。这一点现在更重要了，因为当人人都在做东西的时候，做出差异化会更难，也更重要。再看看今天的界面：聊天框、图表、CLI。这绝不可能就是现代优秀交互的巅峰。我们能做的还有太多太多，也应该做得更多，让产品感觉是生成式的、鲜活的、灵敏响应的、动态的。我们现在真的可以直接跟电脑说话了。所以，放开手脚去拓展吧。是时候发明新的界面了，是时候发明新的美学了。最佳实践还没有被写出来。这件事轮到我们来做，而且现在我们有了做它的工具。就像当年多点触控让全新的交互成为可能，合成器让我们创造出前所未有的声音一样，AI 正在催生各种各样新的创造力。我们在网上已经看到了大量这样的东西。甚至有人做出的数据可视化比 Stripe 设计团队的还有意思得多，把我们都比下去了。我们也看到了有性格、有个性的餐厅网站，还有人用 AI 去画画、去创作艺术

[17:59] Katie

themselves. It is a really interesting time. And at Stripe, we're using AI to essentially amplify the abilities of the creative team. Our more most recent cover for Built to Grow, it was created by a human marbler who worked on these stunning iterations. And then we used AI to fine-tune the details ever further to ensure we had the colors and the lines in all the right places. It was basically taking the good judgment of the humans and helping us scale it to make something truly stunning. Now, to make AI a stronger creative partner, there's a couple of things I recommend. One, improve your inputs. You want more specity going in the direction of your brand, your unique interests. So, put specific prompts. Don't just say, "Hey, I need a website for my Korean barbecue, but this is what I believe in. This is what good is. This is what we care about." Add your source material that you're using to build your own standards with. Help make it think in different ways. And then stress your outputs. Don't get tempted by the burrito dilemma. always push a step further and then of course use adversarial agents to help you critique it and bang it up a little bit, but you yourself should always be pushing for better. Now, these are just tactics. The much harder thing is definitely cultural.

——而且是他们自己动手。这真是一个特别有意思的时代。在 Stripe，我们用 AI 来放大创意团队的能力。我们最近给 Built to Grow 做的封面，出自一位真人大理石纹纸艺人（marbler）之手，这一版版惊艳的作品都是这位艺人做出来的。然后我们用 AI 把细节进一步精修，确保颜色和线条都落在恰到好处的位置。说白了，就是把人的好判断拿过来，再借助 AI 把它放大，做出真正惊艳的东西。要让 AI 成为更得力的创意伙伴，我有几点建议。第一，提升你的输入。你的输入要更具体，朝着你的品牌、你独特的关注点去写。所以，prompt 要写得具体。别光说「嘿，我需要一个韩式烤肉店的网站」，而要说「这是我信奉的东西，这是我认为的好，这是我们在乎的东西」。把你用来建立自己标准的那些素材也加进去，帮它换着角度去思考。然后，给你的输出做压力测试。别被「卷饼困境」诱惑住。永远再往前推一步，当然也可以用对抗性的 agent 帮你挑刺、把它狠狠敲打一番，但你自己必须始终在追求更好。不过这些只是战术。难得多的，绝对是文化层面的事。

[19:30] Katie

It is easy to follow cookie cutter patterns. It's safe and cozy, but it is much more impressive and much harder to find something unique that improves the status quo. So, if you're leading a team, don't just tell them to use AI, but give them room to explore. Protect the strange. AI lowers the cost to create. Let's spend some of that savings on making something truly special. If we only use AI to make the things that we already make just faster, then we are definitely missing out on the most interesting part. AI can help us raise the ceiling, not just the floor. The most important thing is to be very intentional. It's your point of view. It's your system. It's your quality bar and your ambition that you will want to bring to life with AI. In total contrast to the post-war building boom and modernism design was Gothic architecture. In 1850, John Ruskin wrote a lot about quality and craft and highlighted Gothic architecture as the epitome of great. He noticed that no Gothic building was alike. Frankly, not even one column was alike the other. Each detail was uniquely crafted and showed the unique hand and mind of the maker behind it. It felt truly cared for. This is what our users want. They're not impressed if we animated something with 3JS and Blender in 30 minutes.

照着千篇一律的套路做很容易，既安全又舒服；但找到一个能改善现状的独特东西，要难得多，也厉害得多。所以，如果你在带团队，别只是叫大家用 AI，还要给他们探索的空间。保护那些「怪」东西。AI 降低了创作的成本，我们就拿省下来的一部分，去做点真正特别的东西吧。如果我们只是用 AI 把本来就在做的东西做得更快，那我们肯定错过了最有意思的那部分。AI 能帮我们抬高天花板，而不只是抬高地板。最重要的是要有非常明确的意图。你想借 AI 实现的，是你的主张、你的系统、你的品质标准和你的抱负。和战后建造热潮、和现代主义设计截然相反的，是哥特式建筑。1850 年，John Ruskin 写了大量关于品质和手艺的文字，并把哥特式建筑推崇为伟大的典范。他注意到，没有两座哥特式建筑是一样的。说实话，连一根柱子都和另一根不一样。每一处细节都是独一无二地打磨出来的，展现了背后那位工匠独有的手艺和心思。它让人觉得真正被用心对待过。这才是我们的用户想要的。我们用 Three.js 和 Blender 花 30 分钟做出个动画，他们并不会因此觉得有多了不起。

[21:16] Katie

They are impressed by us solving their problems and clever touches in the details that show we anticipated their needs and that our brand has some character behind it. We have the choice in this building boom to not make the digital equivalent of zombie buildings. We can make this a creative renaissance. So, let's make some products that are more powerful and show the hand and care of the maker. Thanks everybody. [applause]

真正打动他们的，是我们解决了他们的问题，是细节里那些巧妙的小心思——它们说明我们预判到了他们的需求，也说明我们的品牌背后是有性格的。在这场建造热潮里，我们可以选择不去造数字世界里的僵尸建筑。我们可以让它成为一场创意的文艺复兴。所以，让我们一起做一些更有力量、能让人看到创作者的手艺与用心的产品吧。谢谢大家。（掌声）