WEBVTT NOTE Sentence-level transcript of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcYoMg-8-L8 NOTE One cue per sentence. Cue ids are the line anchors on /transcripts/UcYoMg-8-L8.html. A cue ends where the next begins, or 2 s after its last word. s1 00:00:01.400 --> 00:00:02.120 Hi there. s2 00:00:02.120 --> 00:00:03.880 Welcome to my talk. s3 00:00:03.880 --> 00:00:14.080 My name is Sanja and today I'm going to share with you an experiment we did at our company that's somewhat unusual and very exciting. s4 00:00:14.080 --> 00:00:22.000 It was a one-month initiative called radical speed month where two-person teams were given full autonomy to build and ship projects. s5 00:00:22.000 --> 00:00:24.800 I built three projects during this time. s6 00:00:24.800 --> 00:00:36.720 I will walk you through them and we'll talk about the outcomes and learnings for myself as a designer as well as the system-wide impact this experiment had. s7 00:00:37.160 --> 00:00:39.200 I'll tell you a little bit about Automattic first. s8 00:00:39.200 --> 00:00:52.320 We're the company behind several products in the WordPress ecosystem such as wordpress.com, Jetpack, WooCommerce, as well as many other brands like Tumblr, Beeper, and many more. s9 00:00:52.320 --> 00:01:02.160 We are around 1,400 people and we're fully distributed which is pretty interesting for also what what I'm about to show you. s10 00:01:02.160 --> 00:01:14.240 We're fully distributed distributed and asynchronous which means that most of our work, our thoughts, our concepts from the past couple of decades are very well documented. s11 00:01:14.400 --> 00:01:21.240 I'm a product designer and I've spent over a decade building software and watching how teams build software. s12 00:01:21.240 --> 00:01:36.000 I've worked for I've been at Automattic for 5 years now on the Jetpack design team and in the past I worked for several companies of different sizes, different types of products, and different team organiza- s13 00:01:36.000 --> 00:01:36.960 configurations. s14 00:01:36.960 --> 00:01:51.400 So after all these years I've not only accumulated experience in designing products, I also have a lot of insight into team dynamics and organizational structures within product teams. s15 00:01:51.880 --> 00:01:56.160 Over the years the the designer role has morphed and evolved a lot. s16 00:01:56.160 --> 00:02:06.200 We we had We still have all of these different types of of roles like web designers or UX designers or interaction or product designers. s17 00:02:06.200 --> 00:02:15.880 We've also used many different tools from the Adobe suite to Sketch to Figma and many many others in addition to those. s18 00:02:15.880 --> 00:02:18.840 And AI is a new tool. s19 00:02:18.840 --> 00:02:22.240 It is definitely not built just for designers. s20 00:02:22.240 --> 00:02:31.240 It's versatile so it can be used by many other um many different roles, but the expectation is is the same for everyone. s21 00:02:31.240 --> 00:02:34.160 It's that it will bring a speed. s22 00:02:34.160 --> 00:02:37.800 And of course, this is why companies are rushing to put it to use. s23 00:02:37.800 --> 00:02:49.280 But no matter what role uses AI, um this velocity is going to look very different in small teams like one to three people that are building new products. s24 00:02:49.280 --> 00:03:07.120 Let's say a zero to one product versus large organizations that might have built entire entire product ecosystems, that have software that's anywhere between 5 and 20 years old and that have uh more than a thousand or even thousands of people. s25 00:03:07.840 --> 00:03:15.040 Before I dive into the experiment, I will tell you a little bit about what preceded it in terms of how we use AI at Automattic. s26 00:03:15.040 --> 00:03:20.720 We were encouraged to use it, to learn it, and to experiment with AI from the very beginning. s27 00:03:20.720 --> 00:03:24.080 At first, we had access to tools and courses. s28 00:03:24.080 --> 00:03:31.760 Then the AI enablement was initiated where every single employee goes through a two-week course designed specifically for their role. s29 00:03:31.760 --> 00:03:36.840 This is completely immersive with lectures and and focused hands-on time. s30 00:03:36.840 --> 00:03:38.800 Very very helpful. s31 00:03:38.800 --> 00:03:45.640 And over time as AI coding tools got better, everyone was encouraged to get comfortable with contributing in code. s32 00:03:45.640 --> 00:03:58.600 And we can thank our systems and operations team for setting up fantastic security and processes as well as documentation that's good enough that a non-engineer such as myself can spin up a working s33 00:03:58.600 --> 00:04:00.440 development environment. s34 00:04:00.440 --> 00:04:10.520 And last but not least, an incredibly helpful tool that I that I use every day for research and planning is context AC. s35 00:04:10.520 --> 00:04:21.200 It's an MCP server that gives AI tools access to all of the knowledge and data that we have documented over the years that I previously mentioned. s36 00:04:21.880 --> 00:04:23.040 So back to the experiment. s37 00:04:23.040 --> 00:04:26.919 About 2 months ago, we kicked off this project. s38 00:04:26.919 --> 00:04:33.200 The instructions were to pause the roadmap work for 30 days, pair with a partner, and ship something real. s39 00:04:33.200 --> 00:04:36.560 We were welcome to use AI, though it wasn't a requirement. s40 00:04:36.560 --> 00:04:40.520 And of course, um we couldn't all do this at once. s41 00:04:40.520 --> 00:04:46.000 We had to do this in in stages, and we had about a third of the company participating in the first round. s42 00:04:46.000 --> 00:04:54.840 That's around 500 people that started around 794 projects in these 30 days. s43 00:04:54.840 --> 00:05:01.840 One lucky circumstance for me was that during this month, I was also participating in this 2-week in-person AI enablement course. s44 00:05:01.840 --> 00:05:06.160 So AI tools played a huge role in what I was able to deliver. s45 00:05:06.160 --> 00:05:12.600 Um and that's why I was building not one but three different projects. s46 00:05:12.600 --> 00:05:18.320 And when Radico Speedman started, uh I I had some knowledge of GitHub. s47 00:05:18.320 --> 00:05:19.640 I would review PRs. s48 00:05:19.640 --> 00:05:23.480 I had played around with cloud code. s49 00:05:23.480 --> 00:05:28.280 But I had never until then actually built and shipped something in code. s50 00:05:28.280 --> 00:05:31.200 And I mean at work. s51 00:05:31.200 --> 00:05:39.760 Like I've done a small hobby project here and there, but that's completely that was a completely different experience. s52 00:05:39.760 --> 00:05:48.200 Uh I'm going to share my personal journey of how my skills and process and collaboration style shifted over the over the course of the 30 days. s53 00:05:48.200 --> 00:05:58.240 And this will also give us insights into how this change can be promoted and implemented at the organizational level for large companies. s54 00:05:59.000 --> 00:06:03.440 So this is the story of the first project I worked on and my first contributions in code. s55 00:06:03.440 --> 00:06:10.680 As I mentioned at the time uh Radical Speed Month was starting, I was at the in-person A&E enablement training. s56 00:06:10.680 --> 00:06:21.280 And over there we did an as as part of the program we did an exercise where as a group of four we had uh 2 hours to build something together. s57 00:06:21.280 --> 00:06:28.040 We were two designers that aren't super comfortable in code, an engineer, and a product lead. s58 00:06:28.040 --> 00:06:31.960 And we decided to build this board game session manager. s59 00:06:31.960 --> 00:06:35.240 We had a board game evening planned that night. s60 00:06:35.240 --> 00:06:44.000 Uh so we wanted to create an app that's that's used to create, view, and join, and manage board game event sessions. s61 00:06:44.000 --> 00:06:47.120 Um you can see what that looked like. s62 00:06:47.120 --> 00:06:49.440 This is what we built in in 2 hours. s63 00:06:49.440 --> 00:07:03.680 We built an app um where people can start and stop uh uh a session, uh see what games and spots are available, and even chat with each other. s64 00:07:03.680 --> 00:07:17.000 And on top of that we chose this 16-bit style um illustration of our actual office that uh people found especially appealing. s65 00:07:17.080 --> 00:07:20.320 The most interesting thing about this project isn't what we built. s66 00:07:20.320 --> 00:07:23.680 It was how we worked together and leveled up together. s67 00:07:23.680 --> 00:07:36.640 Uh at the very beginning we agreed that we all want to uh contribute, and we were very lucky that the engineer that was uh in our group was really really great at setting us up for success. s68 00:07:36.640 --> 00:07:44.360 So she set up the project in GitHub, helped us grap grasp some basic commands, and helped us understand how Git works. s69 00:07:44.360 --> 00:07:55.080 I worked with versioning in the past um for you know, in different situations, but and I thought I understood Git, but actually I didn't. s70 00:07:55.080 --> 00:08:03.360 I really needed someone to to tell me how it works and and what what are the best ways to to to set up a project. s71 00:08:03.360 --> 00:08:10.320 We were sitting together, we were testing out the app, and we were building it um together and dividing the work among us. s72 00:08:10.320 --> 00:08:14.680 So, we were committing code to this project. s73 00:08:14.680 --> 00:08:28.480 And since this wasn't this this app that we were building, it's not related to any of of our existing products, so there were no risks involved, and our focus was on learning, which was really really s74 00:08:28.480 --> 00:08:29.640 really great. s75 00:08:29.640 --> 00:08:44.000 We only used Cloud Code for this purpose, and outside of that, I think the only visual tool used was Nano Banana to to create um uh to create the office illustration. s76 00:08:46.600 --> 00:09:04.760 And the biggest insight, I think, for me from this project was that if you're an engineer, the impact that you have when you enable others may be far greater than the impact of doing more engineering yourself. s77 00:09:04.760 --> 00:09:08.839 And for any this this is a great learning for any role. s78 00:09:08.839 --> 00:09:13.760 It can be um the same for engineering or design or product. s79 00:09:13.760 --> 00:09:25.560 Keep in mind that when you're working on a team with mixed abilities, and if you're stronger in a specific skill, make sure that you're helping and enabling each other up, because now with AI, we can all do a little bit s80 00:09:25.560 --> 00:09:30.040 um of the work that's outside of our domain. s81 00:09:30.040 --> 00:09:39.880 And this was the biggest learning for me, uh that engineers will need to become enablers and teachers. s82 00:09:40.000 --> 00:09:44.640 Moving on to the second project I worked on, this was my main focus for the radical speed month. s83 00:09:44.640 --> 00:09:49.360 I paired with an engineer and um a design operations person. s84 00:09:49.360 --> 00:09:54.120 And our goal, our main goal, we we worked on some design system projects together in the past. s85 00:09:54.120 --> 00:10:04.120 And here our main goal was to surface relevant and up-to-date design system information to humans and AI tools. s86 00:10:04.120 --> 00:10:07.280 And this um problem space is huge. s87 00:10:07.280 --> 00:10:14.000 Our design system uh that we use for our WordPress ecosystem products is open source. s88 00:10:14.000 --> 00:10:18.840 It serves many products internally and externally and is always in flux. s89 00:10:18.840 --> 00:10:20.440 So, the problem space was big. s90 00:10:20.440 --> 00:10:22.160 Uh we saw a lot of opportunities. s91 00:10:22.160 --> 00:10:25.760 So, we decided to divide and each person took on a problem to tackle. s92 00:10:25.760 --> 00:10:41.680 And what I proposed this design system status track tracker um the solution that I proposed raised questions with the engineer around performance, around maintenance, and if we would be able to to build it in the first place. s93 00:10:41.680 --> 00:10:46.000 But I was kind of empowered by the previous exercise. s94 00:10:46.000 --> 00:10:52.720 I was allowed to experiment, so I decided to build the full idea as a proof of concept on my own. s95 00:10:52.720 --> 00:10:58.920 So, um the discovery portion was three people, but the design and build was just myself. s96 00:10:58.920 --> 00:11:03.080 And it took around 2 and 1/2 weeks to build this. s97 00:11:03.080 --> 00:11:15.120 And as I worked on it piece by piece, especially uh when I reached the point where I had actual live component previews working, I was really mind-blown at what I was able to achieve. s98 00:11:15.120 --> 00:11:23.080 I moved through the project without any um without any restrictions in mind. s99 00:11:23.080 --> 00:11:26.880 Um I was just trying to push the limits. s100 00:11:26.880 --> 00:11:38.520 And um the tracker was picking up links from the GitHub repo, from Storybook, from Figma, sorting them according to status, tagging them with the correct library names. s101 00:11:38.520 --> 00:11:44.760 Search worked perfectly, and I was really excited about this product, and I shared it with fellow designers. s102 00:11:44.760 --> 00:11:49.880 I iterated a little bit based on the feedback, but everyone was pretty excited. s103 00:11:49.880 --> 00:12:00.400 I built the prototype initially as a start, and then I used Figma only later in the process for some visual fine-tuning. s104 00:12:00.400 --> 00:12:09.760 Some things that I just couldn't explain to claw to claw code, I I wanted to deliver an image, and that worked. s105 00:12:09.760 --> 00:12:15.560 But the live project was was I was what I was iterating on directly. s106 00:12:15.560 --> 00:12:26.360 And the prototype was built within a week, and then it took another week and a half to rebuild it for some fixes, to set up a hosting, and deploy it in our internal platform s107 00:12:26.360 --> 00:12:36.920 as an internal tool, as well as on an external public-facing site with that that had a little bit of a curated um data and information. s108 00:12:36.960 --> 00:12:44.800 And delivering this this product was a defining moment for me, where I moved from a designer to a design engineer. s109 00:12:44.800 --> 00:12:53.000 This is of course enabled by AI, but most of all, it was enabled by the fact that I could own the entire process. s110 00:12:53.000 --> 00:12:58.680 We were within the radical speed month, I was allowed to experiment. s111 00:12:58.680 --> 00:13:05.040 I I I had the agency and made all of the necessary decisions. s112 00:13:05.040 --> 00:13:18.760 In large organizations, this is very hard to do, but here I could just build whatever I thought was um was needed, and I didn't have to spend a lot of time in negotiations s113 00:13:18.760 --> 00:13:20.960 and handover. s114 00:13:23.080 --> 00:13:36.280 And then that was 2 and 1/2 weeks, so I kind of had 1 week left Um a radical speed month, so I paired with a fellow designer and here you'll be able to see the incredible shift and speed and process that happened. s115 00:13:36.280 --> 00:13:53.640 In only 6 days, we went from zero to uh through the entire process to building an iOS chat for WooCommerce merchants that um allows them to answer shoppers in real time, reply from their phone, s116 00:13:53.640 --> 00:13:58.640 or even set up AI to answer the uh questions for them. s117 00:13:59.560 --> 00:14:09.040 And this is a fully working proof of concept that includes authentication through wordpress.com, includes a Jetpack connection. s118 00:14:09.040 --> 00:14:12.960 If If you use WordPress, you might know what that is. s119 00:14:12.960 --> 00:14:26.840 Um we also built a widget that inherits the site theming where the site visitors can actually ask the questions, as well as the the fully capable AI agent that scans the site for information s120 00:14:26.840 --> 00:14:36.280 and answers visitors' questions in real time, and also discerns whether it can answer a question or or not. s121 00:14:39.240 --> 00:14:47.680 What was important here was that the the alignment and the the ideation part was fairly easy. s122 00:14:47.680 --> 00:14:55.160 It was fairly easy for us two designers to align and shape the features with because we always have the users in mind. s123 00:14:55.160 --> 00:15:06.320 And on the process side, um what was interesting is that we started the exploration as a cloud code project folder where all of the chats and ideas were recorded into a file system. s124 00:15:06.320 --> 00:15:15.080 And I I noticed that that um significantly uh sped up collaboration, as well as build later. s125 00:15:15.080 --> 00:15:20.680 And we've uh continued I've continued this practice in my in my daily work. s126 00:15:20.680 --> 00:15:26.080 Um the main artifact we worked on here as well was the prototype. s127 00:15:26.080 --> 00:15:35.440 And that's the biggest shift for our process because normally we would start in Figma and we would work in Figma until we reach very high fidelity. s128 00:15:35.440 --> 00:15:39.760 But here uh, we had uh, very good plan. s129 00:15:39.760 --> 00:15:59.480 Then we um, built the the the prototype or the product and then we went back into Figma to just come back to it in a visual sense to build a mood board and for some UI fine-tuning. s130 00:15:59.960 --> 00:16:05.680 And in only 30 days, my process that has been similar for years has completely shifted. s131 00:16:05.680 --> 00:16:08.720 And that was true for many other people. s132 00:16:08.720 --> 00:16:15.920 The first project showed me how the engineer's role can be elevated from a builder to an enabler. s133 00:16:15.920 --> 00:16:24.320 And this is a skill that I believe will be crucial as more and more um, people in other roles start working in code. s134 00:16:24.320 --> 00:16:29.760 The second one moved me from a designer to a design engineer. s135 00:16:29.760 --> 00:16:40.960 Um, and here I'm talking about being able to push code to production in a well-established large system that requires serious onboarding and security practices. s136 00:16:41.160 --> 00:16:51.320 All of the company initiatives that I described together gave me the space I needed to experiment and find my own process that works within what we already have established s137 00:16:51.320 --> 00:16:52.680 in the company. s138 00:16:52.680 --> 00:17:08.839 And and the third project that I shared was just proof that we've unlocked speeds because I already had adjusted my process a little bit, but then we both leveled up together and had a shared understanding s139 00:17:08.839 --> 00:17:15.040 on how we can apply the tools so we could also easily meet each other. s140 00:17:15.400 --> 00:17:22.800 If you're in a large organization, try to implement this um even just at your team level. s141 00:17:22.800 --> 00:17:29.640 Uh changing processes or tools in large organizations requires shifting the human behavior behind them. s142 00:17:29.640 --> 00:17:42.160 So, provide your people with the access to the new tools, find your enablers and champions, create space for experimentation, and and give them agency so that they can break out of their habits s143 00:17:42.160 --> 00:17:46.200 and unlock the speed that AI tools can bring. s144 00:17:46.200 --> 00:17:48.520 Thank you.