Dive Club 🤿 Rooz Mahdavian - Designing frontier interfaces at Neuralink and Apple
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Oct 3, 2025 Rooz Mahdavian, a design engineer at Neuralink and former Apple Watch Faces team member, dives into the world of frontier interfaces. He discusses the fascinating transition from designing the Siri watch face to brain-computer interfaces. Rooz explores how to empathize with users lacking motor skills and the challenges of innovating a neural cursor. He dreams of a future where visual imagery transfer may become reality, enabling 'daydreaming with computers.' Tune in for insights on creating intuitive designs that redefine user interaction in tech!
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Origin Story From fMRI To Neuralink
- Rooz traced his interest to a Berkeley fMRI study that reconstructed watched movies and dreams from brain signals.
- That fascination led him from filmmaking to interning on Apple Watch Faces and later joining Neuralink in 2019.
Input Defines Interaction Models
- Interaction models follow input mechanisms; changing inputs reshapes what computers can do.
- Neural interfaces push intent higher up the stack, so new interaction paradigms become possible.
You Can't Empathize Closed-Loop Control
- Open-loop tasks (observe only) are easier to simulate than closed-loop tasks that provide real feedback.
- You cannot reliably empathize with closed-loop neural control without real users because feedback fundamentally changes behavior.