Lenny's Podcast: Product | Growth | Career

Building beautiful products with Stripe’s Head of Design | Katie Dill (Stripe, Airbnb, Lyft)

Oct 15, 2023

01:34:01

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Katie Dill, Head of Design at Stripe, discusses what makes a design great, building high-performing teams in hyper-growth environments, a pivotal leadership lesson at Airbnb, Stripe's focus on quality and growth, removing organizational friction, increasing productivity, and what to look for when hiring a designer.

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Quick takeaways

Beauty in design enhances functionality, trust, usability, and user satisfaction.

Trust is built through attention to detail, quality execution, and user-oriented design.

Stripe operationalizes quality through collaboration, evaluations, and a focus on critical user journeys.

Prioritizing impact, intentionality, humility, and bold ideas leads to better outcomes in leadership and product development.

Deep dives

Beauty and Functionality: Enhancing User Experience

The use of the word beauty in digitized books has decreased, suggesting a prioritization of functionality over aesthetics. However, functionality and beauty are not opposing concepts. Beauty enhances functionality by making things easier to use and more approachable. It also plays a role in establishing trust with users and creating a positive emotional experience. Companies that understand the importance of beauty in their products recognize that it leads to increased trust, usability, and desirability. At Stripe, the focus on quality and beauty in design has directly contributed to business growth and improved user outcomes. Beauty, when combined with utility and usability, creates truly great products.

The Role of Beauty in Functionality

01:23

Performance = Potential - Interference

01:21

Quality and Competition in Product Development Will Drive Better Experiences

01:27

Keys to building great products including courage

02:13

Introduction

4min

A Surprising Intervention: A Story from Airbnb

3min

Building Trust and Listening in the Workplace

23min

Building High-Quality Products with Clear Communication

22min

Expectations, Operating Principles, and Meticulous Craft

2min

Building, Leading, and Managing Large Teams: Lessons in Team Building and Leadership

3min

Designing Teams as they Grow

18min

Designing Products Based on Purpose and Context

8min

Optimizing for Value and Humanity

11min

Katie Dill is the Head of Design at Stripe. Previously, she was Head of Experience Design at Airbnb and Head of Design at Lyft. Katie has been named one of Business Insider’s 10 People Changing the Tech Industry as well as one of Fast Company’s 100 Most Creative People in Business and received the Girls in Tech “Creator of the Year” award. In today’s episode, she shares:

• What makes a design great

• Advice on building high-performing teams in hyper-growth environments

• A pivotal lesson in leadership she learned at Airbnb

• Stripe’s focus on quality and how it’s tied to growth

• A formula for removing organizational friction

• How to increase productivity

• What to look for when hiring a designer

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Find the transcript for this episode and all past episodes at: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/building-beautiful-products-with

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Where to find Katie Dill:

• X: https://twitter.com/lil_dill

• Threads: https://www.threads.net/@lil_dilly

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/katie-dill-79168b3/

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Where to find Lenny:

• Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com

• X: https://twitter.com/lennysan

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/