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

... the use of the word beauty in, in books that have been digitized by Google has decreased, like pretty dramatically. And it, it's aligned with this idea of like, well, functionality is king. Functionality is what matters. And as if people think about functionality as b- and beauty as, like two opposite things. Like, no, they're not two opposite things. You know, functionality is important. And actually beauty enhances functionality because it does make things easier to use, more approachable, uh, more compelling to use. And the other piece of it that is not talked about in business as often is just the importance of how people feel. Things that are more beautiful increase trust. They, you, you see that, like we've put painstaking detail into this and we care about the details of how something works, and that gives you assurance that we care about other details that you can't see too.

(instrumental music) Today my guest is Katie Dill. Katie is head of design at Stripe where she oversees product design, brand and marketing creative, web presence, user research, content strategy, and design ops. Katie was previously head of design at Lyft and head of experience design at Airbnb. She's built and led design teams at three different hyper-growth companies, seen the team scale at least 10X, and two of which, Airbnb and Stripe, are some of the biggest and fastest growing companies in the world, and also the best-designed products. In our conversation, Katie shares stories of trials and tribulations of leading large design teams, processes she's put in place for operationalizing quality, how she thinks about quality and beauty very practically, how design can directly lead to growth, and examples of this that led to big lift in conversion at Stripe, plus a math formula she uses to increase team performance, how she suggests organizing your design and product teams, what to look for in design hires, and so much more. I was really lucky to get to work with Katie while at Airbnb and I am so excited to have her on this podcast. With that, I bring you Katie Dill after a short word from our sponsors. This episode is brought to you by Sidebar. Are you looking to land your next big career move or start your own thing? One of the most effective ways to create a big leap in your career, and something that worked really well for me a few years ago, is to create a personal board of directors, a trusted peer group where you can discuss challenges you're having, get career advice, and just kind of gut check how you're thinking about your work, your career, and your life. This has been a big trajectory changer for me, but it's hard to build this trusted group. With Sidebar, senior leaders are matched with highly vetted, private, supportive peer groups to lean on for unbiased opinions, diverse perspectives, and raw feedback. Everyone has their own zone of genius, so together we're better prepared to navigate professional pitfalls, leading to more responsibility, faster promotions, and bigger impact. Guided by world-class programming and facilitation, Sidebar enables you to get focused, tactical feedback at every step of your journey. If you're a listener of this podcast, you're likely already driven and committed to growth. A Sidebar personal board of directors is the missing piece to catalyze that journey. Why spend a decade finding your people when you can meet them at Sidebar today? Jump the growing wait list of thousands of leaders from top tech companies by visiting sidebar.com/lenny to learn more. That's sidebar.com/lenny. You fell in love with building products for a reason, but sometimes the day-to-day reality is a little different than you imagined. Instead of dreaming up big ideas, talking to customers, and crafting a strategy, you're drowning in spreadsheets and roadmap updates and you're spending your days basically putting out fires. A better way is possible. Introducing Jira Product Discovery, the new prioritization and road mapping tool built for product teams by Atlassian. With Jira Product Discovery, you can gather all your product ideas and insights in one place and prioritize confidently, finally replacing those endless spreadsheets. Create and share custom product roadmaps with any stakeholder in seconds, and it's all built on Jira, where your engineering teams are already working, so true collaboration is finally possible. Great products are built by great teams, not just engineers. Sales, support, leadership, even Greg from finance. Anyone that you want can contribute ideas, feedback, and insights in Jira Product Discovery for free. No catch. And it's only $10 a month for you. Say goodbye to your spreadsheets and the never-ending alignment efforts. The old way of doing product management is over. Rediscover what's possible with Jira Product Discovery. Try it for free at atlassian.com/lenny. That's atlassian.com/lenny. Katie, thank you so much for being here. Welcome to the podcast.