Brooke Hopper: Adobe's machine intelligence design lead on what AI can't touch

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23:44Aarron Walter:And now, back to the show.

23:51Aarron Walter:I wonder if there's some interesting opportunities for our students in these types of programs to model ways to use these tools. And one example I'm thinking of is Aaron and I produce our illustrations for a lot of the posts that we do. And if we had the budget, we'd definitely hire an illustrator, but we're a little team. And so we often have to take that on ourselves. And at least for me, I find the most effective way is to maybe start with a prompt and get something terrible. And then I'll sketch something, hand draw something more like this or provide it some human feedback. And over time, it starts to get better.

24:24Aarron Walter:I'll throw it into Photoshop and use the generative feel in a few areas to make things less AI looking, essentially, and then hand draw some things. So there's a back and forth, there's an iteration, and it's leaning on my own skills to some degree. I used to do a lot of illustration, especially in my kind of younger adulthood. But also the power of the AI to generate something really detailed drawing very quickly that I can adjust. So, yeah, I wonder if there's opportunities there in the kind of education field. Yeah, I think there totally is. going back to the Parsons partnership, I did a workshop in one of the classes and Adobe has a product called Firefly Boards.

24:56And it's sort of this freeform sort of brainstorming generative tool. And it was just a workshop around how you could use generative AI to really quickly come up with a bunch of different ideas to then sort of hone in and work from maybe more manually. And at the end of the workshop, one of the students says, you know, I've been so worried about using Gen.ai in my work because I thought it would make me feel like I could do everything on my own. She's like, but after playing around in this, she's like, it actually makes me want to collaborate more because what she saw is this ability to take someone else's style and remix it in with something you've done.

25:32And then exactly like you said, having this sort of back and forth conversation, put a little bit of your style into it and then see what comes out. Alejandro Chaveta, He's one of the executive creative directors on our studio team at Adobe that does all the Max branding. That's exactly how they did the Max branding a couple of years ago, is they started out with drawings from everyone on their team. They put it into Firefly. They got something out. They made some more adjustments. Did some more drawing, maybe did some collage in Photoshop, put it back in. And so it was this really fun sort of back and forth with the machine that can give you all of these unexpected results.

26:11That's one of the ways that we're looking at how do we work. And one of my favorite things to do with both teams who are interested in thinking about how they can bring generative AI into their process and students is give them an assignment where maybe it's one that they've already done and say, you have to do this entire thing using only generative technology. You cannot go into Photoshop and retouch something manually. You have to do the entire thing generatively. and really quickly you find out where it makes sense to use Gen.AI and where it absolutely does not. And I'll give you an example.

26:48I was working with one of our customers, a cosmetics company, and they wanted to try to do a 30-second paid spot end-to-end generative with the exception of they had some guidelines within their company. They don't generate people and they don't generate their product, which are very common. We gave ourselves a three-week deadline, start to finish, and we generated, I'm not even joking, thousands of assets. Their entire creative team ran out of generative credits, their entire creative team. And because I work at Adobe, you know, I'm one of the lucky people who don't have that problem. I had to end up finishing this thing for them.

27:27And at the end of the day, they were really happy with it, but they decided not to put this out into the world because there's a ribbon that goes through the entire sequence. And the ribbon at almost every point in time, no matter how much we tried, was defying physics. There are certain things that just do it the old fashioned way. And I think that that exercise is so good for people who are worried about not being needed in their career. Your career is changing and you get to focus on the stuff that's actually a lot of fun. I love telling that story because I I think it's a really good example of no matter how hard you try, you're not going to be happy if you try to generate something end to end.

28:09Even the people I know who do AI short films or something like that, they're still using so many people to put this together, to do the voices, to do all these other things. Creativity is a human experience, and that, I can guarantee you, is not going away. I like this idea of the ping-ponging back and forth where you've got something that maybe you start with yourself or you get some starting point prompt that comes back from generative AI. So last year, the key theme that we heard a lot of people talking about was agentic AI, having multiple tools, multiple AIs doing different pieces of a complex puzzle.

28:49How do you see that playing out in larger design teams? It seems like that would be potentially very helpful. We recently talked to the lead designer on the Winter Olympics campaign. Just the vastness of that, I couldn't even really fathom. Like all the assets you would have to create. But I don't know, how is agentic AI fitting into the creative process these days? I think the most common place that people are using it for is that sort of like early brainstorming and, hey, take a look at this, the brief and the data and whatever it is that needs to go into this and maybe give me a few different directions that I could go.

29:28So it's sort of like at the beginning, some of the directionality pieces of it, I think, make a lot of sense because that's what you look at. What are machines really great at? They're great at synthesizing data. They're so good at it. And then making human decisions. I think that middle part of the creative process is the more human aspect of it, where you're making the decisions, you're making the choices. And then more towards the end of it, especially when you think about the Olympics, you know, you think about all the production aspects of it. Like, I need this, these five assets and these 20 different sizes and these 50 different languages.

30:02And very quickly, you get to the point where you're literally making hundreds of thousands of things that really are pretty mindless work for most people. And that's the nature of production. And for so many years, we've just said, you know, well, it's part of the job. And we're finally at this point where some of that can be taken care of by a machine, because those are the types of things that they do really, really well. You set it on a task and it does the task. Obviously, you have to have a human check everything for right now. I could see a future when maybe there's a few things that you're totally okay with it, just putting it out into the world.

30:36It's such an interesting way to look at how some of that is changing already and has been changing. Production is one of the biggest opportunities I see and most obvious opportunities I see for all of this.

30:48Aarron Walter:We're actually one day past kind of a moment in design history where it was February 19th, 1990, Adobe released the first version of Photoshop on a Mac. It had a whopping 100 ,000 lines of code. And you have a kind of unique position in being at Adobe for a pretty lengthy period of time, over 10 years, I believe. And I imagine things have evolved massively at that time. Maybe you could just give us a quick run through of your time starting there up through now, some of the big changes that you've observed. Yeah, so I started at Adobe a little over 10 years ago, and it was about three weeks after I started.

31:25My boss, Eric Snowden, who I believe you've had on the podcast a couple of times, was on stage at Apple demoing the brand new Apple Pencil, the very first one. And I was hired to work on mobile apps with Eric, mobile drawing and painting apps. And so three weeks into Adobe, my job completely changed. And that really is what changed the whole direction of the iPad. And that's what opened up the whole new world of people who are actually doing creative work on their iPad, which is something that three weeks before when I started Adobe, only the people who are working on that could even conceive that that would be a thing.

32:03And I've been able to work directly with Apple on certain features too, which has been really fun because we have a close relationship with them. Starting from basically finger painting apps on the iPad when I started to building a full fledged, essentially pro version of Photoshop specifically for drawing and painting called Adobe Fresco. People do full on illustration work and they build their careers by using this. And so that's been a really fun change. The story that I always like to share is I submitted a talk to South by Southwest 2021, and it was all about the metaverse, NFTs and the metaverse, and they were changing the way everything was going.

32:41Submitted the talk, had it accepted. Two months later, I had to go back and say, can I change that to be about generative AI instead? You know, because in just a couple of months, I was like, this talk that I had planned is not going to be relevant because I could see how quickly Gen.AI was just taking over the internet. memes of Prince eating spaghetti out of a washing machine. I remember it was one of the first generated images I saw, and it was amazing. Being able to see the progression and how much things have changed even in the past few years, being one of the first designers on the Firefly site, whereas really just we kind of put it out as an experiment, quite honestly.

33:21We're like, well, let's put this out and see a few things that we can do. And then up until now, where I'm working on future tools that have not been released yet and thinking about what does it mean to be non-destructive? Adobe is known for being non-destructive and doing things in non-destructive ways. But when you can do anything at any point in time, does non-destructive matter quite as much anymore? You know, asking hard questions, I asked a question to a designer one time. I was like, you know, do we even need layers anymore? And they're like the sheer look of terror on their face. And, you know, I say these things to be provocative, because I think we do need to be asking these questions.

33:59I think a lot of these things are up in the air. Can we build ephemeral tools? Yes, I think we absolutely can. I was just mentioning, you know, we're looking at tooling that sort of constructs itself based on the content that you have on your canvas. And so, you know, I think there's all of these things where we went from taking specs from, at the time they were designing it in Illustrator, some of the mobile apps, because it needed to be vector, and then all the way to being able to generate and code my own thing in just 15 minutes. It's insane, the rate that technology is changing. But it's so cool.

34:35I'm a forever optimist. I see a lot of the positive sides of it. And I see so much opportunity for design and for people to come in and really make a mark and honestly have a voice in the way that this technology manifests. And we've already seen it, a lot of it. You know, one thing that fascinates me is, you know, anytime I go to a school function at my kids' schools or I hop on YouTube and I see people who are creating videos and, you know, that they're an expert in a topic, but they're not designers. And yet, like their thumbnails are really good. The lower thirds animation that pops up, like they've got skills for their medium.

35:17Design, we've talked about everyone's a designer or design has a place in everyone's life. I think now it really is true. Everyone needs design in some capacity, and they need good starting points. And that's a really tough design challenge. Anyone who's ever tried to design templates or pre-structured elements that you can customize, that is a very difficult design problem. There's Adobe Express, which has become a pretty major product in Creative Cloud. How does Adobe think about bringing more people into design, even those who are not designers? I kind of look at them, these people, in sort of separate frames.

35:58There's the people like teachers or maybe people who work in an office that just need to make a flyer. Or candidly, even sometimes students, I hear that all the time. They say, you know, I just need this thing really quickly. I know it's not the best design, but it works for right now. because over the past however many years, couple of decades, taste has elevated across the population, I would argue, across the general public. Yeah, we're just exposed to so many things. Exactly, we just expect things to look better. I believe that that's a place where Express works really well. Or for marketers, for example.

36:33Express has a feature where, as a designer, I can make a template and lock down things. And my biggest fear was always, you know, I'm going to make this thing and it looks perfect and then someone else is going to get a hold of it. And two days later, it's going to be total trash, you know, because they've changed the font, the color of that brand. They made the logo bigger. But Express is great for that because it allows you to keep control over the things that you want to have control over. We think of it as like a precision continuum, essentially, like I need more precision. And Firefly kind of lives somewhere in the middle of that right now, just because of the nature of the technology.

37:09Like I said, you could probably get 80 % of the way there, but in order to get 100 % of the way, you definitely need the more precise tools. And anyone can sort of start at any point in time along that continuum. But I think it's just different groups of people. I may start in Express as a student, but then I start moving maybe into Firefly or into tools that give me a little bit more control. And then one day I'm like, oh man, I just need to go to that next level. Well, we've got tools for that. And so I look at Adobe's strategy in terms of the tools we provide as sort of enabling more people to make things look better at whatever level it is that they are.

37:48So we're kind of meeting people where they are in terms of their skill level. That's kind of how I personally look at that.

37:55Aarron Walter:Maybe it's just a bit of a build on Aaron's question, but calling back to our conversation about coding and my brother and him not touching. essentially he said he hadn't written a line of code in six months, and he works for a pretty major technology company that's invested in AI. So it's interesting to hear coming from him. And then one of the Anthropic founders said that coding is largely solved. I don't see Adobe saying design is solved or illustration is solved, but is there a pithy counterpoint to that, maybe from your perspective or the kind of organizational perspective at Adobe? The thing that I'll say is we kind of use design and creativity interchangeably to some extent at Adobe.

38:33And the thing is, is that coding is a math problem for the most part. Creativity, you can turn it into a math problem. I know there's a lot of companies that try to turn it into a math problem. We have formulaic movies. We have formulaic, you know, like there are definitely formulas that work. There's a place for that.

38:50Aarron Walter:Marvel movies, not to throw shade on Marvel, but it's pretty formulaic. It's pretty formulaic, but you know what? It works. It works for them. They've got a thing going. But when you get into true creativity, that is impacted by not only what I'm experiencing and thinking and feeling, it's impacted by social, cultural, political moments. Some of the best design has come out of like huge political unrest. Creativity is reactive. It has to move and change and gain relevance. And coding is not that. Yes, there are advances in technology for sure. There's definitely innovation and technology. But I think that that's where I view it.

39:32And again, that's sort of my take on it is that that is such a human experience. And if you take any of that stuff out of it, it's no longer creativity. It's a formula. Shifting gears here a little bit, Brooke, I'm fascinated that you've been at one company for so long because that is a rarity for a lot of people in the tech industry, but also that you're a principal designer. And I know so many people who have been in a role for a while, and they found themselves sort of pushed into some managerial role. And what they really wanted was to be a better designer and to excel at that. And I love that we started the conversation today where you were experimenting with very specific interactions and so forth for a product.

40:22And you're at a senior level at Adobe. can you talk to us about being a principal designer and the pathway of career growth while still maintaining that connection to the craft? I learned very early on in my career through a very short stint in managing that I can manage, but I'm just not happy. I need to have my hands dirty. I've got to like be in the trenches working on this stuff to really feel fulfilled. I need something that I can look at at the end of the day and say, that's the thing I worked on. And that makes me really, really happy. To your point, it's surprising to a lot of people when I say, you know, oh, I was coding.

41:02I was trying to look at these micro interactions or, oh, you know, I was doing these things in Figma. And they're like, why are you doing that? You're a senior principal designer at Adobe. Why would you be doing that? I think it's so important to stay connected. The moment that you step out of understanding what it is that maybe like the customer needs or the day-to-day of design, you're sort of stepping away from that connection. And I'm not saying it's for everyone, but for me, I need to be in the weeds doing this stuff, talking with people, talking with other creatives, talking with students, being a part of all these conversations.

41:38But then also as a principal, my role is to also have a good understanding of the business strategy and make sure that I'm connecting the business goals and the business strategy to the design perspective. And so that's why I've been working most recently on a lot of future tools work, which is thinking, how can we make those connections? Where are we going as a company and where do we know that we need to get to? And then how can we build things that are important and actually help people make a career, but also achieve the business goals? And so I sort of sit in between that business and design level while still being an IC.

42:17And that's not to say, You know, I talked to my manager into letting me manage a couple people a few years ago, and I love doing it. But I found that I'm a much better mentor and leader than I am a manager. And I made peace with that, and I'm okay with that. That doesn't mean it's not going to change in the future. I always tell people, you know, say, why did you decide to stay as an IC? My career advice, and this is probably terrible career advice, is always, can you go back to what you were doing before? If you can, what's the harm? It's not that you're going to be required to be a manager for the rest of your life if you decide you want to be a manager.

42:50You know, you can always go back to IC. And so I think that just sort of like flexibility and maybe that's sort of the mentality I bring to a lot of things is the flexibility, the curiosity, the sort of playing, not taking things too seriously. If you're not having fun at work, what are you doing? I believe it's really important to have fun at work and do what you love. And honestly, that's why I'm where I am is I get to sit around and make tools for the most creative people in the world. And what more can I ask for? You know, that's pretty cool. Just a quick follow up on that. So I think one of the reasons why people want to move into that managerial role is because they want to have greater influence at their organization.

43:31But I think few people are as mature and wide eyed of the possibilities as you just described your approach to your work. How do you think about influence as an individual contributor? The way that I think of influence is I have become essentially an expert in this area. And what I'm able to do and what my position allows, it allows me to talk to our executives in a way that they listen. I guess a subject matter expert SME is, I guess, what the shorthand is for it. But, you know, when I go and I present designs, yes, sometimes I'm presenting, you know, a combination of my work and other people's work.

44:09That's the nature of design. If anyone says they design something on their own, don't believe them. We design in teams. But when I'm presenting work, I try to be really honest about what is happening. Because one of the things that I've found is that, I guess there's two ways to look at this. One of the things I found that is the higher level title you are, the more people like to hide the truth from you or like to tell you something that looks really special. I sort of pride myself of being honest. And yes, I'm going to tell you the truth. I'm not going to dog on something. But I'll be honest.

44:41If something isn't working, it's not working. If I don't think it's a good experience, I'm going to let you know. Respectfully, I don't think that's a good experience. How about let's brainstorm something else? And I think for me, that's the way that I've built influence with our executives. And I think there's also influence amongst your peers. And the best way that I can influence our peers is through mentoring, through leadership. I try to take an intern every summer. The way that I look at it is I am where I'm at because other people took a chance on me. And I've already had several interns.

45:11I'm like, you're going to be my boss someday. They're amazing. Back to your point about the manager, I think most people only think about the upwards influence. And sometimes that's actually the least important. Yeah, that's an important message.

45:25Aarron Walter:What's inspiring you right now? It doesn't have to be work-related. It could be something you're looking forward to doing on the weekend, movies, books, podcasts. I'm really looking forward to being outside. I'm in the Bay Area. It's been kind of rainy. I'm a very active person. I like being outside. I love being in nature. I'm really looking forward to that this weekend. I need that sort of divide in my life between sitting in front of a computer all day and doing very techie things and then being in nature and enjoying it. Fantastic. Brooke, thank you so much for being on Design Better. Thank you so much.

45:58It was so fun chatting.

46:04This episode was produced by Eli Woolery and me, Aaron Walter, with engineering and production support from Brian Paik of Pacific Audio. If you found this episode useful, we hope that you'll leave us a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to finer shows. Or simply drop a link to the show in your team's Slack channel, designbetterpodcast.com. It'll really help others discover the show. Until next time.