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Derek Briggs

Things Derek Says on Podcasts

Where to Find Them

Derek Briggs has been a guest on Dive Club 🤿 (2 times) .

Recently: “Derek Briggs - Scaling craft at Shopify” on Dive Club 🤿 (November 2026); “Derek Briggs - Creating a culture of craft” on Dive Club 🤿 (January 2024).

What They Said

“Agents are capable of doing what they've learned to do, and innovation happens in what has never happened before. So it's very difficult. And my personal opinion is it's very difficult to innovate in design with AI, being that it's only ever going to present what has happened before when we're trying to figure out what's going to happen in the future.” — Derek Briggs, Dive Club 🤿

The interviewer said he feels like a quality cop as more people can prototype and ship. Briggs argues designers should spend more time hands-on rather than just prompting, and explains why human taste still matters, while allowing this may change.

Dive Club 🤿 · 2026-11-03 Permalink → Listen →
Dive Club 🤿 Around 24:12 into the episode
Derek Briggs

…happens. I want everything to just accidentally be amazing because everyone's agents are using the same strategies that the really good outcomes used to achieve where they were. And that's where they were massaged. But then moving forward, it's so easy to make something better automatic.

Speaker 4

…to me asking, I feel like I'm becoming the bottleneck or the cop almost because so many other people can prototype, can ship. And, you know, I'm overwhelmed reinforcing quality in some ways. And so creating systems for greatness to accidentally happen, I really, really like that as a mindset.

Derek Briggs

Contrary. I think that designers need to spend some more time on the hardboard at times. I think that there's a lot of prompting happening that just results in what an agent will do for you as opposed to what you're capable of doing as a human. Agents are capable of doing what they've learned to do, and innovation happens in what has never happened before. So it's very difficult. And my personal opinion is it's very difficult to innovate in design with AI, being that it's only ever going to present what has happened before when we're trying to figure out what's going to happen in the future. So I think that there is an opportunity still for with LLMs, also just helping to automate these processes, but like use your brain, use your skills, use your taste, use your ambition to sit and look at something and make some adjustments with your hands and decide like, this is what we can do. And here's the ideas that I have. Now, implementing that, yeah, I mean, that's where like designers…

Speaker 3

There's one question that I can't stop asking myself. What if companies apply to talk to you rather than the other way around? And that question is the foundation for the all-new Dive Talent Network. And it's working. Like right now, I'm helping many of the most exciting startups that I know to…

Speaker 4

Okay, so then I'm going to go down a little quick rabbit trail then and talk a bit about how your workflow has evolved over the last year and a half, two years since we've talked, because you're somebody who. Has been able to own a heck of a lot of code historically, where people like me all of a…

Derek Briggs

one, I'm always trying to solve the customer issues. Like, what are the problems that merchants and our buyers are running into and researching what the solution is there? What's the North Star? Where do we want to be to accomplish this? There's just so many data inputs that you can pull from, pull…

Speaker names come from our own diarization. The position is estimated from where the line sits in the episode.
“It's important to me that folks are not using AI to do 10 times more work. It's important to me that it's making them 10 times better. … What are you doing with the extra time? And that's, I think, the thing that's really important to me, that I'm spending the extra time that's now freed up on how can I make my work even better.” — Derek Briggs, Dive Club 🤿

Asked what he looks for when hiring designers to raise the craft bar at Shopify, Briggs says some people use AI to do more output and get lazier. He wants people who put the time AI saves back into quality.

Dive Club 🤿 · 2026-11-03 Permalink → Listen →
Dive Club 🤿 Around 45:51 into the episode
Derek Briggs

…systematic level: how do we deploy this preference across an entire company, not just in a specific area? I think companies are wasting their time if they're trying to hire tons of these people to be responsible of all these areas when you can very horizontally deploy them through Markdown.

Speaker 4

…want to bring into Shopify to continue to raise the bar for craft and quality, and what are some of the very specific things that you're looking for? Like, can we talk a little bit about your evaluation process for new hires? Because I know you're hiring for a bunch of different roles right now.

Derek Briggs

Yeah. It's really important to me that folks are not using AI to do 10 times more work. It's important to me that it's making them 10 times better. So what they used to be doing by hand all of the time and they're extremely good at, how can they make that even better? Like, how can they make the quality of that output even better? I also can sense some folks just getting lazier. And again, that's the part of doing 10 times more work because they're like, all right, I can automate all of this stuff. What I could do now, I can do a bunch of. Yeah, that's so true. And we all do that. But what are you doing with the extra time? And that's, I think, the thing that's really important to me is that I'm spending the extra time that's now freed up. And how can I make my work even better? And right now is influencing other people and influencing the output of other folks on our teams to reach their capability that maybe they didn't feel like they were that was possible. So it's a lot of sort of thought sharing and what I'm doing to inspire them so that they can start doing more of this stuff too. And again, that compounds…

Speaker 4

think this conversation created a lot of alleyways for people to deploy that hunger and different rabbit trails to go down, even down to just how specifically you leveled up. I'm sure hundreds of people are going to use this as inspiration for easing curves and how products feel. And there's just…

Derek Briggs

Yeah, my pleasure, man.

Speaker 2

Hey, if you enjoyed this episode, don't forget that every Thursday I go live with Tommy Gioko for Dive Radio, where we deep dive into trending topics and hear from a ton of incredible designers in the industry. So if you want to get that on your calendar, just go to dive.club/slash radio and I'll…

Speaker names come from our own diarization. The position is estimated from where the line sits in the episode.

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