Why Design Matters: Lessons from Stripe, Lyft and Airbnb | Design Review

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
Today on Design Review, we'll be doing something a little bit different. I'll be interviewing Katie Dill, Stripe's head of design.

**Katie Dill** (0:06)
The gravitational pull is to mediocrity. It's never easy. There is no black and white answer of like, oh, you ship it when it's this or you ship it when it's that. It's best to always come back to like, well, what problem are we trying to solve and who are we trying to solve it for?

**SPEAKER_1** (0:17)
Katie has led design teams at some of the most successful companies in Silicon Valley, like Lyft, Airbnb, and now Stripe. So I sat down with her to learn about how design played a role in their success and how you can build a culture of high quality design from the earliest days of your startup. Katie, thank you for having us today.

**Katie Dill** (0:44)
Well, thanks for being here at Stripe, and thanks for having me on.

**SPEAKER_1** (0:47)
So our audience is early founders, and I think you and I are very much aligned that we would love to see more great quality design in the world. So I am excited for them all to learn from you today about how to do that, what great design looks like, and how to bring that to their startups at the earliest stages. Maybe to start, why don't you tell us a little bit about your role here at Stripe, and a little bit how the design team operates here.

**Katie Dill** (1:11)
So I lead the design organization, and what that means is that we have the product designers, researchers, content designers that work hand in hand with engineers, product managers, building the product. So for us, that's Stripe billing, that's the checkout, that's pulling together all of the various products that show up in our dashboard or in our consumer interfaces. But also a part of the design organization is the brand studio team that works on our advertisements, our events, our branding, the books we design at Stripe Press. And then lastly, the website team, stripe.com.

**SPEAKER_1** (1:44)
Everybody watching this will probably be familiar with Stripe and Lyft and Airbnb and a number of other companies that you've worked at. And they're also known for having great design and a great user experience. What is the role that you think design played in the success of those companies?

**Katie Dill** (2:01)
It's really interesting if you think also like back to their early days, right? So Airbnb was creating a product that was pretty different at the time, right? Very novel, like, I'm going to stay in somebody else's house. Like, I've never done that before. I don't know. And so design was instrumental in making that something that people could identify with and gain confidence in the safety, security, and enjoyment of that experience. And so the founders did an incredible job bringing very thoughtful details to that experience, like, how is this going to work? How is the money exchange? How are they communicating? How do we portray it on the Internet? And by doing that and really sweating over every one of those details, I think they made it more approachable for somebody to try something new. And I mean, look at them now. That's just grown in such wonderful ways, and they're continuing to make design such an integral part of it. And that same thing for Stripe. Stripe, the founders, when they were creating the early days of these products, it is also something new and different. People were taking payments online, but they had never solved the problem in that way.
And these founders care a lot about every detail of the user experience, and they put that in to the early days of the work, such that people could feel more confidence by seeing how much they cared about the details of just how the interface is portrayed. That like, oh, maybe then you also are going to take very good care of my money, and you're also going to take care of these other parts. It builds that confidence, builds that trust, and also makes the product more functional and easier to use.

**SPEAKER_1** (3:28)
Yeah, it's interesting from the outside, I bet a lot of people think of Airbnb as the UI that you interact with, Lyft, the app that you call a car, Stripe, maybe the developer API or other tools that you have. And they don't think of the holistic experience of what goes on behind the scenes there. And I think one thing that all of those companies have in common is that you need incredibly high levels of trust more than like any other type of B2B software. Stripe, it's moving your money. With Lyft, you're getting a stranger's car. With Airbnb, you're staying at a stranger's house. And if it didn't look trustworthy, and the experience was not a well-oiled machine that felt really friendly and approachable and trustworthy, I don't think those businesses would have worked. I don't know. What do you think?