The secret to great software | Aravind Srinivas and Lex Fridman

Summary

The transcript discusses the inspiration from Larry Page's approach to product development, emphasizing the importance of search and hiring talented PhDs during the internet bust. It highlights the obsession with reducing latency to enhance user experience, as seen in products like Google Chrome and Spotify. The 'user is never wrong' philosophy is underscored, advocating for products that cater to user laziness by predicting intent and providing intuitive interfaces. The narrative also touches on the challenges of balancing feature development for power users without alienating new users, drawing parallels to Google's minimalist design and the importance of suggesting questions to guide user interaction.

Takeaways

• 🚀 **Inspiration from Larry Page**: The speaker was inspired by Larry Page's approach to focus on search and hire talented PhDs during the internet bust, leveraging the market to acquire great talent at a lower cost.
• 🧠 **Emphasis on Core Infrastructure**: Larry Page's strategy to build a strong core infrastructure with a focus on research and reducing latency was highlighted as a key to success.
• 📊 **Latency Matters**: The obsession with reducing latency in products like Google Chrome and the speaker's own app, Perplexity, is emphasized as crucial for a seamless user experience.
• 🌐 **Testing on Suboptimal Conditions**: Larry Page's practice of testing Chrome on old hardware to ensure it performs well under all conditions is mentioned as a valuable approach.
• 🔍 **User-Centric Design**: The 'user is never wrong' philosophy is discussed, advocating for product design that accommodates user errors and provides high-quality experiences regardless of user input quality.
• 💡 **Prompt Engineering**: The importance of being a good 'prompt engineer' is highlighted, focusing on predicting user intent and providing relevant responses even from poorly constructed queries.
• 🛠️ **Design for Laziness**: The idea that a better product allows users to be 'lazy' by minimizing the effort required to use it effectively is explored.
• 🤔 **Catering to Curiosity**: The challenge of translating human curiosity into well-articulated questions is discussed, and how产品设计 should assist users in this process.
• 📱 **Mobile App Design Considerations**: The speed of user interface elements like the keyboard appearing in mobile apps is noted as an important detail in user experience design.
• 🔄 **Balancing Feature Growth and Usability**: The dilemma of adding features for power users versus maintaining simplicity for new users is touched upon, with references to how different products handle this trade-off.

Q & A

What was Larry Page's contrarian insight regarding product development?

Instead of focusing on building a traditional business or marketing team, Larry Page realized the importance of search and decided to hire as many PhDs as possible to focus on building core infrastructure and deeply grounded research.

Why was it advantageous for Google to hire PhDs during the internet bust?

During the internet bust, many PhDs who had worked at other internet companies were available at a lower market rate, allowing Google to acquire great talent at a reduced cost.

How did Larry Page's focus on latency influence product development?

Larry Page was obsessed with reducing latency, which became a core focus in product development. This obsession led to a significant improvement in user experience, making products like Chrome and Google Search fast and efficient even on older devices and poor internet connections.

What is the 'user is never wrong' philosophy and how does it impact product design?

The 'user is never wrong' philosophy suggests that the product should always provide high-quality answers regardless of the user's input, even if it contains typos or is poorly constructed. This approach forces product designers to focus on understanding user intent and improving the product to cater to all users, including those who may not be adept at formulating clear queries.

How does the 'user is never wrong' philosophy relate to prompt engineering?

Prompt engineering should aim to create products that understand user intent even when the user does not ask for something explicitly. This philosophy encourages designing products that anticipate user needs and provide the desired information or functionality without requiring the user to ask for it.

What is the significance of latency in software product success?

Latency is a critical factor in the success of a software product as it directly affects user experience. Low latency can make a product feel responsive and addictive, while high latency can lead to user frustration and a negative experience.

How does the speaker apply Larry Page's insights to their own product, Perplexity?

The speaker applies Larry Page's insights by ensuring that Perplexity works well even on poor internet connections, such as flight Wi-Fi, and by focusing on reducing latency in all aspects of the product, including the speed of the search bar and keypad appearance.

What is the role of 'people also ask' or suggested questions in product design?

Suggested questions or 'people also ask' features help minimize the effort required to ask a question and predict user intent. They assist users in formulating queries and can guide them towards interesting or relevant questions, which is particularly helpful for users who may not be skilled at asking good questions.

Why is it important for products to allow users to be 'lazy'?

Allowing users to be 'lazy' means designing products that are intuitive and require minimal effort to use. This approach can lead to a better user experience, as it accommodates a wide range of users, including those who may not want to invest time in learning complex features.

How does the design of Perplexity aim to minimize user effort?

Perplexity is designed to minimize user effort by predicting user intent, providing suggested questions, and ensuring that the product is fast and efficient even on poor internet connections. The design also focuses on small details like having the cursor ready in the search bar and auto-scrolling to the bottom of the answer.

What challenges does product design face when balancing features for new and existing users?

Product design faces the challenge of balancing features that cater to power users without overwhelming new users. As products grow, there is a need to add features that enhance the experience for existing users, but this can make the product more complex and less accessible for newcomers.

Outlines

00:00

🔍 The Vision of Larry Page and Google's Early Focus on Search

The speaker discusses how Larry Page's unique approach to product development influenced their own. Instead of following the conventional path of building a business and marketing team, Page chose to focus on search technology, hiring numerous PhDs during a time when many were available at lower costs due to the internet bust. This strategy led to a strong emphasis on core infrastructure and research, particularly on reducing latency, which was not a common focus at the time. The speaker shares anecdotes about Page's attention to detail, such as testing Chrome on old hardware to ensure performance, and applies similar principles to their own app, ensuring it works well even on poor Wi-Fi connections. The importance of latency in user experience is highlighted, with examples from successful products like Spotify. The speaker also mentions the philosophy 'the user is never wrong,' which has guided their approach to product development, focusing on user intent and providing high-quality answers regardless of user input quality.

05:00

💡 Designing for User Laziness and the Power of Suggestion

The speaker emphasizes the importance of designing products that cater to user laziness, allowing for quick and easy use. They discuss the challenge of translating human curiosity into well-articulated questions and how their product aims to minimize the effort required to ask questions, drawing inspiration from Google's 'people also ask' and auto-suggestion features. The speaker also talks about the delicate balance between simplicity and feature richness in product design, acknowledging the trade-offs between catering to new users and maintaining power users. They mention the importance of predicting user intent and providing a clean, minimal interface, while also considering the anxiety that can come with overly simple designs. The discussion includes the challenge of growing a user base while retaining existing users and the need to balance feature additions for different user groups.

10:02

🚀 Balancing Feature Growth for New and Existing Users

In this paragraph, the speaker delves into the complexities of product design and growth, particularly the challenge of adding features that appeal to both new and existing users. They mention the example of a Facebook data scientist who emphasized the importance of features that cater to new users for the platform's growth. The speaker acknowledges the ongoing debate about product design and the difficulty of striking the right balance between adding features for power users and maintaining a user-friendly experience for newcomers. The paragraph concludes with a reflection on the inherent challenges in product development and growth, suggesting that there is no one-size-fits-all solution and that each product must find its own path to success.

Keywords

💡Contrarian Insight

Contrarian Insight refers to the ability to see things differently from the majority and make decisions based on those unique perspectives. In the video, Larry Page is highlighted for his contrarian insight to focus on search quality and hire PhDs during the internet bust, which was an unconventional strategy at the time. This insight led to Google's success by prioritizing core infrastructure and research over traditional business and marketing teams.

💡Arbitrage

Arbitrage in this context refers to taking advantage of a price discrepancy between two markets. The script mentions an arbitrage opportunity during the internet bust where talented PhDs were available at lower market rates. This allowed Google to hire top talent like Jeff Dean, which was crucial for their core infrastructure development.

💡Latency

Latency in the video refers to the delay before a transfer of data begins following an instruction for its transfer. The script emphasizes the importance of reducing latency in software products, such as Chrome, to improve user experience. Larry Page's obsession with latency, even on older hardware and poor internet connections, is highlighted as a key factor in Google's success.

💡User Experience (UX)

User Experience (UX) is the overall experience a user has when interacting with a product. The video discusses how reducing latency and focusing on details like cursor placement in the search bar can significantly enhance UX. A good UX can make a product addictive and reduce user frustration, as seen with Google's search and Spotify's music streaming.

💡Prompt Engineering

Prompt Engineering is the process of designing prompts in a way that guides users to interact effectively with AI systems. The video talks about how products like Perplexity aim to understand user intent even from poorly constructed queries, which is a form of prompt engineering. It's about making the product intuitive and user-friendly.

💡User is Never Wrong

This philosophy suggests that the product should always aim to meet user needs and expectations, even if the user's input is not perfect. The video uses the example of Google's early days, where the focus was on providing high-quality answers regardless of the query's quality. This approach forces product teams to build systems that are highly adaptable and user-centric.

💡Autocomplete

Autocomplete is a feature that predicts the rest of a word or a query as the user types. The script mentions Google's 'people also ask' and autocomplete features as ways to minimize the effort required to ask a question and predict user intent. This feature enhances user experience by making interaction with the product more efficient.

💡Product Design

Product Design in the video refers to the process of creating a product that balances simplicity and functionality. It discusses the challenge of making a product that is simple enough for new users but also rich in features for power users. The video uses Google's minimalistic design as an example of effective product design.

💡Growth Hacking

Growth Hacking is a process that involves rapid experimentation across marketing channels to identify the most effective, efficient ways to grow a user base. The video mentions a Facebook data scientist's approach to growth, emphasizing the importance of focusing on features that attract new users rather than just satisfying existing ones.

💡Clutter

Clutter in the context of the video refers to unnecessary elements in a user interface that can overwhelm or confuse users. The speaker discusses the desire to keep the user interface clean and minimal, likening it to a well-maintained, clean house. This approach to design aims to reduce cognitive load and enhance user satisfaction.

Highlights

Larry Page's contrarian insight to focus on search and hire PhDs during the internet bust for talent at a lower cost.

The importance of hiring great talent like Jeff Dean to build core infrastructure and conduct deep research.

Larry's obsession with latency, testing Chrome on old hardware to ensure performance even under poor conditions.

The philosophy that the user is never wrong, which drives product development to be user-centric.

The impact of latency on user experience and how reducing it can lead to an addictive product.

The attention to detail in product design, such as cursor placement in the search bar, to enhance user experience.

The concept of designing products to work well even with user errors, typos, or speech transcription mistakes.

The idea that a better product should allow users to be 'lazier' by anticipating their needs.

The challenge of helping users articulate their curiosity into well-constructed queries.

The use of 'people also ask' and auto-suggestions to minimize the effort required to ask a question.

The design decision to show or hide shortcuts in the user interface based on user preferences.

The balance between minimalism in design and providing enough guidance for new users.

The trade-off between adding features for power users and maintaining simplicity for new users.

The importance of product design in growth, focusing on features that benefit new users over existing ones.

The story of Google's early design, which was minimalistic with just a logo and a search bar.

The challenge of product design in balancing simplicity with the need to showcase features.

The debate on whether forcing users to think and articulate their queries is beneficial or not.

Transcripts

Larry Pages inspired me in many other

ways too like

um when the products started getting

users uh I think instead of focusing on

going and building a business team

marketing team the traditional how

internet businesses worked at the time

he had the contrarian insight to say hey

search is actually going to be important

so I'm going to go and hire as many phds

as possible

and there was this Arbitrage that

internet bust was happening at the time

and so a lot of phds who went and worked

at other internet companies were

available at at at not a great market

rate so uh you could spend less get

great talent like Jeff Dean uh and and

like you know really focus on building

core infrastructure and like like deeply

grounded research and the obsession

about latency that was you take it for

granted today but I don't think that was

obvious I even read that um at the time

of launch of chrome uh Larry would test

Chrome intentionally on very old

versions of Windows on very old

laptops and and complain that the

latency is bad obviously you know the

engineers could say yeah you're testing

on some crappy laptop that's why it's

happening but Larry would say hey look

it has to work on a crappy laptop so

that on a good laptop it would work even

with the worst internet so that's sort

of an Insight I I I apply it like

whenever I'm on a flight I always test

perplexity on the flight Wi-Fi mhm

because flight Wi-Fi usually

sucks and I want to make sure the app is

fast even on that and I Benchmark it

against chat gbt or uh gemini or any of

the other apps and try to make sure that

like the latency is pretty good it's

funny I do think it's a gigantic part of

a success of a software product is the

latency yeah that story is part of of a

lot of the great product like Spotify

that's the story of Spotify in the early

days figure out how to

stream music yeah with very low latency

exactly that's uh it's an engineering

challenge but when it it's done right

like obsessively reducing latency you

actually have there's like a face shift

in the user experience where you're like

holy this becomes addicting and the

amount of times you're frustrated goes

quickly to zero and every detail matters

like on the search bar you could make

the user go to the search bar and click

to start typing a query or you could

already have the cursor ready and so

that they can just start typing every

minutu detail

matters and auto scroll to the bottom of

the answer instead of them forcing them

to scroll or like in the mobile app when

you're clicking uh when you're when

you're touching the search bar the the

speed at which the keypad appears we we

focus on all these details we track all

these latencies and that that's a

discipline that came to us because we

really admired Google and the final

philosophy I take from Larry I want to

highlight here is there's this

philosophy called the user is never

wrong it's a very powerful profound

thing it's very simple but profound if

you like truly believe in it like you

can blame the user for not prompt

engineering right my mom is not very

good at um English she uses

perplexity and she just comes and tells

me the answer is not

relevant I look at her query and I'm

like first instinct is like come on you

didn't you didn't type a proper sentence

here and she's like then I realized okay

like is it her fault like the product

should understand her intent despite

that MH and

um this is a story that Larry says where

like you know they were they just tried

to sell Google to

excite and they did a demo to the exite

CEO where they would fire exite and

Google together and same type in the

same query like University and then in

Google you would rank Stanford Michigan

and stuff exite would just have like

random arbitary

universities and the ex Co would look at

it and it's like that's because you

didn't you know if you typed in this

query it would have worked on exite too

but that's like a simple philosophy

thing like you you just flip that and

say whatever the user types you're

always supposed to give high quality

answers then you build the product for

that you you go you you do all the magic

behind the scenes so that even if the

user was lazy even if there were typos

even if the speech transcription was

wrong they still got the answer and they

allow the product and that CH forces you

to do a lot of things that are corly

focused on the user and also this is

where I believe the whole prompt

engineering like trying to be a good

prompt engineer is not going to like be

a long-term thing I think you want to

make products work where user doesn't

even ask for something but you you know

that they want it and you give it to

them without them even even asking for

it yeah one of the things that perplex

is clearly really good at is figuring

out what I meant from a poorly

constructed query yeah and I don't even

need you to type in a query you can just

type in a bunch of words it should be

okay like that's the extent to which you

got to design the product cuz people are

lazy and a better product should be one

that allows you to be more lazy not not

not

less sure there is some

like like the other side of the argument

is to say you know if if you ask people

to type in clearer sentences it forces

them to think and and and that's a good

thing too but at the end like uh

products need to be having some magic to

them and the magic comes from letting

you be more lazy yeah right it's a it's

a trade-off

but one of the things you could ask

people to do in terms of work is the

clicking choosing

the related the next related step in

their Journey that was a very one of the

most insightful experiments we did after

we launched we we had our designer like

you know co-founders we talking and then

we said hey like the biggest blocker to

us is the biggest enemy to us is not

Google it is the fact that people are

not naturally good at asking questions

mhm like why why is everyone not able to

do podcast like you there is a skill to

asking good

questions and uh everyone's curious

though curiosity is unbounded in this

world every person in the world is

curious but not all of them are blessed

to translate that Curiosity into a well

articulated question there's a lot of

human thought that goes into refining

your curiosity into a question and then

there's a lot of skill into like making

the making sure the question is well

prompted enough for these AIS well I

would say the sequence of questions is

as you've highlighted really important

right so help people ask the question

the first one and and suggest them

interesting questions to ask again this

is an idea inspired from Google like in

Google you you get people also ask or

like suggested questions Auto suggest

bar all that basically minimize the time

to asking a question as much as you can

and truly predict the user

intent it's such a tricky challenge

because to me as we're discussing the

Rel at ated

questions might be primary so like you

might move them up earlier you know what

I mean and that's such a difficult

design decision yeah and then there's

like little design decisions like for me

I'm a keyboard guy so the control eye to

open a new thread which is what I use

yeah it speeds me up a lot but the

decision to

show the short cut mhm in the main

perplexity interface on the desktop yeah

is pretty guts that's a very uh it's

probably you know as you get bigger and

bigger there'll be a debate yeah I like

it but then there's like different

groups of humans exactly I mean some

people I uh I talked to karpati about

this and uses our product he hates the

sidekick the the side panel he just

wants to be Auto hidden all the time and

I think that's good feedback too because

there's like like like the Mind hates

clutter like you when you go into

someone's house you want it to be you

always love it when it's like well

maintain and clean and minimal like

there's this whole photo Steve Jobs uh

you know like in this house where it's

just like a lamp and him sitting on the

floor I always had that Vision when

designing perplexity to be as minimal as

possible Google was also the original

Google was designed like that uh that's

just literally the logo and the search

bar and nothing else I mean there's pros

and cons to that I would say in the

early days of using a product there's a

kind of anxiety when it's too simple

because you feel like you don't know the

the full set of features you don't know

what to do right it's almost seems too

simple like is it just as simple as this

so there's a comfort initially to the

sidebar for example correct uh but again

you know kathi I'm probably me aspiring

to be a power user of things so I do

want to remove the side panel and

everything else and just keep it simple

yeah that's that's the hard part like

when you when you're growing when you're

trying to grow the user base but also

retain your existing users making sure

you're not H how do you balance the

tradeoffs um there's an interesting case

study of this nodes app and uh they just

kept on building features for their

power users and then what ended up

happening is the new users just couldn't

understand the product at all and

there's a whole talk by a Facebook early

Facebook data science person uh who who

is in charge of their growth that said

The more features they shipped for the

new user than existing user they felt

like that was more critical to their

growth and there are like so you can

just debate all day about this and and

this is why like product design like

growth is not easy