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Julie Zhuo

Julie Zhuo

@julie-zhuo · 43 positions · On ppll ↗

Co-founder of Sundial; former vice president of product design at Facebook; author of The Making of a Manager; writes The Looking Glass.

Julie Zhuo did not write this page.

We collected these quotes from things they published elsewhere, and every quote links to where it was said. They have no account here and have not endorsed this site. Quotes are word for word; the short line under each one is our own restatement, not their wording. Their own site. Is this you? Claim it or ask us to remove it. Or tell us what is wrong here.

13 of Julie Zhuo's claims fit 10 mental models. Most often: Design is how it works, Affordances and signifiers, Conventions (Jakob's law).

Models they name

Their own words name the idea.

Curse of knowledge

Once you know something, you cannot remember not knowing it. Fresh eyes see what you no longer can: a newcomer's, or your own after time away.

Used by 6 others

Rather than coasting on intuition and taste, a data-informed person starts from the assumption that they know nothing.

  1. Julie Zhuo Co-founder of Sundial; former vice president of product… Rather than surfing by on intuition and taste, the data-informed individual adopts a beginner's mindset: Assume you know nothing Stay Healthy. Stay Data-Informed.lg.substack.com · 17 Mar 2020All korrents from this piece
    Rather than surfing by on intuition and taste, the data-informed individual adopts a beginner's mindset: Assume you know nothing

Feedback loops

Shorten the loop between doing and finding out; whatever a loop rewards is what you become.

Used by 62 others

Feedback should be a daily practice rather than a twice-yearly review, because the team that improves one percent a week overtakes the team that improves one percent a month.

Compounding

  1. Julie Zhuo Co-founder of Sundial; former vice president of product… But feedback really in my mind ideally should be like a daily practice because the thing that matters for us in the long run as a team is how quickly are we getting better. So a team that just gets 1% better every week compared to a team that gets 1% better a month is even if they start off at a much lower baseline is going to outperform in a very short amount of time the team that doesn't get better. From managing people to managing AI: The leadership skills everyone needs now | Julie Zhuoyoutube.com · 21 Sept 2025 · 0:58:21 into the videoAll korrents from this video
    But feedback really in my mind ideally should be like a daily practice because the thing that matters for us in the long run as a team is how quickly are we getting better. So a team that just gets 1% better every week compared to a team that gets 1% better a month is even if they start off at a much lower baseline is going to outperform in a very short amount of time the team that doesn't get better.

Make it real

Making a cheap, real version settles questions a description cannot.

Used by 26 others

Mocks and docs are dying: AI-native teams prototype and prune with code-first prototypes instead of static mocks and product requirement documents.

  1. Julie Zhuo Co-founder of Sundial; former vice president of product… Say goodbye to cycles of mock and doc feedback, and say hello to code-first prototypes with constant iteration (on prompts, models, etc) to answer three key questions. The Death of Product Development as We Know itlg.substack.com · 25 Mar 2025
    Say goodbye to cycles of mock and doc feedback, and say hello to code-first prototypes with constant iteration (on prompts, models, etc) to answer three key questions.

Models we see in what they say

Our reading: their claim applies the idea without naming it. The claim is theirs; filing it here is ours.

Design is how it works

Judge a design by what it does for the person using it, not only by how it looks.

Used by 26 others

Design is not how a product looks; it is how it works, and all builders are designers.

  1. Julie Zhuo Co-founder of Sundial; former vice president of product… Design is not the way it looks, or beautiful colors and animations. It's not the brand or the logo. It is how the product works. Designing is the the process of exploring and arriving at a solution. I believe all builders are designers. The Looking Glass: What AI Won't Changelg.substack.com · 20 Apr 2023
    Design is not the way it looks, or beautiful colors and animations. It's not the brand or the logo. It is how the product works. Designing is the the process of exploring and arriving at a solution. I believe all builders are designers.

The most powerful rule for an exceptional interface is that it feels obvious to use; novelty, minimalism and simplicity are means to that, not the end.

Conventions (Jakob's law)

  1. Julie Zhuo Co-founder of Sundial; former vice president of product… Sometimes designers will go to great lengths to make a user interface novel, or minimal, or simple. This is the wrong goal. Novelty, minimalism or simplicity are good heuristics for obviousness, but do not mistake the means for the end. Conversational Interfaces: the Good, the Ugly & the Billion-Dollar Opportunitylg.substack.com · 12 May 2025
    Sometimes designers will go to great lengths to make a user interface novel, or minimal, or simple. This is the wrong goal. Novelty, minimalism or simplicity are good heuristics for obviousness, but do not mistake the means for the end.

Do not judge a product's beauty by its aesthetics; judge it by how it made you feel.

  1. Julie Zhuo Co-founder of Sundial; former vice president of product… Do not judge a product’s beauty by its aesthetics; judge it by how it made you feel. The Looking Glass: How to tell if work is beautifullg.substack.com · 16 Nov 2023
    Do not judge a product’s beauty by its aesthetics; judge it by how it made you feel.

Affordances and signifiers

An interface should show what can be done and where, and give people a model of how it works.

Used by 11 others

A blank chat box is lazy: it violates the first rule of a good user experience, that it is obvious what you can do.

  1. Julie Zhuo Co-founder of Sundial; former vice president of product… The problem with a blank chat box on a blank page is that it violates the first rule of a high-quality user experience: it isn’t obvious what I can do. Conversational Interfaces: the Good, the Ugly & the Billion-Dollar Opportunitylg.substack.com · 12 May 2025
    The problem with a blank chat box on a blank page is that it violates the first rule of a high-quality user experience: it isn’t obvious what I can do.

ChatGPT exploded because of its obvious chat interface, not its technology, which had launched earlier in a different wrapper that few noticed.

  1. Julie Zhuo Co-founder of Sundial; former vice president of product… The technology powering ChatGPT had already launched prior to November 30th, 2022. It was just wrapped in a different interface. Very few people paid attention. Why did ChatGPT explode in popularity? Because of its obvious chat interface, which everyone intuitively already knew how to use it. Conversational Interfaces: the Good, the Ugly & the Billion-Dollar Opportunitylg.substack.com · 12 May 2025
    The technology powering ChatGPT had already launched prior to November 30th, 2022. It was just wrapped in a different interface. Very few people paid attention. Why did ChatGPT explode in popularity? Because of its obvious chat interface, which everyone intuitively already knew how to use it.

Conventions (Jakob's law)

People bring what they learned on every other product, so familiar patterns usually win over novel ones.

Used by 5 others

Obviousness comes from conforming to people's existing mental models: do not reinvent a common UI pattern unless the new one is at least twice as good.

  1. Julie Zhuo Co-founder of Sundial; former vice president of product… Obviousness comes from conforming to people’s existing mental models. Don’t waste time reinventing common UI patterns or paradigms unless they are at least 2x better, or you have some critical brand reason to do so. The Looking Glass: How to tell if work is beautifullg.substack.com · 16 Nov 2023
    Obviousness comes from conforming to people’s existing mental models. Don’t waste time reinventing common UI patterns or paradigms unless they are at least 2x better, or you have some critical brand reason to do so.

The most powerful rule for an exceptional interface is that it feels obvious to use; novelty, minimalism and simplicity are means to that, not the end.

Design is how it works

  1. Julie Zhuo Co-founder of Sundial; former vice president of product… Sometimes designers will go to great lengths to make a user interface novel, or minimal, or simple. This is the wrong goal. Novelty, minimalism or simplicity are good heuristics for obviousness, but do not mistake the means for the end. Conversational Interfaces: the Good, the Ugly & the Billion-Dollar Opportunitylg.substack.com · 12 May 2025
    Sometimes designers will go to great lengths to make a user interface novel, or minimal, or simple. This is the wrong goal. Novelty, minimalism or simplicity are good heuristics for obviousness, but do not mistake the means for the end.

You are not the user

Watch real people use the real thing; your own sense of what is obvious does not count as evidence.

Used by 15 others

If the people a product is designed for cannot generally agree that the design is good, it is not good.

  1. Julie Zhuo Co-founder of Sundial; former vice president of product… If you cannot get a group of people for whom your product is designed for to generally agree that your design is good, it’s not good. The Looking Glass: How to tell if work is beautifullg.substack.com · 16 Nov 2023
    If you cannot get a group of people for whom your product is designed for to generally agree that your design is good, it’s not good.

The more your target audience does not look like you, the more you should be skeptical of your design intuition.

  1. Julie Zhuo Co-founder of Sundial; former vice president of product… The more your target audience does not look like you, the more you should be skeptical of your design intuition. Despite having seen thousands of a/b test results for minor design details, I am still regularly surprised and humbled by my intuition being wrong. The Looking Glass: What AI Won't Changelg.substack.com · 20 Apr 2023
    The more your target audience does not look like you, the more you should be skeptical of your design intuition. Despite having seen thousands of a/b test results for minor design details, I am still regularly surprised and humbled by my intuition being wrong.

Compounding

Small gains that build on themselves beat big one-off wins; so do small losses.

Used by 18 others

Feedback should be a daily practice rather than a twice-yearly review, because the team that improves one percent a week overtakes the team that improves one percent a month.

Feedback loops

  1. Julie Zhuo Co-founder of Sundial; former vice president of product… But feedback really in my mind ideally should be like a daily practice because the thing that matters for us in the long run as a team is how quickly are we getting better. So a team that just gets 1% better every week compared to a team that gets 1% better a month is even if they start off at a much lower baseline is going to outperform in a very short amount of time the team that doesn't get better. From managing people to managing AI: The leadership skills everyone needs now | Julie Zhuoyoutube.com · 21 Sept 2025 · 0:58:21 into the videoAll korrents from this video
    But feedback really in my mind ideally should be like a daily practice because the thing that matters for us in the long run as a team is how quickly are we getting better. So a team that just gets 1% better every week compared to a team that gets 1% better a month is even if they start off at a much lower baseline is going to outperform in a very short amount of time the team that doesn't get better.

Less, but better

Find the essence and cut the rest; simplicity is hard work, not the absence of effort.

Used by 59 others

Better design does not mean more design: the most obvious designs are often invisible.

  1. Julie Zhuo Co-founder of Sundial; former vice president of product… Better design does not mean more design. Often, the most obvious designs are invisible. The Looking Glass: How to tell if work is beautifullg.substack.com · 16 Nov 2023
    Better design does not mean more design. Often, the most obvious designs are invisible.

The map is not the territory

Every model, word or plan is a simplified map of reality; useful when its structure matches, misleading when mistaken for the thing itself.

Used by 55 others

Numbers offer a false precision: which metrics you choose to look at, and whether a five percent rise is good, are both art rather than science.

  1. Julie Zhuo Co-founder of Sundial; former vice president of product… Because it's like okay we got these numbers and the numbers go up. It's like no, the fact that you still have to choose which things you look at is an art, not a science. And your interpretation of if the number went up 5%, is that good? Is that not good? Is also an interpretation and is an is an art, not a science. From managing people to managing AI: The leadership skills everyone needs now | Julie Zhuoyoutube.com · 21 Sept 2025 · 0:35:14 into the videoAll korrents from this video
    Because it's like okay we got these numbers and the numbers go up. It's like no, the fact that you still have to choose which things you look at is an art, not a science. And your interpretation of if the number went up 5%, is that good? Is that not good? Is also an interpretation and is an is an art, not a science.