How They Work

Stumbled on this site called Interface Lovers that just interviews people who make the stuff you use every day. Designers at Spotify, coders at Dropbox, illustrators at Nike—the people building the interfaces and apps that eat up your time. The interviews aren’t polished PR. They talk about their actual setups, what software they use, what keeps them going creatively.

Maybe I’m just nosy about how other people’s minds work. After enough years designing, you know everyone’s process is a little weird, a little chaotic, different from what they’d want you to think. These interviews feel like that—real enough to be useful, personal enough that you remember who’s talking.

What got me was how specific everything is. Julie Delannoy from Product Hunt talks about her setup differently than Helen Tran from Spotify. Karri Saarinen at Airbnb has a completely different head than either of them. Not famous names, just people who’ve shaped things I use and probably never think about. But once you know they exist, you see their fingerprints everywhere.

The other hook is the Spotify playlists. Everyone interviewed puts together a playlist of what they listen to while they work. That’s where it gets interesting. Everything from Active Child to Twenty One Pilots to Maggie Rogers, and suddenly you’re inside someone’s head—what they need to hear to focus, what gets them through a long project. Music is intimate in a way interviews alone can’t be.

I probably spend more time on Interface Lovers than I should. Not because it’s going to change anything. Just because you recognize yourself in some of those answers, and that’s rare enough that you have to sit with it. The site does one thing well: treats these people like they’re interesting. Turns out they are.