# Frontier Dialogues

> Frontier Dialogues Edition 1, a dinner hosted by Raw Materials, looked at what it means to design for intelligent products, as software starts to recognize intent and the paradigms designers have worked within for decades finally move, gathering people shaping design at these edges to compare notes on what becomes possible.

The entire publication is a single long-scroll page at https://www.frontierdialogues.com/. The links below are section anchors within that one page. The conversation is documented in eight chapters, written to keep the evening's tensions intact rather than smooth them over.

## Publication

- [Frontier Dialogues — Edition 1: Designing for Intelligent Products](https://www.frontierdialogues.com/): The full publication: masthead, primers on Raw Materials and the series, eight chapters, and the guest list.

## Chapters

- [Introduction](https://www.frontierdialogues.com/#ch00): Why the dinner happened: thirteen designers, creative directors, and product leaders at a table in San Francisco, and a piece written to keep the conversation's real, unresolved tensions intact.
- [The Designer's Original Job](https://www.frontierdialogues.com/#ch01): First principles: the designer's job as unlocking computing power, and what happens to that translation layer as computers start to understand intent.
- [WYSIWYG for Everything](https://www.frontierdialogues.com/#ch02): John Roescher's metaphor for effort shifting from the steps to the outcome, and what gets lost when skipping the steps strips out slow reasoning.
- [The Sea of Similarity](https://www.frontierdialogues.com/#ch03): Peter Markatos's prediction that prompt-built products converge into sameness, and the economics of weird.
- [Interfaces as Social Contracts](https://www.frontierdialogues.com/#ch04): Interfaces set standards of behavior; when they're generated, the designer ends up programming morality.
- [Soul and Authenticity](https://www.frontierdialogues.com/#ch05): The word that kept surfacing was soul: what a human spirit responds to in work designed by a human spirit, and what AI cannot fake.
- [The Designer Moves Upstream](https://www.frontierdialogues.com/#ch06): The night's loose agreement: design's center of gravity moves away from what the interface looks like, toward what the system is allowed to do and how it should behave.
- [Closing](https://www.frontierdialogues.com/#ch07): What remains: John Roescher's closing question to the table, and optimism as core to why design exists.

## Guests

- [Guests](https://www.frontierdialogues.com/#attendees): The thirteen attendees of Edition 1, each listed below with role and company as published on the site.
- [Alex Prodaniuk](https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-prodaniuk-810257a3): Designer, Canary's Revenge
- [Amy Ni Pan](https://www.linkedin.com/in/amynipan/): Designer, Cohere
- [Conner Drew](https://www.linkedin.com/in/connerdrew): Designer, Monarch Money
- [James Song](https://www.linkedin.com/in/jsong1121): Creative/Designer, Independent
- [John Roescher](https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnroescher/): CEO, Raw Materials
- [Kevin Funkhouser](https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevin-funkhouser-a2626a52): Creative, Meta
- [Madison Behringer](https://www.linkedin.com/in/madisonbehringer/): Designer, Huge
- [Maria Springer](https://www.linkedin.com/in/mariajosemonterov/): Head of Product, Raw Materials
- [Mike Buzzard](https://www.linkedin.com/in/buzzard/): Director UX, Google
- [Pablo Marques](https://www.linkedin.com/in/pablomarques/): Designer/CCO, Raw Materials
- [Peter Markatos](https://www.linkedin.com/in/markatos/): VP of Design, Bumble
- [Rob Young](https://www.linkedin.com/in/robyoungom/): Designer, Coval
- [Saurabh Kakade](https://www.linkedin.com/in/saurabhkakade/): Creative Strategist, Meta Creative Shop

## Host

- [Raw Materials](https://www.therawmaterials.com): An unusual design company: designs and launches unusually creative digital products and brands for partners working at the frontier of technology; D&AD Design Agency of the Year 2024.
- [Email](mailto:Hello@theRAWMATERIALS.COM): Contact for the series and the studio.