Interview with Escha Vera on designing Perplexity Comet

Deep dive into her design process and what it looks like to use AI like an artist:

Topics

• How she designed Comet onboarding experience

• Creating generative invite codes using multiple AI tools

• How she created the Perplexity design system from scratch

• How she productized AI without leading with chat interfaces or prompts

• What are her principles for designing AI experiences that prioritize usability

• + a lot more

Chapters

0:00 Intro

1:13 How Escha got to Perplexity

3:50 Creating the Comet design system

11:34 Prototyping in code

15:11 Designing the Comet onboarding

21:17 Designing generative invite codes

27:36 Figuring out who Comet is for

31:50 Designing the core AI UX

36:53 Whether or not to have a new tab page

38:56 Making key decisions as a designer

41:38 Lessons learned on previous design systems

44:34 How Escha thinks about designing AI experiences

51:41 How to use AI like an artist