It Took Me 1 Week to Redesign This Screen

Airtable is one of the biggest tools in the world for building tools and workflows without knowing how to code. By the end of 2021, they were worth about $12 billion. Now the market valued them closer to $3 billion. Pause because at the time of editing this video, Airtable just got acquired by Bending Spoon for $1.285 billion. So the valuation was not exactly right. And it's also unfortunate that They got acquired. Back to the video. Last year, the CEO made a big change. Airtable is now an AI-native company, which brings me to the screen I actually want to talk about in this video. This one. This is the bet an entire company is repositioning itself around, and it's also one of the toughest screens to figure out that hundreds of other tools also have. So I redesigned it 5 times. Well, you'll see. Let's get into it and let me know your favorite one in the comments. But before I touch anything, let's look at what this screen actually does. Because it starts before the screen. When you sign up, Airtable asks you 3 things: your company name, your industry, and your team and role. And look at what it did with your 3 answers. It gives you pre-written prompts you can go through with this button right here, change suggestions. Click it and you get another one and then another one and another one. Now, I want to be fair here because this is better than most start screens have. It knows where you work and the cards down here do change based on the company and the project you're on. That's very important to build momentum for new users so that there is some sort of connection and trust between you two. And honestly, Airtable having millions of teams building with their product, they already kind of know some patterns between teams and projects. So they probably do have a pretty good idea of what someone in your role is about to build. So prediction is not the real problem, but relying on it entirely is because Look at what you actually get. 18 cards. And 18 is fine. It's not too overwhelming, but there's no filter, no way to say, you know what, just show me the marketing cards. If none of them are what you want, you've got exactly one move left, hoping to get a good idea out of it. Oh, and this, the background, I'm not a big fan of it. The shapes are changing, the colors as well, right behind everything you're supposed to scan and be focused on. We'll come back to that because I think there might be a good fix for it without losing the personality. Here's the first exploration I did. The first one is kind of like the boring one. You've got the same elements, nothing new in the architecture. I'm just fixing and refining what's already there. Spacing gets a better system. Information on the cards gets cleaned up to make it easier to scan. And the background stops moving, finally. You're basically asking someone to come up with new ideas and trying to put them into words, especially for the first few times you're using the product. And there are all of those shapes and colors moving around distracting you. Now the group and the projects get pulled forward with that nice blue color. They stop being kind of like breadcrumbs almost. And honestly, it's pretty good. That could be the redesign of the video, but it still has one problem I couldn't design my way out of. It's still 50/50. Half the screen wants you to type stuff, half the screen wants you to browse stuff. Then neither one really wins at getting your full attention. And I really believe that it's not something improving the design. Visually will fix. It's just going to make it look better. So I went all in and explored both extremes. Here, an idea is not a suggestion. It's the foundation of the whole experience. You start from a word, a goal, the description with the prompt bar, and then you refine it right on the screen. You add elements, you refine the prompt, you explore the options, and you pick your starting point. And down here, a search and an action bar to narrow things down without ever leaving the page. But now imagine what happens When a first-time user lands here, it feels more like a super complex control center. And that's kind of like the problem. We've still got the same friction that hasn't been solved. Let's flip the script and go all in on writing what you want. The prompt bar is the screen now. Lots of space and only one thing to do pretty much. With most of the attention being now on the prompt itself, the rest is a little bit more pushed in the back and less of a priority. And the ideas are now pills. All of that information, the description, the previews, the metadata pushed one click away. The framing here is different too. The prompt isn't really the finish line anymore. It's more like step one of that process. You give the big picture first and then you refine it as you go. This is to me the calmest version by far because nothing is competing. You look at it and you know kind of what to do and then you just start typing. But Big type means that you cannot write much. So this beautiful design to describe your idea doesn't really have room for your idea. Now this is where things start clicking. We group the ideas and the templates together, and the logic is simple. A long list of cards means you scroll, you scan, you read. Every single one of those is a small cost, which one, quickly adds up, and two, you're paying it Before you've actually built anything. Categories flip that. You start with a category, that's a cheap decision to make. Add shortcuts on top of this and it becomes really powerful. So this one isn't wrong, it just feels kind of unfinished. I made browsing cheaper to use, but I still haven't found the answer to the other question, the one from the very first screen. What is the prompt bar actually for? Now we are so close. This is where it all starts coming together. It's the combination of every good thing we've had from the 4 previous versions. You start with the input. It's not a big and dramatic text field anymore. It's not asking you to know exactly what you want. It's not prefilled with AI's guesses. It's just always there, ready when you want it. It's giving you this feeling that you can keep refining it because it will always be there throughout the whole process. So it lowers the pressure and creates more opportunities to come up with new ideas. It's not just an assistant that appears and disappears. Here is the product is the bet. It's here with you throughout the whole experience. Then for the cards, this is the part where I'm actually keeping what Airtable already does with only 6 options, but it cannot be the only path. So when none of them are hitting right, you go to the view more and you land here, which is a mix of that table layout and the category suggestions we explored earlier. The categories become more customized and intent based. You start with a category or a goal, you filter it down, you find what you want. Perfect for discovery and keeping users active on the platform. And if you still want to create your own, the input bar is right here. There are 3 ways to move forward basically, and all of them are low commitment. So what's the problem? Why is the video still going? And by the way, if you're still watching, make sure to leave a like and subscribe. But the reason is, it's because everything on this screen is good, but it's not great. Look at the cards. They tell you the name of the thing, but they don't show you the thing. Campaign Manager, for example, that's just one line of text and that's it. I'm still asking you to trust and imagine something that might not be right. You're not quite sure what to expect yet. And that's the easiest way to lose users and lose their trust. And the input bar is still white, which is fine, but it's on a white background with just that blue gradient helping to differentiate the two. And how is it going to evolve throughout the flow and experiences that you go through to build Those tables and those workflows and those tools. And if 6 cards are not right, there's still only one door to go through it. You either leave or you type. But the real problem is bigger than any of that. Take the logo of this screen. What product is this? It could be anyone's. Sure, it's a good AI start screen, but it's just not Airtable's. And if you're going to redesign the single most important screen at a company, Betting everything on this exact moment. It has to feel like something. So I did one more exploration. I locked in and I refined that screen a lot of times to create something that would make it unique and still encapsulates what we've been exploring up until this point. And the first thing you will notice is that at the core of the screen, it's the ideas. It's what the platform already believes you're here to build. The context control stays because that part was already right for the marketing team doing content creation. It's the same information Airtable already has about you. It's just yours to change now. But the most important part is that it has filters and search with that view more button as well, which sounds pretty normal just saying like it has search and filtering. But after everything we've gone through, it kind of makes sense and becomes a pretty important part of the design. In the 5th exploration, if the ideas were not right, you would have left. On this exploration, you can narrow it down right here. It's powerful and simple. And the cards finally show you the thing instead of just saying it. That's a real benefit because you can see what to expect next. And that's kind of like the power user exploration from version 2, except that it's not a control panel with a text-heavy table anymore. It's a cleaner, easier to scan grid of ideas and templates. And the input bar is darker now. Even the colored background I didn't like in the Airtable initial design, I added it back here. In Exploration 5, it was sitting at the bottom of the page to still add some life and branding into it. Here it's doing the exact same thing at a fraction of the cost or weight, whatever you want it to be. And it's here to help you focus, not distract you. It's simple and powerful at the same time, which is what Airtable has been doing for over a decade now. But here's the part I like most. This screen gets better the more you use it. Every table you build, every filter you set, every idea you skip, that's something the AI can remember. So the ideas it shows you next month should be better than the ones it's showing you today. And the more you use it, refine it, create with it, the better the predictions are going to be. Instead of one guess and a button to reshuffle, you can go deep or you can start right away. And either way, there's no pressure to make it perfect on the first try because The input never goes away. That's the whole goal. A first screen should not ask you to be right. It should make it cheap to be wrong and easy to refine. So putting it all together, ideas that put you at the center stage because the platform already knows something about you, context you can actually change and have a positive impact on, filters and search right where you need them to be, a library full of ideas one click away, and an input that's always on so nothing has to be right the first time. This screen, in my opinion, encapsulates everything Airtable is about. A simple yet powerful tool that sets your whole team up for long-term success. Now, I picked number 6. You saw all of them. Tell me which one is actually your favorite, because I feel like some of you are power users and would want something closer to number 2. Maybe others might actually prefer the polished original version. So let me know in the comments. And if you like this video, give it a like and subscribe. And also make sure to follow me on X if you haven't already. I post designs almost daily there, and I see you for the next one. Bye.