Sent to you by Dayton Kelly

Designing AGI for Good:

Why OpenAI is My Dream Company

Designing AGI for Good:

Why OpenAI is My Dream Company

Note to reader: I truly appreciate you taking the time to read my message and this quick letter

Hey, I’m Dayton-


I’m a product designer, student and researcher who is dedicated to the craft of human-centered product building. On a personal level, I'm ambitious about living a fulfilling and healthy life.


I'm writing because I want to express my genuine interest and passion to work at OpenAI.


A quick outline for this letter:

Highlights from my background

(2024)

Built a product that uses AI to analyze human intelligence (specifically product designers)

  • Launched a closed beta to ~250 users

  • Co-designed and built the entire concept

  • Wrote the prompt that analyzes human inputs

  • Interviewed 40 design leaders and design recruiters to fuel product decisions and understand their sentiment towards AI


(2021-2024)

Led innovative projects at Publicis Sapient

  • Led a cross-functional team of 3 designers and 2 engineers to spearhead the company’s first Apple Vision Pro R&D initiative

  • Drove UX efforts for XR and blockchain projects, resulting in $4.7M in revenue and recognition through multiple industry awards

  • Designed and shipped several enterprise products and websites


(2022)

Published HCI research that got accepted into the CHI conference

  • Academic research sponsored by Snapchat

  • Augmented reality for activism


(2020-2021)

Led design and research for an early stage AI digital health startup

  • Collaborated closely with the CEO, CTO, and board members to design a compelling prototype, directly contributing to securing $225K in pre-seed funding

  • Interviewed families to understand how predictive AI can spur better health outcomes for aging seniors

Why I am passionate about Open AI

While working on side projects with the OpenAI API, I found myself spending a lot of time prompt engineering in the Assistants playground.


I appreciated how easy it was to get started, but over time, I found it increasingly challenging to get the API to do exactly what I needed. This is an area where I believe design has tremendous potential to enhance the technology behind the API by making the developer experience easier to master and more intuitive. What excites me most is the chance to design experiences that advance the model/API layer of AI.


In June 2023, I wrote an article titled Why Product Designers Need to Care About AI, where I explored how OpenAI would onboard the first billion AI users. Since then, I’ve come to realize that it won't be a billion ChatGPT users, rather it will be a billion users that are interacting with products that leverage the OpenAI API.


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Every time I watch a demo day video from OpenAI, it's clear how deeply the team considers the human impact of their innovations. I would be honored to contribute to a company so deeply committed to a human-centered mission.

AI things I'm thinking about

How might we design a developer experience that reduces time-to-mastery?

How might design help people write better prompts? Better prompts = better outcomes = more trust and adoption


Exploring UI patterns that enable a rich experience in no-code model fine-tuning.


How can AI agents become more accessible for people to build with?


How might AI integrations enable healthier living?

  • Young people and smart phones - mental health

  • Learning about ourselves through our data

Thank you so much for reading my letter.

- Dayton