Replit exists to let anyone build software without having to write code. Yet Haya Odeh, its Co-Founder and VP of Design, spent years learning the language of developers anyway.

Today Replit is one of the world’s most widely used platforms for software creation, with over 50 million users and five million apps created. Getting there required thousands of design decisions, some as big as requiring her team to design in Replit, others as small as swapping "deploy" for "publish," a single word change that got millions of people to ship. She also took CS classes herself, and believes every designer should know enough to take the wheel when the software fails. The easier she makes it look, the more obsessive the work behind it.

Recently, she sat down with the Reach team to talk about her path into design, how Replit’s design team grew alongside the product, and the kind of taste she thinks every designer needs… The kind that notices the difference between 1% gray and white.

In today’s issue:

Read time: 6 minutes

Reach: What was your journey to a design career?

Haya: When I finished high school and was deciding on a major, my sister told me about a new major called graphic design. I learned all the fundamentals: drawing lines, shapes, light, shadow, architecture, interior design, typography, calligraphy, graphic user interfaces, websites, posters, branding…

After graduating, I worked on magazines and newspapers, designing ads and other things. I didn't feel like I was tapping into my potential, though, so I started redesigning websites. At the time, I didn't have the design language to fully know what I was doing, other than "I don't think this site looks as good as it should."

When I first met Amjad [Replit's other co-founder and CEO], he asked me to design the logo and UI for the first version of Replit. Then I followed him to New York, where I applied to jobs as a graphic designer. It felt a bit like the Hunger Games, with all the best in the world competing. I reminded myself of my strengths. I know two languages very well, English and Arabic, and came across something called internationalization design: how can you design for two audiences who speak two different languages?

I later found a course from General Assembly called Introduction to UI/UX. For the first time, I felt like, "This is it!" If I had to describe the kind of designer I am, I am an experiences designer. I'm really good about things that make you feel good and how it makes you feel good.

What are some design principles that you consistently return to?

People can overcomplicate things, so I always like to simplify to what users really want. There are user needs, the business needs, and the brand goals. When a designer can synthesize these needs, they can find a sort of Holy Grail.

What is on you, and what is on me? Sometimes, people want to put it all on the users to figure out, and that dialogue is missing.

I always come back to: Is it clear? Is it understandable? Do the expectations make sense? Who is doing what? Once these are clear, users start trusting the product more and more, and everything else will click.

As Replit went from focusing on developers to non-technical users, what was an important design choice to help that transition?

Language is very important, and small changes can make a big difference.

Back when we were focusing on developers, the product language was catered for technical people — terms like "deploy," "object storage," "fork."

When we saw they were confused, we tested "publish" versus "deploy," and "publish" performed much better. When we made this change, people created many more apps.

What design tools does your team use?

Whether it's sketches or prototypes, all our designers work in Replit. I made it mandatory for my team to dogfood our product.

It feels so good to see real prototypes come alive in Replit, versus looking at still pictures on Figma or other tools. It gives the designers more autonomy, and it makes the design feel more real when they can see something come to life themselves. Designers can tell the AI agent, "I want that animation to happen." And by the time they're handing something off to engineering, the work is already so detailed that [engineers] don't even have to wonder how to implement it.

If you were to start your design career again today, what would you prioritize?

Letting my guard down, and understanding how to listen to people, took me some time, because the practices I had learned were "the designer is always right." Feedback is such a blessing, and I wish I embraced that earlier on.

Another thing I would prioritize is trying to understand computers more. I took many development classes to learn how to code so that I could communicate with engineers. Now, do future designers need all of this? Maybe not; my passion is that with Replit they don't need to know everything in such detail. When you're in a self-driving car, you don't want to be relying on it without knowing how to drive. What if something happened with the software? You should be able to take the wheel.

“Taste” is a word we hear a lot these days. How is good design taste developed in the age of AI?

AI can follow established design guidelines and systems, and it's great that it can take these details off my plate. But I worry when new generations of designers take the fundamentals for granted. I've seen this with some young designers who don't notice certain things, like the difference between 1% gray and white. Or when something is mathematically centered, but visually it's not centered to the human eye.

Practice is important for any artist. The more you do something, the more you realize you like things in certain ways, and the more you discover who you are.

For the full interview: https://www.reachcapital.com/resources/thought-leadership/design-replit-haya-odeh/

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Until the next push, 

Valentina & the Reach Capital team

Reach Capital invests in early-stage founders redefining how we learn, live, and work. Our portfolio of 130+ startups includes tools you might’ve used in school (ClassDojo, Desmos, Brilliant) and next-gen, AI-native disruptors shaping how future generations build, work, and thrive (like Replit and GPTZero). 

These teams are constantly on the lookout for talented builders. Share what you’re studying, building, or exploring, and we’ll intro you to projects, people, and paid opportunities for you to build upon.