Context Doesn't Travel on Its Own
What changes when the person approving your work wasn’t there when it started, and 5 moves for bringing a new decision-maker along without stopping the work.
Latest work from the portfolio
Everything, organized by how you read.
Context Doesn't Travel on Its Own
What changes when the person approving your work wasn’t there when it started, and 5 moves for bringing a new decision-maker along without stopping the work.
A Roadmap Slide Is an Interface
The question executives asked in almost every planning review I sat in this week, 5 ways to design a roadmap so it answers that question first, and 4 books on showing how sure you are.
The Small Ask Inside the Big Questions
A review that opened with 10 minutes of silence, the one critique I had for a strong doc, and how to make sure a room knows what you need from it.
Debating The Code
Two design leaders who took their craft into the codebase this month, why fixing the component beats fixing the screen, and where agent-assisted fixes ran out of road.
The Pile Nobody Owns
A rule for work that has an owner, the larger pile of work that doesn’t, and what design leaders can do about shared problems without claiming them forever.
Why A Great Homepage Is So Hard To Build
Why the first screen of a product is so hard to get right, the sentence that settled a debate between 2 surfaces, and 4 books on deciding what deserves someone’s attention.
Bookends
A special edition for the start of Q4: 4 write-ups worth a second read before planning season, and the books behind each one.
Show the Bridge, Not the Shore
A vision that only paints the destination is a wish, and wishes don't move people. The credibility lives in the path. Draw the bridge, not just the shore.
Prioritization Isn't Real Until the Swap Is Named
A harsh comment in an executive review turned into a week of thinking about trade-offs, who names them, and why addition without subtraction reads as capacity.
Build and Maintain
Role lines are blurring faster than titles can follow. A descriptor that can move first, plus a set of books on framing your focus area.
Leverage Is What You Already Know
A cohort of designers and PMs got write access to the repo and a cloud agent this week. The best advice in the room was: don't become engineers.
A Working Feature Isn't the Same as a Trusted One
A feature that worked but didn’t feel safe, the pause a squad chose on their own, and the question I’m adding to every product review as automation grows.
Good Isn't Great
A designer’s agent-built fix for sideways card photos, the thumbnail choice that refused to pretend, and the gap between fixing something and finishing it.
Know What to Doubt
Why tickets now carry a human-written and a machine-written version, how to label which is which, and a better headline for designers who build.
Three Lattes, One Order
What goes wrong when the same work lives in 3 documents, why blurred roles in a builder model make it worse, and the one-table PRD I’d put in their place.
Silos Aren't the Price of Autonomy
What leaders owe teams building the same thing in parallel, why working in silos isn’t what autonomy costs, and 4 moves for converging without slowing anyone down.
New Patterns Are a Tax
The 2 design principles that came out of design crit this month, the one-line CSS change that made a table easy to scan, and 4 books on keeping a product simple as it grows.