The Layer Above the Design System Has No Owner
Why every product org ends up with 4 assistants and 3 hubs, and the small pilot I'd run before arguing for a new team.
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Everything, organized by how you read.
The Layer Above the Design System Has No Owner
Why every product org ends up with 4 assistants and 3 hubs, and the small pilot I'd run before arguing for a new team.
Own the Gates on the Home Surface
What a home surface is for, the 2 rules I gave the designer who owns ours, and why workflow software can't run the consumer experiment model.
What I Ask in Week 1
The questions I ask new hires in their first week, the 1:1 shape they're walking into, and how I set up a pairing with a lead who isn't their manager.
Parity Is Where We Get Into Trouble
Why I'd let a mobile team diverge from the desktop design system when the rationale is strong, and the order I'd give a design system team so it doesn't cost them.
We Already Know Every Request
Why voice-of-the-customer programs stall at the routing step, the agent-driven flow I'd pilot instead, and 4 books on making discovery stick.
Point the Prototype at Real Data
What a full day of building taught us, the loop that turns a prototype into a plan, and the small things (test accounts, open sessions) that decide whether designers build.
Three Options, Then a Fourth
Two presenters, one silent FigJam board, and the small framing moves that made 10 minutes of written feedback land.
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.
One Journey Map, Three Tracks
How a deliberately simple onboarding journey map for group practices became three planning tracks a few weeks before annual planning.
The 90-Minute Problem
Teaching designers and PMs to build turned out to be 2 problems with a shared title. Splitting them changed the whole plan.
9 Tickets and a Coffee Card
A designer stocked a practice board of 9 vetted fixes before the education pilot kicked off. What makes it work, and 2 cautions before you copy it.
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.
Greenhouse or Graveyard
Prototypes are multiplying and living on laptops. The case for a shared shelf, the graveyard fear, and the tending rules that decide which one you get.