Everything, organized by how you read.
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.
Infrastructure, Not a Feeling
Product and design are consolidating under technology leaders across the industry. The design leaders who keep their voice will be the ones who translate it.
CS Wanted B, the Room Wanted A
Two versions of a permissions screen, two stakeholders who wanted different things, and a third version that surfaced in 2 minutes because someone was listening for the need.
We Built You a New Dashboard
A redesigned billing hub landed as a loss in the customer community. The team fixed the announcement before touching the screens.
Judgment Has to Travel Without Us
As PMs and engineers become builders, design judgment has to work in rooms with no designer in them. Three places it has to travel, plus a shelf.
Almost to the T
A design lead on our team pointed an AI model at a Figma file over MCP. What it built, what it cost, and why the list of misses is the real deliverable.
The Earlier You Talk to Finance
Rolling out AI builder tools is mostly choreography with finance, IT, and security. 5 moves from a week of getting a pilot onto the plan.
Velocity Is the Product
The design system vision locked this week around a single measure, and the component count lost the vote.
Nobody Wants to Name the Constraint
Sales and product spent another meeting sequencing a list that exceeds our capacity in any order. On the political comfort of never cutting anything.
When AI writing gets spotted at work
Documents written with machine help are getting flagged on sight. Where the giveaway actually sits, and what rewriting one taught me about the fix.
The Healthiest Room of the Week
A live crit produced public mind-changing three times in an hour, and one of the changed minds was mine.
The System Refused to Improvise
My writing voice became a version-controlled file this week, and the best thing it did was say no. Then a reader's feedback shipped as an amendment.
A Sitcom Walks Into a Spec Review
How a beloved show's act cards became acceptance criteria for a photo-caption feature, kill rule included.