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Sharing my brain-dumps on product strategy, design systems, and the intersection of human psychology and technology.

A photo-realistic editorial image shot from a slight overhead-and-side angle, looking down at a wide wooden desk in warm tungsten light at night. The desk is covered with the visible residue of a search: a laptop open in the centre showing four browser tabs in the tab bar (the labels readable as logos / favicons for a performance-management dashboard, a journaling app with a "How was your day?" prompt, a generic AI chatbot interface, and a Google Docs page titled "Brag Document — 2026"), with the active tab being the dashboard. To the left of the laptop, a leather-bound A5 notebook lies open, the visible page hand-written in fountain-pen ink with the heading "WHAT I ACTUALLY NEED" underlined twice, and a numbered list of six items written below in legible but personal handwriting (only the first three lines fully readable: "1. asks a question, not a blank field / 2. catches glue work / 3. cadence beats forgetting"). A black uniball pen rests across the page. To the right of the laptop, a half-drunk cup of black coffee sits on a saucer beside a pair of reading glasses. The figure is not in frame — only the workspace tells the story. The wall behind the desk is dark and bare. The room outside the warm desk-lamp pool fades to deep navy-black. The visual focal point is the handwritten list against the glow of the laptop — the moment when the search through other people's tools ended and the writer's own list began. Shot on a 50mm lens at f/2.2, the notebook and laptop screen in sharp focus, the further corners of the desk softly out of focus. The mood is late-evening, slightly exhausted, decisive — the energy of a Sunday night when a personal project has stopped being optional. Lighting evokes the same Edward Hopper *Office at Night* register as the cover for the previous piece in this series, recomposed around a workspace mid-build rather than a workspace mid-paralysis. Photo-realistic.
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May 19, 2026 9m read

I'm Building the Performance-Review Tool That Doesn't Exist.

Eight months scanning four tool categories. Lattice tells managers to use ChatGPT. Day One has no schema for work. Here's the wishlist that came out, and why each item is on it.

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A photo-realistic editorial image shot from a slight overhead-and-side angle, looking down at a wide wooden desk in warm tungsten light at night. The desk is covered with the visible residue of a search: a laptop open in the centre showing four browser tabs in the tab bar (the labels readable as logos / favicons for a performance-management dashboard, a journaling app with a "How was your day?" prompt, a generic AI chatbot interface, and a Google Docs page titled "Brag Document — 2026"), with the active tab being the dashboard. To the left of the laptop, a leather-bound A5 notebook lies open, the visible page hand-written in fountain-pen ink with the heading "WHAT I ACTUALLY NEED" underlined twice, and a numbered list of six items written below in legible but personal handwriting (only the first three lines fully readable: "1. asks a question, not a blank field / 2. catches glue work / 3. cadence beats forgetting"). A black uniball pen rests across the page. To the right of the laptop, a half-drunk cup of black coffee sits on a saucer beside a pair of reading glasses. The figure is not in frame — only the workspace tells the story. The wall behind the desk is dark and bare. The room outside the warm desk-lamp pool fades to deep navy-black. The visual focal point is the handwritten list against the glow of the laptop — the moment when the search through other people's tools ended and the writer's own list began. Shot on a 50mm lens at f/2.2, the notebook and laptop screen in sharp focus, the further corners of the desk softly out of focus. The mood is late-evening, slightly exhausted, decisive — the energy of a Sunday night when a personal project has stopped being optional. Lighting evokes the same Edward Hopper *Office at Night* register as the cover for the previous piece in this series, recomposed around a workspace mid-build rather than a workspace mid-paralysis. Photo-realistic.
May 19, 2026 9min

I'm Building the Performance-Review Tool That Doesn't Exist.

Eight months scanning four tool categories. Lattice tells managers to use ChatGPT. Day One has no schema for work. Here's the wishlist that came out, and why each item is on it.

A photo-realistic editorial image of a single mid-career professional, viewed from over the shoulder at a slight downward angle, seated at a clean wooden desk in low warm tungsten light at night. The figure is anonymous — head and face cropped out of frame at the top — wearing a charcoal-grey knit sweater with sleeves slightly pushed up. On the desk, a laptop is open showing a generic web-form interface with a single oversized empty text box labelled "What did you accomplish this period?" — the cursor visible as a thin vertical line in the otherwise blank field. Beside the laptop, a half-drunk cup of black coffee, a closed notebook, and a pen left across its cover. The wall behind the desk is bare and dark. The room outside the warm desk-lamp pool fades to deep navy-black. The mood is quiet, late, slightly exhausted — not bleak, not dramatic, just the specific late-Sunday-evening fatigue of a senior professional who has been staring at the same form for forty minutes. The lighting evokes Edward Hopper's *Office at Night* recomposed for a 2026 home-office setting: one isolated figure, one warm light source, an architecture of routine that has stopped working. Shot on a 50mm lens at f/2.0, shallow depth of field, the laptop screen and empty field in sharp focus while the figure and the room recede slightly. The empty text field is the visual centre of gravity — the entire composition asks the viewer to feel the weight of a blank box. Photo-realistic.
May 15, 2026 10min

Your Performance Review Isn't About Your Performance

It rewards articulation, not work. The 14% of employees who say theirs inspires improvement already know it.

A professional stands confidently at a whiteboard covered in structured diagrams — elicitation flows, requirement annotations, and stakeholder maps — translating complexity into clarity for an off-screen audience. The posture is assured, not defensive: someone in full command of their domain. The room is clean and purposeful, with warm amber light and a cool teal accent from a secondary screen. Shallow depth of field, figure slightly left of centre, whiteboard filling the right two-thirds of the frame. The mood is active and authoritative — expertise made visible. Render in a hyper-realistic style with tactile, physical rendering and fine attention to surface detail and lighting.
Mar 29, 2026 7min

The Three Edges: What Ten Years of BA Work Taught Me About Product Management

Why requirements precision, stakeholder translation, and data framing are the PM skills most career paths leave to chance.

A lone workbench in a dim workshop, covered in precise, carefully assembled components — circuit boards, sketched blueprints, a half-built wooden structure — all arranged with evident care but never assembled into a final object. A single light source (desk lamp) casts a warm glow over the unfinished work. The mood is contemplative, not chaotic. Dust particles visible in the light. No people present. Illustration style — clean editorial illustration with a warm, muted colour palette.
Mar 23, 2026 7min

18 Months. Never Shipped. Here's What That Taught Me About Product Management.

Why the shipping decision is harder than building the product — and the three traps that stopped me.

A Studio Ghibli-style illustration of a young character at dawn standing on a high rocky lookout, gazing at a glowing, semi-transparent holographic star map floating in the air.
Jan 8, 2026 4min

The Navigator’s Map: Product Trends for 2026 and Our Roadmap Ahead

Navigating the Product Landscape: Trends and Roadmaps for 2026

A Studio Ghibli-style illustration showing a character on scaffolding carefully mending a large wooden water tower that has glowing blue water leaking from several holes, symbolizing the process of fixing customer churn.
Dec 30, 2025 3min

Why They’re Leaving: A Deep Dive into Retention and Churn

Stop Chasing Vanity Metrics and Start Fixing Your Leaky Bucket

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