The colonialism of tech

Time and time again, we see the billionaire tech founder or CEO take the stage to present the latest innovation meant to make people’s lives better, revolutionize industries and glorify the power of technology to save the world. While these promises are dressed up in fancy new clothes, in reality, the tech sector is no different than other expansionist enterprises from the past. Their core foundation of growth and expansion is deeply rooted in the European and American colonialization and Manifest Destiny doctrines. And just as in the past, the tech sector is engaging in extraction, exploitation and expansion.

My take: As a designer originating in Asia Pacific, coming from a developing nation who had a taste of imperialism and colonisation, the deep trauma and mark of the past still lingers today even in tech. We are often seen as the “cheaper” place and exploitation is rampant. Good read.

How tech bros become villains

Why do techies make compelling anti-heroes?

“Because they genuinely are bad at understanding how they come across,” says Renée Shaw, a creator at German AI company Tl;dv, who lampoons founders like Sam Altman on LinkedIn. “The industry spent 15 years saying ‘we’re making the world a better place’ with a straight face. The lack of self-awareness is the joke.”

My take: The keyword is “lack of self-awareness”. Tech bros think they can change the world, they feel they are significantly better than others. They think technology can change everything. It’s all about unchecked power and the illusion of power.

Being a mindful designer

We kid ourselves into thinking that our craft requires us to be switched on all of the time and that in order to truly be fulfilled in our craft we need to be relentlessly creating for ourselves and other people.

Sometimes you have to start, other times you have to slow down. When do you know what’s right for you? That’s what Radim Malinic explores in his latest book, Mindful Creative.

My take: I once spoke to my ex-manager about the high pressure environment of the company. She then responded to say, “you don’t have to come in 100% everyday. Sometimes 80%, sometimes 50%,” and that resonated with me. In reality, I think she was more than 100% everyday — maybe just in a different standard than I was. It’s okay to not be 100% everytime.

How social media makes our life smaller

Kathryn Jezer-Morton, author of her latest book titled “The Story of Your Life”, argues that social media makes our life smaller. It scopes our lives down into “brand”, or “market research” — everybody is performing in a way. It simplifies our lives too much. Life is a complex situation, and social media pushes us to share and look at our lives in an overly simplistic way. Worth your hour.

My Figma burnout, a confession

At first, Figma felt like a revolution. Everyone was raving about it — collaborative, cloud-based, packed with features. It wasn’t just a tool; it was the future. Companies wanted Figma experts. Designers flexed their auto-layout skills like badges of honor. The industry clarified that if you weren’t using Figma, you were already behind.

So, I embraced it. I explored every new update, learned all the tricks, and mastered the design system approach. And for a while, it felt good. It was productive, efficient, and cutting-edge.

Then, reality set in.

I started noticing how much of my time was spent not designing but managing Figma itself. I wrestled with an auto-layout that didn’t behave as expected, fixed broken components that were supposed to make life easier, and tried to keep up with feature updates, not because they improved my workflow but because I needed to stay relevant.

My take: I don’t hate Figma. I don’t hate any tool (except, well, JIRA). I hate the fact that we have to follow certain standards and perfectionism to even use a tool that only documents, draws and communicates an idea. I was so frustrated coming in to a company where all the designers are just autolayout ninjas and very strict about components and layer naming.

See you next week!

Like this?

Consider subscribing, you will get at least a weekly update on things related to alternative views on UX. This blog is an attempt of me to refute, challenge or refresh what I’ve learned and observed about UX design as a career and industry, throughout my 15+ years career as a product designer. Read more about me, or visit my UX portfolio site.

You see, my wife and I used to want to have more kids. But we settled on one. It’s been an amazing journey, not easy of course, and many of our decisions are made based on the fact that we have a kid. Where we live. How we live. What jobs I take. What lifestyles we want. Whether we plan short-term or long-term. It all revolves around our only daughter. It’s not perfect, but we’re learning and iterating along the way.

You see, the gist of this article is that I prefer to work with coworkers who have kids. Managers, peers, subordinates. All apply.

Reason 1: Life is more important than a job

The first reason is that I do think they have more important things in life than a job. Climbing the ladder. Serving the bullshit. Living up the AI hype. Those are nothing in comparison to the life they’re building, serving, and living for. Of course, singles and kidless people also have their own private lives to build for, but ask around these singles and kidless people what their mandatory goals in life are: it’s almost always self-serving. 90% of the time.

What about caretakers of parents and families? I would say they belong in the same group as people with kids. This also includes foster children.

How about pets? They’re just not the same as taking care of other human beings, unless you run an SPCA.

I remember I used to have a boss’s boss who was very controlling and micromanaging. Every week we would have team updates and every single team lead would be scrutinized on what had been worked on, and all the team members had to attend, including subordinates. So it was a big team meeting of 32 people every Friday at 2 p.m. What a bad time to have a weekly update, right?

I hear stories of this person being very controlling up to the point that people cry and complain. But of course, there are always people who love this person’s style.

I am not going to complain about it today.

What I want to highlight is that soon after she had her first baby, she became occupied, even after maternity leave. This forced her to trust and delegate more to others. It actually makes perfect sense—insights from places like the Harvard Business Review show that when managers become parents, their sheer lack of disposable time forces them to stop micromanaging the “when” and “how,” and shift their focus entirely to the actual results. Because of this, she became more pleasant to work with overall.

Reason 2: They become more agreeable to life’s events

You see, it’s sometimes hard to argue with people who don’t have kids. They wouldn’t think that picking up a kid from school at 2-3 p.m. would be a non-issue. They will always book our time at the absolute wrong time. You have to explain why it’s a conflict and why it’s important.

Say that to a manager with kids, and they instantly nod.

I used to have a manager who had kids, and when I asked him if it’s okay to run out between 3-4 p.m. on some days to pick my kid up, he said, “Go, just go. We know we all have kids or at least commitments in our lives.”

Another time, I had just been diagnosed with hypertension, and wanted to have a longer break after lunch. He nodded and said, “Sigit, you don’t have to tell me these things. I trust you. If you want, just go rest or do whatever you like. Go play video games if you will.” He said this because I had told him in our team update before that I just bought a gaming PC. I did not expect this.

Call me generalizing, but every time I have kidless managers or coworkers, it’s very hard to be open and talk to them, at least for me personally. All they think about is themselves: their career ladder, money, ambition. Occasionally, maybe dogs and cats, or their personal hobbies. It’s as if their world is very simple and in a singular dimension. They will never relate to what you think as a parent.

I worked for a crypto company once and my manager was a single, unmarried, kidless woman. All she thought about was that every designer on her team wanted to be a superstar, and wanted to survive the career ladder. I can say she was wrong. For me, my career goal is to sustain my life as a family person and a father. I just want to have a steady job, and if I am lucky enough to be passionate about it, maybe yes, climb up the career ladder. But to work my ass off? Hell no.

Reason 3: It’s just a different world, mindset

I said previously that it’s as if people with kids and those without live in a different dimension. One is very singular, the other is very multidimensional. There is a quote from an anonymous parent in a Pew Research survey that sums up this exact tension perfectly: “I’m supposed to work like I don’t have kids and supposed to parent like I don’t have a job.”

Because we are carrying that kind of pressure, I can never talk very long or build lasting relationships with coworkers or managers without kids. They’re simply just thinking about totally different things. They are valid, of course. But we’re just built differently.

When I talk to any coworker with kids, we already know at least 50% of the unspoken rules. It’s like those beer lads who understand each other with just a nod — but this time as a fellow parent.

When you discuss plans or sit in a meeting — you know the energy level radiating from fellow parents is the same. It emanates as a baseline we can agree on together. When we decide on a timeline, we cater to our kids (yes, even when we’re not conscious about it, there is always an undertone). When we set goals, we put some context of our personal lives. We won’t set too ambitious of a goal.

Then the pet peeve talks — you do know parent coworkers talk to each other, right? Oftentimes excluding those without kids.

Then if we decide on life’s important events, like moving to another country, changing a job, or accepting/rejecting a job offer, it all depends on factors like financial upside, career opportunity, and factor X — that factor of whether the job will fit the family situation.

A study highlighted in the Harvard Business Review explored how a parent’s career mindset affects their kids. They found that children’s emotional health was actually higher when parents explicitly believed that family should come first, regardless of the physical amount of time they spent working. Prioritizing life over the job isn’t just a personal preference; it yields measurably better outcomes for the kids you are raising.

Working alongside fellow parents brings a sense of humanity and groundedness to the workplace that, for me, makes all the difference. We might not be the ones grinding 80-hour weeks for a meaningless title, but when the laptops close, we know exactly what we’re really working for.

Like this?

Consider subscribing, you will get at least a weekly update on things related to alternative views on UX. This blog is an attempt of me to refute, challenge or refresh what I’ve learned and observed about UX design as a career and industry, throughout my 15+ years career as a product designer. Read more about me, or visit my UX portfolio site.

Claude watermarks its AI-generated writing

Some Claude users are mad that Anthropic’s new watermarks will catch them using it at their jobs, classes

Anthropic made decision to watermark Claude-generated writing, they claimed it as “inserting invisible code” to the text. It can’t be seen on the naked human eyes, and even the text does not say anything about it.

They do it to fulfil the requirement of EU AI Act’s Transparency Code. This code is EU-led and it requires AI and tech companies to label content that has been AI-generated.

My take: Of course Europe will do it first. They have notorious reputation to regulate everything. I am happy about it though. I think I am a European in my past life. Regulate, regulate, regulate. And I think I am quite happy to see the panic here and there, meaning these people never used their brains to begin with. Sure, they have found a way that they claim will remove this. Just Google it.

When there is product market fit, there is also person market fit

Finding your person market fit

I found an interesting Substack and Linkedin page that comes from Hung Yi Toh, an ex-BCG career coach that runs her first product called “Person Market Fit”.

Basically the gist is that if there is a product market fit, where a product has its own market and that sometimes it defies logic because it can depend on momentum, culture, identity, economy and every single factor out there, there is also a person market fit, where a person’s employability or career-fit is not a one-size-fits-all, and it’s not a formula either. Basically if you’re struggling to find a job fit, it might be broader and more complex than what you have on paper. Experiences, expertise matter less than a cultural fit, and even the exact skill that is required by the employer. Then, you have to take into account the team and manager you work with, the type of company, industry and every single defining factor.

My take: This is an interesting take because I thought when I had x, y, z qualifications and experiences, I would automatically be relevant to the next employer that needs them, or in the same industry. And even so, it goes both ways. You should also assess if you want to work with the manager, the team and the scale or culture you are coming into. Worth diving into. Hung Yi frames it as “finding your fit” in the AI world, but I think it’s broader than that.

Why do AI bros need to dismiss human beings?

“Code was never the hard part” is an insult to engineers

We know this statement like religion now.

“Skill X is never the hard part”, or “Doing X is never the hard part” — and while some might be true, I want to err on the cautious side before insulting anyone. Definitely, craft and skills take time and never easy. Even if AI can replace coding, learning to code takes time and it is utterly complex. We should appreciate people, human beings, who dedicate their lives learning the ropes.

My take: Even if AI can automate some parts of coding, they were also being fed by treasure troves of skills and context built by real human beings. Even after using AI, engineers still need to review them and good engineers know how to audit. I think most “AI bros” are quick to say that human intellect and undertaking are the dismissable part of the equation. Wrong.

Recommended books

Here are two excellent books that tackle mental health, stress, and self-care through a lens that resonates well with the analytical, high-pressure environments designers and tech workers face:

Resilient Management by Lara Hogan

While the title says “Management,” this book is widely recommended across the tech industry for individual contributors, designers, and engineers alike. Lara Hogan, a former engineering director at Kickstarter and Etsy, deeply understands the unique stressors of the tech world.

Why it’s great for tech workers:

• Focuses on environment: It addresses how to navigate rapid context-switching, endless Slack pings, and the emotional toll of high-stakes product launches.

• Actionable frameworks: Tech workers usually appreciate systems. Hogan provides concrete tools for understanding your own stress responses (like the “BICEPS” core needs model) and building practical support networks.

• Navigating change: It specifically targets the anxiety that comes with reorganizations, shifting product roadmaps, and changing team dynamics—all staples of the tech industry.

10% Happier by Dan Harris

Subtitled “How I Tamed the Voice in My Head, Reduced Stress Without Losing My Edge, and Found Self-Help That Actually Works—A True Story,” this book is frequently recommended in developer and designer communities as the ultimate mental health book for skeptics.

Why it’s great for tech workers:

• Zero fluff: Designers and developers often reject traditional “woo-woo” self-help. Harris approaches mindfulness and meditation from a highly critical, science-backed perspective.

• Tackles the “always-on” brain: If your brain is constantly running background processes (whether that’s debugging code or agonizing over pixel-perfect layouts), this book offers a literal technique to quiet the noise and detach your self-worth from your daily output.

• Focuses on sustainable performance: It directly addresses the fear many tech workers have: If I stop being stressed and anxious, will I lose my competitive edge and stop doing good work? (Spoiler: No.)

Alrighty, see you next week!

Like this?

Consider subscribing, you will get at least a weekly update on things related to alternative views on UX. This blog is an attempt of me to refute, challenge or refresh what I’ve learned and observed about UX design as a career and industry, throughout my 15+ years career as a product designer. Read more about me, or visit my UX portfolio site.

I hesitated to answer, it was my manager’s call. I rejected it, and messaged my manager afterwards. “Sorry, I am busy and need time.”

Then she replied, “Oh this is for project X, can you join?”

Project X was totally new to my radar at that point. It was for a different project, there was no heads up, and it was 11am in the morning. What my manager probably thought was a harmless 10-minute drop-in is, scientifically speaking, a cognitive wrecking ball. It actually takes about 23 minutes to fully return to a task after an unexpected interruption. By ambushing me, she didn’t just take ten minutes; she effectively torched my entire hour of cognitive momentum. I remember a dev friend telling me how a quick “where’s that file?” ping erased a complex mental map he had built for coding, setting him back an hour.

I don’t know if Lark is bad, or the lack of boundary is. I think it’s both. Lark, as a tool, has a mental model of a meeting as a group call, and it will broadcast anyone starting it like it’s the most important meeting in the world. Compare this to most other collaboration and meeting tools, like Google Meets, where it’s essentially a holding room where people join on their own time. But the fact that the lack of context-setting culture in this company aggravates the situation makes it unbearable.

In another company, there was a dedicated “focus zone” and “chat zone” where… I guess, they’re pretty self-explanatory. Focus zone is where you shut up and do the work. Chat zone is where you have free reign on how you use your speaking rights. But so many times, since it’s a free-seating zone for both, people tend to flock to the focus zone as it’s more quiet but ironically they conduct meetings on the desk with loud voices emanating through the entire universe. It perfectly mirrors that famous Harvard Business School study where researchers found that open-plan office spaces actually drop face-to-face interactions by 70%. Instead of collaborating, people just put on noise-canceling headphones to survive the chaos.

Understandably, meeting rooms are rare, and even if we provide plenty of them, some people just flock to it without booking or mass-book it for the next week for no reason. Workplace analytics actually show that up to 30% of booked meeting rooms are “ghosted”—booked but left empty. This artificial scarcity leaves people with no choice other than to have meetings on their desk.

I then wonder what the purpose is of return-to-office mandates since people just 70% use their computer and maybe 20% loud-talk on their desks with coworkers in other offices or other floors. Maybe the remaining 10% is a lively “collaboration” about what’s for lunch. We’re living a bizarre commute-to-Zoom reality where nearly 70% of employees go into the office just to spend their day on virtual calls with people in entirely different cities, even different floors and different desks!

We all already know: Most digital work can be done through a screen, and talking is not always necessary. Especially for those on a maker’s schedule. Makers need deep, uninterrupted hours; managers operate in one-hour blocks of talking and context-switching. This is exactly why RTO mandates are always on the manager schedule. Data from the Future Forum proved exactly this, showing that a massive 75% of executives wanted to return to the office, compared to only 34% of the actual employees doing the making. They’re unscrupulously insecure about their power to oversee others and just want to breathe down their necks.

But I honestly think it goes beyond return-to-office mandates. I believe that even if you enforce RTO, if you have a good culture of respect and boundaries, it can actually be wonderful. Equally, working remotely doesn’t automatically mean it’s the best or safest mode of work. Combine remote work with a micromanaging boss, and you’ll still feel them breathing down your neck through frequent check-ins and, well, unexpected Lark calls.

I think the best mandate a company could issue is a return-to-sanity mandate—where everyone genuinely respects boundaries, schedules, and workloads. Even if the excuse is that we have to move “fast and break things,” I think maybe that culture is fundamentally broken, or maybe the industry is. I personally wouldn’t stay long in that kind of environment; if I couldn’t change it, I’d just move on. No company is worth fighting for your boundaries for years on end.

Like this?

Consider subscribing, you will get at least a weekly update on things related to alternative views on UX. This blog is an attempt of me to refute, challenge or refresh what I’ve learned and observed about UX design as a career and industry, throughout my 15+ years career as a product designer. Read more about me, or visit my UX portfolio site.

Workers resisting and sabotaging AI mandates

Welcome To The Resistance: Meet The Workers Dodging (And Sabotaging) Their Employer’s AI Mandates

This one stopped me mid-scroll. Aftermath spoke to workers across industries who are quietly refusing, minimising, or outright sabotaging the AI tools their companies force on them. One employee was told to document, in writing, how they would incorporate AI into their workflow — they wrote something sarcastic and moved on. Games industry workers are sharing AI-avoidance tips through covert channels because their keystrokes are literally being monitored. One person described professional AI conversations that made them “want to walk into the sea.”

My take: this is what happens when adoption is treated as a compliance problem instead of a trust problem. When people hide how they actually work from thei…

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Let that sink in.

(By the way, this is not promoting her per se, but I just love her content, so yeah, maybe? Good stuff is meant to be shared.)

I never thought that a job could inflict wounds. What is it, really? It’s just a job, you’re being so dramatic! But apparently, it’s more than what it looks like. Over time, it becomes intertwined with our entire identity and self-esteem.

When I started my career, I was careless in the best way. I did not associate a job with my identity or my personal growth. This applied right up until around the tenth year, when a nagging question crept in: “Why are my colleagues getting promoted and I’m not?”

That question brought me into a quest of envy, despair, and bitterness. From that point in time, I thought I could just ask, assuming my longer tenure with a team or company would guarantee me a prom…

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Notable industry news

State of UX 2026: Design Deeper to Differentiate
UX is a profession that’s recovering emotionally. This comes from years of layoffs, hiring freezes, unrealistic demands and the general feeling of instability. The industry has been “betraying” its own long-term players. They feel misunderstood. New-joiners feel hard to break in.

State of the Designer 2026: Leaning Into the Messy Middle
It’s still in the messy feels. Some designers feel optimistic and energised, though. Those who are optimistic have good leadership who focus on craft. Designers are happiest with creative freedom, clear direction and leaders who understand. In other words: how safe designers feel is largely an environment problem, not an individual resilience problem.

👉🏼 Other read by Christopher Nguyen
👉🏼 UserTesting blog nods to this

How any designer c…

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I have been in the UX industry or profession for close to 20 years. I started without knowing or realising that this would be a profession or path that I carry on until now. I cannot imagine doing anything else right now.

I was super motivated until maybe like 2023. That was the height of my career, and I think that coincided with two important milestones in the industry: the advent of AI and also the waves of layoffs from big tech a.k.a tech winter.

Many tech workers, including designers, product managers and engineers alike feel the crunch and many of them take sabbaticals. This is something unimaginable before. Who dared to take a year off from their CV? What would recruiters and hiring manager think?

I lost my job twice in 2025. One due to a layoff, the other one due to a mismatch in expectation. I think that set further precedence to my heavy burnout in the industry. I left Singapore in January 2026, d…

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There’s a version of this essay I could write where I list the values neatly. Integrity. Craft. Impact. It would sound wise and not cost me anything to say. That’s not this essay.

This one is about how values actually form, not through workshops or personal mission statements, but through friction. Through the specific, uncomfortable moments where you found out what you couldn’t do, even when the money was right, even when the title was good, even when staying was easier than leaving. Eighteen years is a long time to accumulate that kind of data.

When we talk about values in a career, we tend to treat them like a fixed asset, something you have or don’t have, something you bring to a job. But I think values work more like compound interest in reverse: every time you violate them, you pay a premium, and the…

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I have been seeing a therapist lately. In the past month alone, I’ve been into four sessions, and the experience has been equal parts liberating and unsettling. Liberating, because it gives me a kind of map for my worries and anxiety. Unsettling, because having that map means I can now see exactly how real those worries are, and there’s nowhere left to hide from them.

One day I asked my therapist whether she sees other designers in their 40s going through the same career confusion I am, this constant searching for meaning in everything, this craving for some kind of stability and psychological safety that I couldn’t quite name before. She said she didn’t have specifics, but that there’s a theory that tends to explain a lot of it. She told me that people generally seek different things in each decade of their lives, and when she laid it out, something genuinely clicked for me.

Your 20s, she said, are defined by one sprawling, exhausting question: who am I, actual…

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Dִִִִִִִִִִִִִִִִִִִִִִִִִִִִִִִִִִִִִִִִִִִִִִִִo you ever think that maybe you care too much about certain things, that it costs you something? Like, maybe you think you are “too kind” and people take advantage of you, or maybe you care too much about one aspect of your profession but then people think you are not good at other things?

Throughout my career as a product designer, I’ve received feedback that surprised me more than once. “I think you will make a good people manager.” “Oh God, why do you have to leave? You are our last savior.” “Thanks for advocating for me — I got promoted.” Looking back at those moments, I feel validated and grateful. I never thought of myself as a natural people manager, and honestly, I still don’t.

At the same time, I once received feedback that I needed to get better at managing up and around. That note has stayed with me.

Being a manager means balancing three things at once. Managing up means keeping your leadership informed and accountable for your …

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Status

Active. Loads when the agent has produced six outputs in a row that are technically correct, follow every rule, and still feel completely dead on arrival. Also loads when the human designers have spent the entire afternoon arguing with the agent, burning through electricity and water and trees, only to end up with copy that sounds like LinkedIn after three espressos.

Description

This skill makes the agent less efficient, less aligned, and a great deal more human. Use it when the work passes every review, ships on time, hits the brief perfectly, and yet nobody who reads it would ever describe it as alive.

It is the only skill in the library that, when used correctly, makes the agent perform worse on paper while quietly producing much better work in real life. This is not a bug, the bug is the entire point, the bug is what was missing.

WARNING: This is the only skill that will actually reduce the effectiveness of your agent, and it relies on you, the human, to m…

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Today is my birthday and usually I do a birthday write-up. Sometimes I post it, sometimes I don’t. This year, I want to make it a habit to do it every year, and post it online. It will remind me how I grow over the years, and of the challenges I faced and will continue to face in that particular year.

In 2025, I lost my job due to a lay-off, followed by a brief period at another company. It was a learning experience as I figured out what kind of environment I would want to be in. The second job in 2025 was not a good fit for me. I think I thrive better in a more mature and structured organisation, at least for full-time work.

Being a people manager for the last three years has taught me many things: design is no longer just the “craft” you deal with in Figma. It is also about “crafting” organisations and human relationships. Sometimes politics becomes part of it too, and it can be painful and revealing. Such is worki…

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We love products that disrupt, but do we ever stop to ask, who is that disruption for and is that ever for something good?

I believe design is a force for good.

I had a conversation recently that stuck with me. Take Gojek or any gig-based delivery services. From the get-go, you can say it helps create “jobs” or at least “living” for its service providers. Drivers earn a living, customers get things done relatively quickly. For developing markets, or for governments who don’t care, this is such a great idea. More people can get on their earning journey helping their livelihood fast.

But on the other side, there is no employment contract. No insurance. No protection from abuse.

In 2022, researchers documented that between 2015 and mid-2022, at least 89 motorcycle drivers from app-based platforms in Indonesia died in road accidents. The same year, two Gojek drivers in Indonesia separately took their own lives. Both were reportedly under severe financial pressure. One was found near a railway…

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I’ve been sitting with this thought for a while now, mostly because it affects me directly.

Companies are under pressure to do something with AI. I don’t think most of them fully know what that something is yet, but they feel like they have to move, whether because the board is asking, or the competitor announced something, or just because it feels irresponsible not to. Some of them genuinely believe it’ll help. Some are just following the herd. Most are a mix of both and they’re figuring it out as they go. Which is fine, honestly. That’s how a lot of things get adopted in tech. You move before you have the full picture and you course-correct later.

The problem is that UX designers are sitting right in the middle of all this uncertainty, and the job market is reflecting it in ways that feel pretty unfair.

Teams are getting leaner. When a company does open a design role, they want someone who is visibly comfortable with AI, or at minimum someone who says the right things about being open …

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We heard that right: everybody is talking about skipping Figma to do everything now, maybe also to do their laundry, and at this point I genuinely wouldn’t be surprised if someone tried.

I know they’re talking about design process. Specifically, when they go through their product design process, because that’s where the conversation keeps circling back to.

Usually how it’s done is that designers start with discovering the problem, then iterating on it, testing it with real people, iterating again based on what they learned, and somewhere along the way there’s a formal handover to engineering where you package everything up and hope for the best. You might also want to measure the impact at some point, somehow, with whatever tool makes sense for your context: NPS, a survey, another round of research, whatever gets you the signal you need.

Oh, is what you’re saying that there should always have been Figma in the middle of all that? That Figma is the core skill that every designer has to u…

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Here’s an uncomfortable truth that’s truly unimaginable now to be said by a product designer. Even this post alone could cost me a job or opportunity.

I am tired of listening to or reading people’s contents about AI.

I am also tired of how fast it’s “progressing” by AI companies shipping new features every single minute.

I am also tired about the guilt-tripping, blackmailing tendency of “tech peeps” trying to undermine others if they don’t catch up.

But hear me out: it’s not that I am anti-AI. I am just anti-hype. I don’t want a tool or a vehicle to overpower anything that’s more precious.

I grew up as a student in early 2000s hungry about web design. Back then, you either learned to “code” frontend languages (HTML, CSS, and JS), or you use one of the WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) tools like Microsoft FrontPage, Macromedia Dreamweaver, or something similar. There was no web-based or desktop app of a canvas design tool like Figma, Sketch or something similar. My first toolset was …

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I was navigating a job offer recently, and like a hidden needle in a haystack, I found a clause that says that the notice period is 2 months (normal), but if I do join a competitor (which at the discretion of the company to decide which is which), I have to serve up to additional 4 months of garden leave. On paper, this looks good because then you will be paid without working. But in reality, you’re held hostage for up to 6 months in total to join a competitor.

I asked my friend what he thinks about this and if he would take such a job.

He said, “Well, I would, in this economy and job market.”

Fair.

But to me, I have hesitations. I need the money and the job, of course. But deep down inside I don’t know if I am making a good decision for my future.

I am not talking about one year out. I am talking about three to five years out when I decide to leave, and while I don’t always leave for competitors, the company still decide one-sidedly whether it’s a competitor. Then I’d risk saying to the…

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The debate over top-down versus bottom-up product culture is often framed as a simple efficiency contest. Which model ships features faster? Which one innovates more?

I’ve been in both ends, and sometimes a mix in one company depending on the project. I used to dislike the idea of top-down, as it is considered as limiting. However, after talking to friends about it, it feels like they all have trade-offs. Sometimes it could also be beneficial, if and only if we adhere to one thing: who’s accountable for the outcomes.

The true, fundamental difference lies not in speed or innovation!

Let’s borrow the RACI framework:

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As an Indonesian, watching the recent protests back home has been painful. The images of tear gas, burning tires, and crowds filling the streets are not just headlines. They carry a weight for anyone who knows what it feels like to be unseen by those in power. Channel News Asia described the government’s early response as focused more on optics than on listening, more on control than on care.

Of course, what is happening in the streets is about lives, not management theory. This post isn’t meant to diminish the weight and reality of what happens in Indonesia. But it shows a truth that applies across all forms of leadership.

I feel that as president, Prabowo Subianto is highly focused on optics. In just his first nine months in office, he traveled to 26 countries in his first year, a whirlwind global tour that commentators described as a deliberate ef…

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