#product design
40 pieces filed under “product design”.
The context window is a product decision
The context window is a product decision: curating what the model sees, showing users what's in scope, and designing honest 'I don't know' moments.
AI form copilots: suggestion, not substitution
AI form copilots work when they suggest, not substitute: per-field confidence, bulk-fill undo, and one rule — the model never commits silently.
Memory is a UX surface: designing what assistants remember
What an assistant remembers is a designed surface: inspectable memory, deliberate forgetting, edit affordances, and the privacy postures that earn retention over time.
Continue on your phone: handoff UX that doesn't lose people
Session and device handoff done properly: continue-on-another-device flows, magic links vs QR codes, delayed-resume UX and the honest security boundaries.
Roles and permissions: the quiet complexity of team products
Designing roles that match customer org charts, permission matrices people can read, invitation-time clarity, escalation paths and guarding against the accidental admin.
Command palettes: patterns for the Cmd-K era
When a Cmd-K palette earns its complexity: ranking that beats fuzzy match, mixing actions with navigation, keyboard ergonomics, discovery and mobile equivalents.
Will your logo survive your product?
Identity work gets judged at 16 pixels. Favicons, avatar crops, dark surfaces, motion restraint, and the logo-usage contract that keeps engineers on side.
Announcements inside the product, minus the noise
In-product announcements without banner blindness: an announcements centre, targeting by behaviour instead of blast radius, and expiry rules that stay honest.
Feature discovery: design for the day after launch
Shipping a feature is half the job. Announcement surfaces that respect focus, contextual education, suppression discipline, targeting and how to measure discovery lift.
Progressive disclosure for genuinely complex tools
Hiding complexity without hiding power: sensible defaults as strategy, advanced modes, command palettes as the pro lane, and how to measure if disclosure works.
Onboarding users to an AI assistant
First-run design for copilots: capability discovery without homework, starter prompts that teach, mental-model calibration, and measuring adoption honestly.
Showing the swarm: status UX for multi-agent systems
Multi-agent features bury users in log firehoses or leave them staring at a spinner. Designing step summaries, cost displays, interruption and failure narration.
Bulk actions: power without the footguns
Bulk operations done safely: selection across pages, previewing effects before applying, undo vs confirmation, progress states and permission boundaries.
Settings IA: where features go to be findable
Settings screens are where growing products quietly drown. Grouping by user intent, search-within-settings, destructive zoning and how to migrate categories safely.
Activity feeds and audit logs: designing the product's memory
Activity feeds and audit logs are the product's memory: event grammar, grouping and noise control, filter architecture, and the enterprise sales case.
B2B wholesale portals: design for the reorder
Wholesale buyers are professionals doing a job. Quick-order tables, SKU paste, standing orders, net terms and account hierarchies — built for the reorder.
Size and fit UX: the returns you can design away
Fit is apparel's most expensive doubt. Comparison sizing, fit feedback loops, measurement photography, and the metrics that prove a size tool actually reduces returns.
Invite flows: the social onboarding of team products
The invite flow is where one user bets their reputation on your product. Role choice at invite time, shareable links vs email, and viral-loop honesty.
When the model fails: fallback UX for LLM features
LLMs fail — slowly, confidently and at the worst times. How to design degradation tiers, honest error states and timeouts that keep users' trust intact.
Cancellation flows that leave the door open
Offboarding is a trust surface: retention offers without traps, exit surveys that yield signal, data-export dignity, and win-back timing that works.
Agent UX: designing for delegation, not magic
Agentic features fail when they promise magic. The interface patterns we use instead: scope setting, visible progress, checkpoints, undo and earned autonomy.
Size guides and the design of fit confidence
Fit uncertainty is apparel e-commerce's biggest tax. Size guides, fit finders and honest model references that cut fit-driven returns with design, not policy.
Gift cards are products. Treat them like it.
Gift cards sit in a footer link and a plugin default. They deserve product thinking: delivery scheduling, balance checks without login walls, honest expiry, calm recovery.
A research repository that gets read after the study ends
Most research dies in a read-once PDF. Build a repository people actually use: atomic notes, a lasting taxonomy, insight half-lives, traceable decisions.
Empty states are onboarding: designing the blank dashboard
The blank dashboard is the highest-leverage screen in a SaaS product: three empty-state archetypes, sample-data patterns that teach, and measuring the lift.
Data tables for people who live in them
Ops and finance users live inside your tables all day. Density modes, sticky decisions, column management, honest exports and keyboard speed runs.
Notifications designed like you're not the main character
Notification systems people don't mute: severity ladders, digest economics, channel choice and the anti-patterns that train users to ignore everything you send.
Settings: the screen your product is judged on at month three
Nobody evaluates settings during the trial; by month three they're how users judge you. Defaults as decisions, dangerous-action design, searchable settings.
WCAG AA for product teams: the parts everyone gets wrong
The WCAG AA criteria that fail most in real products — contrast, focus visible, target size, keyboard traps — and the review rituals that keep them green.
Error messages that de-escalate
An error message is a conversation at someone's worst moment with your product. The structure, tone rules and support hooks that make errors actually help.
Template galleries: the shortcut to the aha moment
Starter templates are onboarding's best shortcut — if they're categorised by job not industry, previewed live, pruned ruthlessly and measured to activation, not clicks.
Wizards that don't feel like tax forms
Multi-step flows get a bad name from bad implementations. Step economics, honest progress, save-and-resume, and the test for when one long page beats five short ones.
Onboarding checklists without the nag
Checklists can activate users or train them to ignore your UI. Sequencing by value, dismissible design and honest progress — lessons from shipped onboarding work.
Onboarding that activates: patterns we keep, patterns we've banned
Activation-focused onboarding: value-first flows, honest commitment devices, the checklist patterns that still work, and the seven anti-patterns we refuse to ship.
Dashboard design: answer first, chart second
Most dashboards are chart galleries that answer nothing. The question-first method: decision inventories, alert thresholds, and the five-element view that wins.
Empty states are product marketing
First-run, cleared, error and no-results states teach or lose people. Copy frameworks, illustration restraint, and measuring empty states as funnel steps.
Trailswell: habit tracking without the guilt trip
Habit apps run on guilt. Trailswell wanted the opposite: a tracker that celebrates calmly, treats lapses honestly, and survives week three.
Case studyQuill Legal: a document platform lawyers actually enjoy
A legal-tech SaaS had a brilliant document-automation engine trapped in a 2016 UI. We redesigned the product end-to-end and shipped its design system, Precedent.
Case studyNorthwind Ledger: rebuilding the dashboard accountants actually open
How we rebuilt Northwind Ledger's dashboard around a 40-second morning ritual — sparklines over charts, cash anxiety first, and a hard performance budget.
Case studyArlo & Sons: a tradies marketplace that earned trust slowly
How we rebuilt a two-sided trades marketplace around verified work: comparable quotes, review integrity, trade-side dashboards and onboarding that favours patience.