Adam Kalsey

They lied. This ad is plenty annoying.

Speed test screenshot showing 80Mb synchronous internet speeds with 9ms ping times.

This @hilton hotel sells "premium Internet" for $5 per day because the standard internet is only fast enough for email and basic web browsing.

The standard internet:

Is this response being taught somewhere? It's way too repetitive to be occurring this naturally. I don't think it's AI--that would have more variation.

80% of the answers follow this template: I noticed ____. Instead of waiting for an overhaul, I ___________. What we learned informed the eventual finished design.

Which is a great answer! But after a few dozen answers, it stands out for its blandness.

On an application for a designer role (I'm hiring!) I ask applicants for a paragraph on: "Give us an example of shipping a small, imperfect improvement quickly versus waiting to build a complete solution. What was your thinking?"

The answers are like Designer Mad-Libs:

Every app I own has decided to give me flight updates on my lock screen

Claude Code needs offline mode with a small local model. They can still charge me for tokens. I just sometimes need to use it when I don’t have a network.

Few people are ever trained in interviewing future hires. Here's a crash course and a bunch of questions to use when hiring a product manager.

kalsey.com/2025/11/how...

Reviewing resumes and wondering when every product manager with a year of experience started calling themselves a “product leader.”

I need to know more about the edge case that led to the data constraint being this large.

I use AI as a strategic thinking partner.

Not to make decisions for me, but to expose blind spots I can't see on my own.

I frame a challenge, give context AI asks questions, I clarify. That back-and-forth surfaces assumptions and clarifies my thinking.

kalsey.com/2025/10/ai_...

Picking up a salad from Chipotle

Me: there’s no dressing.

C: you wanted salad dressing?

M: with my salad???? Yes.

C: you need to request when you order

M: 1, I did. 2, do I need to ask for a tortilla on my burrito?

"I bought this Saturday, and it's $50 cheaper today. Do you price adjust?"

Amazon: No, we can't do that.

Me: OK, I'd like to return it.

Amazon: Instead, would you like us to refund $90 and you can keep it?

I asked ChatGPT to find me a 3d printer model of a laptop stand with cable connectors.

It found one, asked what laptop I had, then offered to customize the model for me. !!!

I asked for a different base design and a MagSafe connector. It did it, and gave print parameters.

This is terrible UX from Apple. It's incredibly unclear what the implications of allowing or denying access are. I had to look to see what MacOS considers a "local network" (basically non-internet IP only, not bluetooth). And the app doesn't have a way of explaining to the user WHY they want this.

Demo from a Voice AI company is a coffee ordering tool. They promote it with "Now you can order a coffee with your voice!"

I don't know if you've ever actually been in a coffee shop... but that's the way it's worked for decades.

I’m at a Voice AI event and the irony that the rooms are much too loud for people to actually use and demo their Voice AI tools.

Recurring theme in talks is “the future is all voice” but without recognizing they’re demoing why voice won’t ever be the only interface.

I know a great UX researcher that’s available for full time and contract roles. Lots of AI experience research expertise. The kind of person I’d hire if I had a need.

DM me for an intro.

My productivity operating system has “weekly priority” as a component. It’s not an invitation to list every todo. It’s the spot to list what truly matters.

This week, my priority list has 3 things. Get those three done, I’ll be a smashing success.

We used to wait for code to compile.

Now we wait for AI agents to finish translating our ideas to code.

Did you know that if you take any country song, and play it backwards…

… it still sounds terrible.

I’m betting that even with those issues, the AI had as good or better accuracy rate as the human order takers.

A takeaway for AI implementers is we need to improve things at the margins. It’s not enough to be great in everyday interactions, we must also nail the off-the-wall.

Taco Bell’s AI drive though is dead, killed by edge cases. Most of the problems cited are unusual circumstances, but those still killed the project.

www.wsj.com/articles/ta...

As a former HD and college umpire, I love the umpire helmet cam on tonight’s #SFGiants game. Never saw the ball move quite like that when I was behind the plate.

Could watch the whole game though that.

All members of the product trio must be jointly responsible and accountable for everything instead of splitting up responsibilities.

It's the only way true collaboration happens.

Product Trio explanations often show what areas each person's responsible for. This is wrong.

"The product manager responsible for business value, designer for user value, and engineer for tech feasibility." That's a recipe for unproductive conflct.

Amazon Prime Video’s movie screen starts out with four categories:

- Movies we think you’ll like
- Movie Picks
- Spotlight Movies
- Movie Selections

Which of course are different from the Favorites or Featured categories that appear further down the screen.

Getting mixed messages from my neighbors.

We're in the "browser wars" era of AI models.

Each new model is a big change, and the "best" choice changes daily. "Best viewed with ChatGPT 5" badges everywhere.

Before long, models will be like browsers. They mostly do the same things, and we'll pick one and stick with it.