Ashton Coghlan

“Pixel perfect prototype” … what are you prototyping?

Does anyone else notice how often Sam Altman says “whatever”? The one thing that bugs me about the current crop of dudes trying to take over the world—aside from the whole trying to take over the world part—is that they’re often so blasé about it. Like, where’s the fire? Show you care.

I think all this talk about reversing the ratio of PMs to Devs, because Product is now the “bottleneck,” is quietly highlighting the insane amount of work expected from Product, which has probably led to our discipline’s extraordinarily high burnout rate.

metrics show symptoms
they tell us who we you should talk to
talking to those people uncovers root causes

Managing the Design System Detachment Curve What if design system teams operated like the Federal Reserve?

By understanding and strategically managing a healthy detachment rate, design system teams can foster innovation while maintaining coherence, ensuring the system remains a valuable asset rather than a rigid constraint.

medium.com/@ashton_cogh...

In terms of tech labor, this means there will be more devs than now, not zero devs.

But I think devs are afraid of that too.

Not sure any established trade wants more competition.

Jevons Paradox suggests that efficiency improvements (read: AI) paradoxically increases consumption rather than decreased consumption of a resource.

Announcing my new book about A11Y! ♿

When I first started as a web developer I didn't know anything about best practices for UX

Only after guidance from many wonderful people have I improved; I want to share that ☺️

A11Y is a basic right and improves products for us all 🚀

just wrote “phoney baloney” in a work email and have never felt more alive

This shift is partly driven by age‑related thinning of the posterior cingulate cortex, linking brain structure to changes in risk attitudes over time.

Check out this article for the complete breakdown: drive.google.com/file/d/19IIe...

Loss aversion follows a U‑shaped path across adulthood—decreasing in early adulthood but rising again from mid‑life onward:

Young: loss looms large → play it safe

Mid‑life: loss aversion dips → bolder bets

Elderly (60+): cortex thins, loss aversion spikes → back to caution.

People bet* differently at different stages of their lives. That's not just because of experience, but also due to physical changes in our brains.

*using Annie Duke's definition of a bet as a "decision that carries risk"

But until we get it realllly humming, I still think most of my discovery activities will go something like this:

me: "Hey, who told you that?"

them: *tells me a name*

me: *searches that name in Figma search and opens the files they most recently worked on*

Yes, engineering adoption is the ultimate conversion metric, but it's a lagging indicator.

And Product docs aren't stable enough--the design process turns them inside out.

The sweet spot for design system #product-discovery is Figma.

Given we have such a strong design -> dev handoff culture, this will help us identify what stuff our core design system's team might want to build, adapt or deprecate.

And we'll do that several months faster than usual.

We're building some serious AI-powered telemetry tooling to collect and analyze designer behavior across our *massive* Figma instance.

#designsystems

one person can cause such an effect on our global economy

I'm not a victim to the dunning-kruger effect. I know exactly how wholly incompetent I am.

“We need to improve our documentation site” or “We need more training”

Hope you are exhausted from all of the all usability and onboarding experiments that you’ve been running the last few quarters. Because if you jump straight to docs and training??? Oooo that awakening is gonna be ruuuude.

A product perceived as not “feature complete” reflects a gap in product marketing—not a failure in the product itself. Product quality and completeness are separate concepts.

Bring dev fresh fruit

“Off-gray”

If you don’t like your org chart, fight for a reorg. But don’t fight for collaboration or co-ownership across the org without the proper incentives in place.

Conway’s Law is a law, not a theory. You can’t fight it, so don’t try. Seriously. Stop it.

Our dog walker sends fantastic daily updates of her walks with our dog Pepper. But Apple “intelligence” sucks the joy out of them. Can I turn off text summaries for a subset of contacts?

And maybe this is why I’m so opposed to lonnng backlogs and output-centric roadmaps.

If you are gearing up to say soooo much, are you even listening to what your users, your industry, or even what modern science is saying right now?

Back to the craft of product… yea, thinking in terms of convos, I’m always asking the team:
1. How can we improve the conversation?
2. Should we extend it or end it here?
3. What other topics interest our customers?
4. Are they disinterested, or are we in the wrong room entirely?

And even though I know some of those great products are watching my every move (hi Google), I don’t mind all that much, because they use that information to make my experience feel personal, which makes me feel special. (Google Photo’s auto-curated albums of me and my dog Pepper).

Great products do the same.

Although generally there’s no wine (Vivino is such a tease).

They invite me to participate (Notion).

They delight me with small details (Duolingo).

They connect me with people I never thought I could even talk to (shoutout to WeChat’s auto-translation, circa 2019).

Great conversations are something else entirely.

Time disappears.

Ideas spark.

The words flow effortlessly, weaving humor, depth, and insight into something electric.

And when they end, they don’t really end.

…wine is usually involved, but not required.