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Roger Wong

@lunarboy.com
279 followers 565 following 527 posts

Design leader writing about AI and the future of product design. 20+ yrs at Apple, Microsoft, Samsung, BuildOps. rogerwong.me

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Roger Wong @lunarboy.com · 30/08/2026
I made the Comic-Con schedule app for myself (and any interested nerds). With AI, anyone can DIY software just for their own needs or a small community. Full newsletter here: open.substack.com/pub/lunarboy...
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Roger Wong @lunarboy.com · 23/07/2026
Holy shit. Using the Compound Engineering plugin and Fable, I planned out an iPad port of my app this morning. Then before dinner, kicked off Codex on the goal of implementing it. 4 hours later, it’s alive!!!!
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Roger Wong @lunarboy.com · 23/07/2026
Trying out Codex in the terminal… I'm sorry, but Claude Code is more beautiful and considered. Maybe I'm just used to it, but Codex feels very unfinished from a UI standpoint.
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Roger Wong @lunarboy.com · 21/07/2026
Just in time for San Diego Comic Con! @sandiegocomic-con.bsky.social I made a full schedule explorer app. It's super fast and even contains a relatedness graph view so you can explore by genre, franchise, or even people. Best of all, it's free...
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Roger Wong @lunarboy.com · 20/07/2026
Working on something kind of fun. The @sandiegocomic-con.bsky.social schedule is notoriously terrible. With nearly 3,500 events over 5 days and 51 rooms/venues, it's an information nightmare. SDCC's app and site aren't great. So I decided on Friday to see if I can make a better one. #sdcc2026
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Roger Wong @lunarboy.com · 07/07/2026
Regarding macOS Tahoe and the requirement of squircle app icons, I think it's an accessibility play by Apple. Here, in Mac OS X 10.4, I'm trying to click in the blank space around the shape. Didn't work. 1/
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Roger Wong @lunarboy.com · 29/05/2026
My god this is real.
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Roger Wong @lunarboy.com · 18/05/2026
Been writing about designers-as-orchestrators for a year. "Editorial" is the better word. Orchestrator suggests conducting players who already know their parts. Editorial means standing over the whole portfolio, deciding what belongs and what gets killed. 1/2
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Roger Wong @lunarboy.com · 10/05/2026
Designers and PMs are writing markdown files like DESIGN.md or SOUL.md for their agents. The files hold what used to live in our heads as taste. New newsletter: newsletter.rogerwong.me/p/out-of-you...
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Roger Wong @lunarboy.com · 08/05/2026
You ever get the feeling that Claude Opus 4.7 was trained only on Willam Gibson novels?
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Roger Wong @lunarboy.com · 27/04/2026
AI tools agree with everyone. They're designed to. They remove the friction that used to keep design honest, and whoever learns to put that friction back is doing the actual work.
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Roger Wong @lunarboy.com · 21/04/2026
Spent Sunday afternoon with Claude Design working on my cousin's preschool site. First draft: B-. Four dozen micro-tweaks later: A. The tool gave me a head start. Taste did the rest. rogerwong.me/2026/04/sund...
rogerwong.me
A Sunday Afternoon with Claude Design - Roger Wong
A hands-on look at Claude Design through a preschool website redesign, with reactions from designers on where it fits alongside Figma and Claude Code.
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Roger Wong @lunarboy.com · 19/04/2026
We're getting good at accelerating design work. Automating it is still hazy. AI will ship a passable prototype in minutes, but it can't tell you where your judgment goes when the model handles production.
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Roger Wong @lunarboy.com · 14/04/2026
Acceleration is not automation. Engineers crossed the line this year: four agents in parallel, wiped out by 11am. Design hasn't. Faster PRDs and prototypes are acceleration. Automation needs specialist agent teams, with your judgment shaping the output.
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Roger Wong @lunarboy.com · 13/04/2026
LinkedIn's working Full Stack Builders all spent years as specialists first. That's the part of Tomer Cohen's pitch that nags me. They flex because they built taste one lane at a time. The new APB program bets juniors can skip that phase and still develop the judgment. I'm not convinced. 1/
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Roger Wong @lunarboy.com · 12/04/2026
Gen X gets forgotten AGAIN. Thanks @wsj.com www.wsj.com/personal-fin...
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Roger Wong @lunarboy.com · 29/03/2026
Intercom, Cisco, and Figma all landed on the same answer: design's value is at the beginning and the end. Agents own the middle. The catch: the middle is where junior designers built judgment. We're compressing the workflow and the career ladder at the same time.
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Roger Wong @lunarboy.com · 22/03/2026
When factories got electric motors in the 1880s, they swapped the steam engine and changed nothing else. For 30 years, output barely moved. Most teams are doing the same thing with AI. I wrote more about this: newsletter.rogerwong.me/p/the-factory-hasnt-been-redesigned
newsletter.rogerwong.me
The Factory Hasn’t Been Redesigned Yet
The productivity everyone's chasing lives on the other side of a redesign nobody's started.
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Roger Wong @lunarboy.com · 15/03/2026
Designers, we’re in the messy middle stuck between two ends. Do you defend “designer” as a role or follow the skill of design? I explore this in my latest newsletter.
open.substack.com
Defend the Role or Follow the Skill
The messy middle was never a phase. It was the whole job description.
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Roger Wong @lunarboy.com · 08/03/2026
The design profession got exactly what it asked for: less time pushing pixels, more room for strategy. Most of us are using that time to argue about what designers should be instead. newsletter.rogerwong.me/p/the-territ...
newsletter.rogerwong.me
The Territory You Haven’t Claimed
The tools are ready. The demand is real. So what's stopping us?
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Roger Wong @lunarboy.com · 04/03/2026
Jenny Wen’s "ship fast, iterate publicly, build trust through speed" approach makes sense for Anthropic. They're building greenfield AI products where nobody knows the right interaction patterns yet.
rogerwong.me
The design process is dead. Here’s what’s replacing it. | Jenny Wen (head of design at Claude) - Roger Wong
Jenny Wen leads design for Claude at Anthropic. Prior to this, she was Director of Design at Figma, where she led the teams behind FigJam and Slides. Before that, she was a designer at Dropbox, Square...
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Roger Wong @lunarboy.com · 02/03/2026
In case you’re looking to switch chatbots, say from a four-syllable one to a single-syllable one: claude.com/import-memory
claude.com
Switch to Claude without starting over | Claude
Transfer your preferences, projects, and context from other AI providers into Claude. Switch without losing what makes your AI useful.
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Roger Wong @lunarboy.com · 02/03/2026
Wow. LOL
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Roger Wong @lunarboy.com · 01/03/2026
Developers and designers are independently grieving the same thing right now, and it took me a while to realize they’re not mourning the skill but the tribe. The community that used to care about the craft now feels like it’s about speed, or pulling a slot machine lever on prompts. 1/
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Roger Wong @lunarboy.com · 27/02/2026
I thought the same thing. This might be the inflection point and NOT “AI-washing” as in the earlier layoffs from Amazon, Meta, etc.
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Roger Wong @lunarboy.com · 27/02/2026
Boom. I’m glad @anthropic.com is not caving in. Anti-mass domestic surveillance and anti-autonomous murderbots are moral red lines to have.
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Roger Wong @lunarboy.com · 26/02/2026
Best thing I heard today: “Claude Code is gaslighting me.” 🤣
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Roger Wong @lunarboy.com · 22/02/2026
Just published a new newsletter wrapping up the theme of last week. Design is changing fast due to the new AI tools. Bleeding edge Silicon Valley companies have already made the shift. Our days of drawing pictures of designs to be implemented are numbered.
open.substack.com
Stop Drawing Pictures of Software
AI is pushing designers out of Figma and into the material they actually ship.
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Roger Wong @lunarboy.com · 20/02/2026
Everywhere I look, there’s a new ASCII project. I think it’s sort of a halo effect from Claude Code and the nostalgia designers and developers have for terminals. Anyway, I wrote a roundup of stuff that’s caught my eye. #designsky
rogerwong.me
ASCII Me - Roger Wong
ASCII and text-based art are making a comeback: a personal roundup of ASCII art, animated clouds, glyph tools, Mermaid diagrams, and terminal UIs and nostalgia.
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Roger Wong @lunarboy.com · 16/02/2026
Designers vibe-coding these days...
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Roger Wong @lunarboy.com · 16/02/2026
I pointed Claude Code at our design system and got a working screen in three prompts. Didn’t open Figma once. That’s the part of my job I’ve spent decades doing—drawing pictures of apps and handing them to someone else to build. 1/
rogerwong.me
Product Design Is Changing - Roger Wong
Product design is changing: AI shifts work from Figma mockups to design in code, centering orchestration, machine-readable design systems and human judgment.
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Roger Wong @lunarboy.com · 15/02/2026
I’ve been thinking about what actually makes someone good at their job. Not competent, but good. The kind of good where you look at a screen and know something is off before you can articulate why. The kind where you can tell a product decision is wrong from across the room. #designsky
newsletter.rogerwong.me
The Reps You Can’t Skip
The work AI makes easiest to skip is the work that matters most.
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Roger Wong @lunarboy.com · 13/02/2026
After writing about Wall Street + SaaS, I found a few pieces that pulled on that thread to something forward-looking. - Shawn Smith on how Salesforce is in trouble - Charlie Warren on what he calls “Vertical AI 2.0” - Eli Dukes on the new moat: data recipes - Duncan Grazier on the next AI platform
rogerwong.me
What's Next in Vertical SaaS - Roger Wong
Vertical SaaS: Explore Vertical AI 2.0, data recipes, and decisioning systems reshaping moats, product strategy, and the future of industry-specific software.
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Roger Wong @lunarboy.com · 11/02/2026
Zapier and IFTTT were supposed to "kill the software giants." They didn't. Instead, the system integration market grew to $410B by 2024. Similarly, in 2000, I worked on Sega.com and our agency charged $1M for the design+build. Today, a Shopify site costs $39/mo. But the market has grown to $47B.
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Roger Wong @lunarboy.com · 09/02/2026
Last week, B2B software companies tumbled in the stock market, dropping over 10%. The prevailing sentiment is because AI tools like Anthropic’s Claude Code are now capable of doing things companies used to pay thousands of dollars for. I think Wall Street is wrong and I have receipts.
rogerwong.me
What Wall Street Gets Wrong About SaaS - Roger Wong
SaaS: Why Wall Street's AI panic misunderstands reality - learn how AI boosts adoption, creates complexity, and keeps mission-critical enterprise software vital
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Roger Wong @lunarboy.com · 02/02/2026
What's all the fuss about OpenClaw (fka Clawd fka Moltbot)? I was having FOMO so I tested it out and then wrote about its implications on design. Tl;dr: It's a glimpse into our agentic future. But there's a lot of UX work for us to do. #DesignThreads #AI #ProductManagement
rogerwong.me
OpenClaw and the Agentic Future - Roger Wong
OpenClaw reveals agentic future: a self-hosted AI agent that automates tasks, links apps, and reshapes personal assistants, what it can do and why it matters.
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Roger Wong @lunarboy.com · 30/01/2026
Well that's a first. At least Claude is admitting to making it up? 😂
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Roger Wong @lunarboy.com · 29/01/2026
Hot take: Moltbot (fka Clawd/Clawdbot) is pretty much like an n8n AI personal assistant. But packaged up differently, more automation (like it can configure itself) and with zero guardrails (see configuring itself).
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Roger Wong @lunarboy.com · 28/01/2026
I was lamenting to my teenage son the other day that there aren’t enough protest songs these days. His answer was that artists just wanna make their money, and coming out with a political song will jeopardize their living. We’re at a breaking point in America. Those with platforms must speak now.
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Reposted by Roger Wong
Bruce Springsteen @brucespringsteen.net · 28/01/2026
I wrote this song on Saturday, recorded it yesterday and released it to you today in response to the state terror being visited on the city of Minneapolis. It’s dedicated to the people of Minneapolis, our innocent immigrant neighbors and in memory of Alex Pretti and Renee Good. Stay free
youtu.be
Bruce Springsteen - Streets Of Minneapolis (Official Audio)
YouTube video by Bruce Springsteen
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Reposted by Roger Wong
Marcin Wichary @aresluna.org · 23/01/2026
I’ve been working on this for a while, but let’s make it official: I started a little Tumblr-like microblog about software craft and quality! You can sign up via RSS or a weekly newsletter digest. There’s already almost two months of content, if you just want to check it out. unsung.aresluna.org
unsung.aresluna.org
Unsung
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Roger Wong @lunarboy.com · 27/01/2026
Benhur Senabathi, writing for UX Collective, shipped 3 apps and 15+ working prototypes in 2025 using Claude Code and Cursor. His takeaway: “I didn’t learn to code this year. I learned to orchestrate.…Coding is about syntax. Orchestration is about intent, systems, and knowing what ‘done’ looks like.”
uxdesign.cc
Designers as agent orchestrators: what I learnt shipping with AI in 2025
Why shipping products matters in the age of AI and what designers can learn from it
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Roger Wong @lunarboy.com · 26/01/2026
Over the weekend I sent out my latest newsletter with this big idea: with AI accelerating execution (i.e., coding, delivery), what's left for designers? Strategy of course. But are designers *actually* shifting left and becoming more strategic? #designsky #productdesign #productmanagement
open.substack.com
The Strategic Role Designers Need to Capture
Plus: How browsers work, another chapter in the Rippling/Deel fiasco, and why Apple and Google aren't taking action against X.
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Roger Wong @lunarboy.com · 26/01/2026
I'm seeing this more and more across sites. Overly-strict anti-AI bot firewalls are blocking legitimate human traffic (me). I'm just using an AI-enabled browser (ChatGPT Atlas in this case). Get with the times! cc @linkedin.com
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Roger Wong @lunarboy.com · 11/12/2025
I’ve never like Calibri. There’s a certain group of humanist sans typefaces that don’t seem great in my eyes. I am more of a grotesque guy. 1/
rogerwong.me
Rubio Deletes Calibri as the State Department’s Official Typeface - Roger Wong
Secretary of State Marco Rubio called the Biden-era move to the sans serif typeface “wasteful,” casting the return to Times New Roman as part of a push to stamp out diversity efforts.
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Roger Wong @lunarboy.com · 27/10/2025
I spent the past week using OpenAI's new ChatGPT Atlas browser as my daily driver. My verdict: It's not ready yet. The AI features are compelling—having context from your browsing history and past ChatGPT conversations could be genuinely useful. 1/
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Roger Wong @lunarboy.com · 27/10/2025
Ok who used AI to design the Steelers uniform? #nfl
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Roger Wong @lunarboy.com · 20/10/2025
It's kind of funny to me that academics compare products, write and publish a paper, and it's got immediate authority. It's just a competitive audit, right? We do this all the time. austinhenley.com/blog/aidesig...
austinhenley.com
The design space of AI coding tools
10 design dimensions based on 90 AI coding tools.
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Roger Wong @lunarboy.com · 14/10/2025
Rebuilt my blog with Astro after Next.js performance started degrading. The difference is dramatic: - Content readable in 84ms (was 175ms) - Full page load in 746ms (was 21 secs) - Search: 30ms (was 3.6 seconds) - Hosting costs dropped significantly The right tool isn't always the fanciest one.
rogerwong.me
The Need for Speed: Why I Rebuilt My Blog with Astro - Roger Wong
How I migrated my blog from Next.js and Payload CMS to Astro, achieving 30x faster load times and 100x faster search while cutting hosting costs.
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Roger Wong @lunarboy.com · 23/09/2025
As designers, as people who make technology, it’s time we took responsibility. The assassination of Charlie Kirk was shocking, but it wasn’t unpredictable. It was the inevitable outcome of platforms designed to optimize for outrage. 1/
Dark red-toned artwork of a person staring into a glowing phone, surrounded by swirling shadows.
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