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thisisfranciswu

@thisisfranciswu.bsky.social
269 followers 436 following 378 posts

9 parts dad. 7 parts product designer. 5 parts product manager. 3 parts UI developer. Some parts private.

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thisisfranciswu @thisisfranciswu.bsky.social · 8h
Innovation is removing a constraint, or making it irrelevant. Re-architecting for modern search? Innovation. Letting customers buy without a sales call? Innovation. Giving ICs access to customers and data? Innovation. Before chasing tech trends, identify your constraints.
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thisisfranciswu @thisisfranciswu.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
My parents are cooked! 😭 youtu.be/PpcP835mWEQ
youtu.be
POV: You are a 75-year-old on the internet
Go to https://surfshark.com/philedwards or use code PHILEDWARDS at checkout to get 4 extra months of Surfshark! Here are the notes for the video:…
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thisisfranciswu @thisisfranciswu.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
My brother John and I work in different industries, but we're cut from the same cloth and we've seen the same thing. Nothing compounds like misalignment. Fixes are easy upstream. Downstream, they don't scale. vsquad.art/blog/intervi...
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thisisfranciswu @thisisfranciswu.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Finishing a bag of potatoes before they went bad is top-tier adulthood.
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thisisfranciswu @thisisfranciswu.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
"Just" is the most load-bearing word in any ask. It sounds the same whether the thinking was deep, shallow, or never happened. Worth finding out which. Oldie but goodie: alistapart.com/blog/post/th...
alistapart.com
The Most Dangerous Word In Software Development
“Just put it up on a server somewhere.” “Just add a favorite button to the right side of the item.” “Just add [insert complex option here] to the settings screen.” Usage of the word “just” points t…
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thisisfranciswu @thisisfranciswu.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Half of product bets fail and most never get removed. So you pay for them twice: once to build, then forever to run. Failed bets are like tenants who never pay rent. Why keep them? liamnugent.me/posts/what-y...
liamnugent.me
The most important product decision is what you don’t build
Ask a team what they shipped this year and you’ll get a list. Ask what they killed and the room goes quiet.
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thisisfranciswu @thisisfranciswu.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Really nice exploration on better collaborative experiences with agents. The slides are pretty great too. maggieappleton.com/planning-age...
maggieappleton.com
Planning with Agents: Divided Worlds, Boundary Objects, and Thicker Interfaces
Why we need richer, thicker interfaces and better boundary objects for collaborative planning with agents
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thisisfranciswu @thisisfranciswu.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
My reaction after sharing my iced coffee at the job interview. 🤣
Three men in formal tuxedos from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, with the central crime boss, Lao Che, holding up a small blue glass vial while flanked by two smiling henchmen. Bold white text across the bottom reads "ANTIDOTE".
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thisisfranciswu @thisisfranciswu.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
"Execution bottleneck" gets a lot of airtime. But look upstream at what's pouring through it: a torrent of requests driven by vibes, careless promises, impatience, and even impudence. The bottleneck is gone. Now the job is limiting the blast radius. But that's always been the job.
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thisisfranciswu @thisisfranciswu.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
After building Otzio.app, I've kinda been asking myself the same thing. 😅 slate.com/podcasts/dec...
slate.com
We Make a Podcast. But We Don’t Know What “Podcast” Means Anymore.
Podcasts have never been more popular…or more confusing.
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thisisfranciswu @thisisfranciswu.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
“My Slack would fill up with GO TEAM GO messages from someone who [has no idea that] people have died trying to establish labor laws that protect workers from the exact same conditions that he is now responsible for perpetuating […]” www.wired.com/story/i-work...
wired.com
I Work in Hollywood. Everyone Who Used to Make TV Is Now Secretly Training AI
For screenwriters like me—and job seekers all over—AI gig work is the new waiting tables. In eight months, I’ve done 20 of these soul-crushing contracts for five different platforms. It’s bad.
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thisisfranciswu @thisisfranciswu.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
Stop calling accessibility failures merely "non-compliant." Let's be more accurate: they're both non-compliant and casually ableist.
Drake Hotline Bling meme where he rejects "Non-compliant" but approves "Non-compliant and casually ableist".
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thisisfranciswu @thisisfranciswu.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
"Once you’ve spent a lot of time and effort on something, you overestimate how much it matters to everyone else." For my personal site, I let system settings decide. Enough brain cells were spent. 😅 lea.verou.me/blog/2026/da...
lea.verou.me
The best dark mode toggle is probably none • Lea Verou
My post on two-state dark mode toggles sparked a lot of discussion about the optimal dark mode toggle design. But should you have a (persistent) dark mode toggle at all? I have since been convinced…
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thisisfranciswu @thisisfranciswu.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
Ah, it turned out "collaboration" was code for "collusion". RTO mandates make total sense now. 😅 insights.som.yale.edu/insights/rem...
insights.som.yale.edu
Remote Work Is Linked to a Decline in Financial Misconduct
A new study co-authored by Yale SOM’s John Barrios finds that firms better positioned to shift to remote work during the pandemic experienced a sharp decline in financial misconduct. The likely…
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thisisfranciswu @thisisfranciswu.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
"[…] capitalism’s drive for constant productivity and exchange is fundamentally at odds with the existence of sleep, a period of time in which no production or exchange can occur." www.currentaffairs.org/news/a-socie...
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thisisfranciswu @thisisfranciswu.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
"You'd be a top applicant" is the new "you might have already won".
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thisisfranciswu @thisisfranciswu.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
"Every executive override teaches sales that going around product is the fastest path to, yes, training the organization to ignore the process." Making the trade-offs visible is a way to survive this. insideproductorg.substack.com/p/what-actua...
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thisisfranciswu @thisisfranciswu.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
A dive into Meta's most recent high-collateral FOMO-chasing big bet. www.reuters.com/investigatio...
reuters.com
https://www.reuters.com/investigations/mark-zuckerberg-had-bold-plan-replace-meta-staff-with-ai-heres-how-it-imploded-2026-08-26/
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thisisfranciswu @thisisfranciswu.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
Adopting the ad agency's culture and model is UX's original sin. uxdesign.cc/sterling-coo...
uxdesign.cc
Sterling Cooper built your UX process. We need to redefine it in the age of AI and systems.
The rituals of the 1960s ad shop — the whiskey, the pitch room, the account man, the campaign— still shape how UX teams fail in many…
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thisisfranciswu @thisisfranciswu.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
Same realization here. Figma is no longer a proxy for the ability to design. Then again, it never really was. It's just one design artifact creation tool in an evolving landscape of design artifact creation tools. www.nimblestudio.com/story/a-brea...
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thisisfranciswu @thisisfranciswu.bsky.social · 30/08/2026
Here are helpful examples to differentiate KPIs from OKRs: KPI: The number of times you cry in the office rest room per week. OKR: Survive the toxic culture and cut office breakdowns to zero by Q3.
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thisisfranciswu @thisisfranciswu.bsky.social · 30/08/2026
Finally, an AI executive team to replace the human one. The best part? "Just add AI chat into the product" probably wouldn't pass strategic review. 🤣 github.com/SenteLabsAI/...
github.com
GitHub - SenteLabsAI/OpenExecutive: AI-powered virtual executive team — a single coherent executive persona backed by 8 specialist Claude agents (FastAPI + Next.js).
AI-powered virtual executive team — a single coherent executive persona backed by 8 specialist Claude agents (FastAPI + Next.js). - SenteLabsAI/OpenExecutive
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thisisfranciswu @thisisfranciswu.bsky.social · 29/08/2026
Breadboarding and fat marker sketches are even more lightweight design tools than wireframes. Articulating user flows doesn't really get simpler than this. basecamp.com/shapeup/1.3-...
basecamp.com
Find the Elements | Shape Up
Heads up! This page uses features your browser doesn’t support. Try a modern browser like Firefox or Chrome for the best experience.
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thisisfranciswu @thisisfranciswu.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
"[…] they had people play logic puzzles set to music during the day, then told them they might play some of the same songs later on while they slept, which was their cue to keep working on those puzzles in the dream." Great, soon they're gonna make us work in our sleep. time.com/article/2026...
time.com
The New Science of Dreaming
Researchers have figured out how to induce lucid dreaming—and are using it to help answer to ancient questions about our minds.
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thisisfranciswu @thisisfranciswu.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
Generative AI turned everybody in the org into Leeroy Jenkins — unilaterally building and shipping stuff without all that pesky communication and alignment. medium.com/design-bootc...
medium.com
Everyone can build now. Nobody has to explain why.
What happened over the last year of vibe coding, prototyping, and reflecting — and how product management is changing, not dying.
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thisisfranciswu @thisisfranciswu.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
I had a nightmare where I was being micromanaged by waitstaff at a tropical resort. I was catching heat for spending the time to also include my research insights and thinking with my design artifacts instead of just producing screens.
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thisisfranciswu @thisisfranciswu.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
"[…] my job and responsibilities were being heavily micromanaged by those that did not understand or respect DevRel as a discipline." This applies to so much illegible work and the sentence now lives rent-free in my head. whitep4nth3r.com/blog/goodbye...
whitep4nth3r.com
Goodbye, forever, probably.
I’m leaving developer relations and developer education. Rather than disappear completely unannounced, I wanted to tell you why.
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thisisfranciswu @thisisfranciswu.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
Tom Verrilli's "we regret PM exists" is controversial, but I've been in orgs where ICs just take orders with no expectation to own the problem. So I can see how the PM becomes a stop-gap for ICs the org broke, or couldn't imagine as more than executors. www.youtube.com/watch?v=ruvi...
youtube.com
This CPO regrets that product management exists | Tom Verrilli (CPO of Whatnot)
Tom Verrilli is the chief product officer at Whatnot, a live shopping platform that’s become the fastest-growing U.S. marketplace business in history, with over $8 billion in GMV. Before joining…
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thisisfranciswu @thisisfranciswu.bsky.social · 23/08/2026
Resisting the urge to “pspsps” at the cats appearing in the background during video calls.
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thisisfranciswu @thisisfranciswu.bsky.social · 23/08/2026
"The cutting edge of organizational innovation is concerned with dismantling [Scrum ceremonies] as fast as possible and watching immovable backlogs melt away simply by giving people ownership over doing so and trusting them to do it." productpicnic.beehiiv.com/p/trust-is-n...
productpicnic.beehiiv.com
Trust is not built on craft alone
No amount of tooling will let product teams move faster than being trusted to own their process. That trust is earned through rigor rather than mere velocity.
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thisisfranciswu @thisisfranciswu.bsky.social · 22/08/2026
This piece nails it: accessibility at scale is an architecture problem. The thing is, the architects are front-of-the-front-end developers, and orgs that lump that craft under generic "front-end" will struggle to scale accessibility. #a11y hackernoon.com/accessibilit...
hackernoon.com
https://hackernoon.com/accessibility-bugs-are-often-architecture-bugs
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thisisfranciswu @thisisfranciswu.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
Sure, a mechanical keyboard can sound and feel great. But a membrane keyboard can do a better job masking how little you care when videoconferencing. 😅
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thisisfranciswu @thisisfranciswu.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
A component library provides parts, but a design system provides canonical decisions. Here's a pretty good way to start thinking about how that might be implemented. mattrothenberg.com/notes/you-do...
mattrothenberg.com
You Don't Have a Design System
A component library gives you parts. A design system carries the decisions that make a product feel coherent.
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thisisfranciswu @thisisfranciswu.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
Look at what you need to do just to mimic a fraction of semantic HTML's power! karlkoch.me/writing/on-t...
karlkoch.me
Karl Koch | On the semantic web
Semantic HTML is interface infrastructure: native elements carry behaviour, accessibility, form semantics, keyboard support, and platform adaptation before styling begins.
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thisisfranciswu @thisisfranciswu.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
Hiring managers, is "we'll keep your résumé on file" code for "we'll sell your info to a 3rd party"? Because I regularly get spam from recruiters, but I've yet to get a callback from a company I've previously applied to. Universe, prove me wrong! 😅
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thisisfranciswu @thisisfranciswu.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
It's wild how some companies will hire people, starve them of context, but gladly feed it all to LLMs for all the output they can eat. Give those ingredients to ICs chasing outcomes and let them cook. www.elenaverna.com/p/your-ai-st...
elenaverna.com
Your company needs agency, not agents.
So maybe try actually trusting your employees a bit?
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thisisfranciswu @thisisfranciswu.bsky.social · 17/08/2026
Bachelor Bias (n.): The institutional and entrepreneurial blind spot that occurs when products, business models, and corporate policies are created by individuals completely insulated from domestic, familial, and caregiving responsibilities.
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thisisfranciswu @thisisfranciswu.bsky.social · 17/08/2026
"When a society is unmoved by decades of advocacy from disabled communities but springs into action when a tech company needs the same accommodation, it reveals whose claims on shared resources are treated as legitimate and whose are treated as optional." #a11y www.techpolicy.press/the-web-is-b...
techpolicy.press
The Web Is Being Made Accessible for AI, Not People
Jonathan Zong and Frank Elavsky critique how AI-driven infrastructure changes obscure accessibility and reveal whose needs society chooses to prioritize.
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thisisfranciswu @thisisfranciswu.bsky.social · 14/08/2026
Companies seeking the true health of their culture can look at their talent referral pipeline for clues. People simply won't spend social capital on workplaces they don't trust.
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thisisfranciswu @thisisfranciswu.bsky.social · 14/08/2026
"Role responsibilities got sorted neatly into 'coming up with ideas' and 'executing the ideas.' This split insulated the idea-havers from any consequences of what they were doing […]" productpicnic.beehiiv.com/p/thoughtles...
productpicnic.beehiiv.com
Thoughtless features never add up to a thoughtful product
Your first idea for how to solve a problem is most likely to be a low-impact hack. Delightful user experiences require a higher level of thinking.
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thisisfranciswu @thisisfranciswu.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
Every few years the industry rediscovers that you should model what things are before you build screens around them. In 2003 we had DDD. In the 2010s we had OOUX. In 2026, with AI, we have "meaning layer." Everything old is new again. medium.com/design-bootc...
medium.com
Design taste doesn’t need an API. It needs a meaning layer.
This spring, Jeff Veen pulled design leaders from the major AI labs and software companies into a closed room for something he called the…
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thisisfranciswu @thisisfranciswu.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
Sure, investing in safe bike lane infrastructure is nice. But what about also investing in secure bike parking infrastructure?
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thisisfranciswu @thisisfranciswu.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
Sure, you can ship faster. But does your product still feel calm and predictable, or does it feel like a room full of overstimulated toddlers? medium.com/design-bootc...
medium.com
Everybody is talking about how exciting it is to use AI and ship faster.
AI has made shipping cheap. That changes the emotional equation for your users.
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thisisfranciswu @thisisfranciswu.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
As Seinfeld would put it: "You know how to get the user, you just don't know how to retain the user. And that's really the most important part: the retention. Anybody can just get 'em!" Retention is the real growth engine. www.linkedin.com/pulse/retent...
linkedin.com
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/retention-metric-its-compounding-engine-aleksandra-litwinska-h9lqc/
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thisisfranciswu @thisisfranciswu.bsky.social · 10/08/2026
"Post-Agile" isn't new, it's just good engineering and design. It's knowing what to build, and building it so it can change. www.linkedin.com/pulse/what-p...
linkedin.com
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thisisfranciswu @thisisfranciswu.bsky.social · 07/08/2026
"[The prototype] doesn’t explain why the opportunity matters, what trade-offs were made, how success will be measured or why one investment was chosen over another." The fundamentals still matter. medium.com/design-bootc...
medium.com
When Product Management forgot its job
How we confused access to tools with expertise, and why the most important work in product is quietly being left behind.
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thisisfranciswu @thisisfranciswu.bsky.social · 05/08/2026
"Any coherent question about [AI] constitutes an inadvertent attack on the chain of command responsible for the work because there are no good answers to anything." How AI has turned organizations into ant mills and how to survive it. hermit-tech.com/blog/ai-mani...
hermit-tech.com
AI Mania Is Eviscerating Global Decisionmaking
The reality of how much damage AI mania is doing to our ability to run institutions effectively.
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thisisfranciswu @thisisfranciswu.bsky.social · 04/08/2026
Cineplex's single-page application (SPA) setup makes it unnecessarily difficult to compare available seating for a film across multiple days in separate tabs. This is admittedly the firstest of first-world problems, but damn. Don't build SPAs like this. #UX #webdev
Screenshot of the Cineplex seat selection interface for "The Odyssey" in 70MM IMAX at Cinéma Banque Scotia Montréal, showing an interactive auditorium map with available blue seats and grey reserved seats.
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thisisfranciswu @thisisfranciswu.bsky.social · 25/07/2026
Midway through 2025, LLMs became my go-to method for understanding a domain space. And it wasn't too long before they became part of my domain-driven design and information architecture toolkit. curioussquid.substack.com/p/claude-is-...
curioussquid.substack.com
Claude is an information architecture laboratory (Spilling Ink #15)
Claude is not a thought partner. It is a laboratory where I conduct experiments on information architecture models.
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thisisfranciswu @thisisfranciswu.bsky.social · 21/07/2026
"[…] without UBI, people like this are exceedingly rare. Einsteins are rare. Khns and Kleks are rare. With UBI, they will be less rare. That is not a hope. That is a statistical near-certainty." www.scottsantens.com/the-angine-d...
scottsantens.com
The Angine de Poitrine Argument for UBI
Why Angine de Poitrine's viral microtonal math rock KEXP session, Ireland's permanent basic income for artists, and Albert Einstein are three sides of the same human triangle Two guys in papier-mâché…
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