Getting used to making my work visible
Building has become easier, but distribution still feels uncomfortable, awkward, and much harder to avoid.
Leaflo Update: Slowing Down and Starting Plainline
A quick update on Leaflo positioning, in-app feedback, a new short-form video format, and early research for Plainline.
Why Leaflo Won't Have Streaks
Why I decided not to use streaks in Leaflo, even though they are easy to understand, cheap to build, and often work well for retention.
Leaflo Is Now a CBT Journal
A big Leaflo release: guided CBT check-ins, emotion-specific questions, breathing exercises, App Store updates, and first localizations in seven languages.
Leaflo Update: Monetization, SEO, and What's Next
A quick Leaflo update: App Store monetization shipped, release QA took half the week, and the main focus is starting to shift from development to marketing.
Why I’m gradually turning Leaflo into a CBT journal
And why that makes the product more useful without pretending to replace therapy.
Don't outsource strategy to AI
AI can help with specific tasks, but if you let it shape strategy, it can pull you away from your original product direction.
QA Is Becoming the Bottleneck
Building Leaflo made me realize that QA, not specs or design, is becoming one of the slowest and hardest parts of shipping a small product.
What I'm Building Now
A quick snapshot of the projects I'm working on now, why Leaflo is the main bet, and what I want to prove over the next 12 to 18 months.
Replacing Figma with code-based prototyping
I experimented with partially replacing Figma with code-based prototyping in real product work. Here’s what came out of it
On Principles
Principles are not nice slogans. They are fixed choices between competing reasonable options that help reduce chaos and stop repeating the same arguments.
On Care in Products
In a world obsessed with data, we often overlook the core of our work — Care. It's the deep human motivation that cultivates both function and beauty, fostering connection and loyalty
Design is Art
If design loses its artistic quality, it becomes dead, grey, flat — just a utility. And nobody loves utilities; they are merely used
Design Systems
Alla Kholmatova
Equip your team with practical methods, guiding principles, and real-world insights to build a robust design system that unifies your product
Vision over metrics
When every experiment is expected to succeed, product vision fades into the background. Numbers, not people, start making the decisions
Margin notes. Issue 1
My thoughts on 5 articles
AI-driven generalists roles, CSS text balancing, user research myths and insights, and design artifacts
About Beauty in Digital Product Design
Designers now hide behind functionality, but Beauty drives emotion and lasting impact. It’s time to bring it back
Intercom on Jobs To Be Done
Des Traynor
Discover how Intercom’s Jobs to Be Done (JTBD) approach helps build products that solve real user problems
Competing Against Luck
Clayton M. Christensen, Karen Dillon, Taddy Hall, David S. Duncan
To create hit products find out what “jobs” users need done, and make your product the one they can’t live without
Hacking Growth
Sean Ellis, Morgan Brown
The book is a step-by-step plan that guides practitioners from a variety of companies through the process of Growth Hacking
