Andrew Nhem

I’m becoming more convinced the future isn’t PMs, designers, or engineers. It’s product people. High-agency, high-taste individuals who uncover problems, create concepts, and ship solutions. Fast. The disciplines we’ve relied on? They were just constructs. Useful scaffolding—until they weren’t. AI collapses the scaffolding. The builders are what matter now. A product person isn’t a job title. It’s the engineer embedding with a customer. The designer prototyping ideas before anyone asks. The CS rep turning feedback into a feature. AI makes it possible for anyone to build. If you’ve ever blurred the lines and just made it happen—you’re probably a product person.

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New post: The isolation and loneliness of tech writing may get worse as AI accelerates Isolation is something I've been thinking about lately. Although I have an abundant professional network and support probably 100+ engineers, PMs, and others, at times I do experience a sense of isolation in my role. I'm not sure if it's the holidays, or because now that I'm 50, I'm apparently at the bottom of the "U-shaped happiness curve," but I'm trying to understand how to navigate a world where my relationships with colleagues are increasingly transactional (purely information-based) and lack more social aspects. There are several reasons for isolation, and good reason to believe that AI will only increase our isolation. Read more: https://lnkd.in/gtHwGy4y

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You've likely seen the headlines of executives issuing AI mandates for internal teams, some of which hasn't landed well internally (or externally). Prior to these headlines making a splash we opted to take a slightly different approach. A set of expectations for the entire Design org: 1. You’ll experiment with AI and share what you’re learning. 2. You’ll become proficient at prompting. 3. You’ll stay alert to opportunities for which AI can improve the products, services, and workflows you’re responsible for. 4. You’ll maintain a very high bar for design quality, regardless of whether humans or bots do the work. 5. You’ll never lose touch with the ability to craft with your hands, mind, heart, and gut. How are we making these actionable so they're not just frothy maxims? One of the ways we're doing this is through a monthly series called "AI Playdates" where volunteers or delegates present on design-related AI topics to the entire org. Today was the second instance in our series, with four presenters sharing their experimentation with Lovable, Bolt, Replit, v0, and ChatGPT for generating UI concepts and complementing their design workflows. Through Playdates, we're directly chipping away at 1 and 2 above, and indirectly at 4 and 5. Expectations (or guiding principles) such as these aren't likely to make headlines. In fact this post isn't likely to garner much attention either. Yes, sometimes we need to act boldly as leaders, and yes even with mandates. But there is also wisdom, sometimes greater wisdom, in acting with more thoughtful judgment and more flexible guidelines. Slow and steady. Measured and principled. These don't make headlines as much, but gosh they sure can be an effective way to lead. #ai #design #leadership

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Do you write in your CMS? If you’re like me, the answer is probably “no.” Turns out that’s the case for many #content creators. We start the authoring journey in another app – like Microsoft Word or Google Docs – and then (tediously? feverishly? mind-numbingly?) copy, paste, and format in a CMS before finally publishing. Having the freedom to work in the tool of your choice is a good thing… until you start considering #governance, #accessibility, and other factors that might impact quality. This gets even more elusive if another team member is responsible for pasting your prose into its final resting place. What could go wrong? A lot. This is why Pantheon sees web publishing as “broken,” and they’re aiming to fix it with an innovative new product called Content Publisher. It’s an add-on feature that enables writers to create in a Google Doc and directly publish to their WordPress, Drupal, or NextJs websites – and do it all safely and securely. I spoke late last year to Pantheon’s CSO Josh Koenig about the company’s Tag1 partnership when the Content Publisher beta was introduced, so it’s still in its early phases. I also saw Roland Benedetti, Pantheon’s Senior Director of Product, outline the company’s broader vision for content operations, during the Boye & Company #CMSKickoff25 – and this tool aligns with that mission. On CMS Critic, we dig into some of the current benefits of Content Publisher, the most obvious of which is eliminating the waste of “copy and paste” and unifying more of the ecosystem. Can it help make the web simple and fun again? Read our overview here: https://lnkd.in/ePyWXmai

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Information design is an overlooked superpower. More content and UX designers could be using it to make complex things clear. In grad school, I was focused a lot on visual rhetoric and was always drawn to Edward Tufte’s work and the idea that how we present information shapes people’s understanding of it. In enterprise software, there are so many opportunities to use visuals to make complex data more meaningful. But most UX orgs don’t have people with that skill — or even realize they need it. That gap is a perfect space for content designers and visual designers to collaborate with each bringing strengths that complement the other. I just read an article about how a shift in data visualization helped break through climate change apathy. The new visual approach helped people care. If reimagining data can change how people feel about something as difficult as climate change, what could it do for our products? Article link in the comments.

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As I read PJ Onori's post on design system team morale, I kept coming back to a belief of "design systems are limited." As they should be. "Getting good at saying no" and being more deliberate about forming and pursuing objectives takes you to a more disciplined place. It also makes clear that, like any product's scope, design systems are **not unlimited** even if many different people want different things without a sense of scale, cost or opportunity cost. Know your limits. https://lnkd.in/eVhHfSNJ

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you will never be able to convince an organization of the value (aka, ROI) of UX, because the value and impact of UX comes from *investment* in the full breadth of experience design (research, exploration, iteration, evaluation). asking us to prove our value while withholding the resources to do so is setting us up to fail.

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Today, we released Part II of our Design Leadership series on Substack! In this episode, we dive into the day-to-day responsibilities of a design manager. Writing things out often brings clarity, helping to highlight the tasks and challenges that are typically normalized or left unspoken. So it was another fun discussion with Anukriti V., exploring the nuances of this. Here are three highlights from our conversation: - The importance of meetings for alignment and decision-making - Keeping teams aligned and focused requires intentional effort - Embracing ownership, initiative, and a high standard of craft Link in the comments.

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I think one of the kindest things you can do for a colleague is to schedule Slack DMs for when they're on-line vs. sending when they've gone home (West Coast messaging East Coast) or when they're just getting their day started (East Coast messaging West Coast). It's a great way to indirectly commit to observing shared boundaries, helps create levels of gradation in urgency of message (e.g., if I *do* message you outside of what I know are your working hours, it probably is important), and is FREE TO DO. The inverse usually makes me feel like a colleague is operating under an "I sent the message, now it's off my plate and up to you" model, which forces me to maintain a boundary on my own, figure out if the message is truly urgent, and costs me time to discern all of the above. Anyone else?

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