Flipping questions on its head 4 minutes read — 02 May 2025

A cardinal sin when it comes to design research is when some one asks a leading question. If you're interviewing a consumer of Pepsodent toothpaste, you should almost never, ever, ever, ask "How much do you enjoy using Pepsodent toothpaste?". That's a leading question, and the answers you might get from this question are usually loaded with confirmation bias. It would be more along the lines of...

Vibe writing maxims 3 minutes read — 02 May 2025

Some vibe-writing maxims: - While writing, have two windows open: one for the writing, and the other one for ChatGPT. Previously he used to consult ChatGPT a couple of times for internet research, but now the role has transitioned to be a more conversational thought partner, helping you riff-raff on the idea for the essay. (Let's say you're writing an essay about tarrifs, and you want to...

How I blog with Obsidian, Cloudflare, AstroJS, Github 3 minutes read — 25 Apr 2025

I’ve been refining my writing and publishing workflow to the point where it feels effortless. It combines Obsidian for writing, AstroJS for building the site, and Cloudflare Pages for deployment. Everything now lives locally, in plain text, structured neatly for both creative flow and technical control. And this is partly inspired by Kepano's adherence to the local, plain-text format: > File over...

We have been scammed by the Gaussian distribution club 4 minutes read — 08 Apr 2025

Taleb insists that we've been scammed by the Gaussian distribution club. The gaussian distribution has become so ubiquitous in our daily jargons, oru day-to-day decisions even. >"We have been duped by the bell curve. Mandelbrot was the first to rigorously prove that markets are not Gaussian." – Taleb As most real-world phenomena: especially complex, human-involved systems are not well-behaved in...

I was wrong about optimal stopping 2 minutes read — 07 Apr 2025

If you were tasked with a need to find the tallest mountain, and went searching in a far away land surrounded by a series of mountains, how would you finalise the tallest mountain, especially when you could still go farther, and find even more taller mountains (only if you explore even more). There are various ways to term this, some call it the travelling salesman problem, or the "secretary...

Thinking like a ship 4 minutes read — 05 Apr 2025

It took me a long time to realize that arguments we argue about — aren’t always about facts. They are about values. Reading Jonathan Haidt's The Righteous Mind made this clear, that: be it liberals or conservatives, or activists or traditionalists — they’re all wired with different moral priorities—care, fairness, loyalty, authority, sanctity. They feel different things are sacred. What seems...

It's computational everything 4 minutes read — 21 Feb 2025

I was listening to a talk by Debbie Mcmahon from Financial Times recently at Productcon recently and I was surprised by the fact that even in journalism we're seeing tailwind trends more and more computational skills required — genAI is now used to spot stories, and to spin up newsworthy headlines and narratives around these stories. They are now, 'computational journalists'...who are equipped...

Public gardens, secret routes 3 minutes read — 19 Feb 2025

When you land on a site, you are treated with various hyperlinks. Based on the UX choices you make, you might end up preferring one over the other. You might get the job done, and head back to your earlier Chrome tab. Nothing out of the ordinary. It's an internet search as usual. But what about those pages which have no visible links on the site you just searched. It’s hidden in plain sight, but...

Git way of learning to code 4 minutes read — 14 Feb 2025

My last year's resolution was to learn how to build on Rails. I taught myself the basics by following some courses, but nothing really stuck with me. I wasn’t building apps; I was getting into a tutorial rut. I needed a better way to learn, akin to being pushed into the river with a swimming instructor. So, I discovered the Founder/Hacker course, which provided more tactical insights into the...

Style Transfer in AI writing 4 minutes read — 14 Feb 2025

The first draft usually generated by AI is so devoid of your style and personality, and to get to the stage where it even comes remotely close to that requires a lot of fine-tuning, and custom prompts. Last week, I was looking at various ways in which I could "style transfer" my writing style to AI generated drafts. Due to the time consumed in style-transfer, I ended up writing on my own. (Read...

Understanding codebases without using code 2 minutes read — 14 Feb 2025

Analysing codebase and understanding the patterns followed at a top level has become surprisingly easier nowadays with the help of tools such as Gemini (for larger context windows), Gitingest (to convert codebases to simpler markdown), and Mermaid.js (for visualising mermaid diagrams). This is how I would approach understanding a fresh new codebase in order to take a cursory look: Use Gitingest...

Vibe coding with Cursor 2 minutes read — 13 Feb 2025

I used to run my blog on Ghost CMS hosted on a Digital Ocean droplet for $20/mo. Now I do all that for $0/mo using AstroJS, Cloudflare pages hosting. I didn't make any major tradeoffs, I just ditched the old way of relying on third party services to serve my software needs. And I fancied the idea of building my own site from scratch by just vibe-coding all the way — By just talking out loud to...

Writing in Future Past 4 minutes read — 17 Jan 2025

We lack frequent usage of the future past tense in modern discourse. When I was recently drafting my new year resolutions, I noticed the use of 'I can', and 'I will', and found myself questioning the format, especially when I see that I'm good at making promises, but end up being miserable at keeping them. I also observed that when I write "I achieved..." instead of "I will achieve..", I can...

Poetic License of Design 3 minutes read — 12 Jan 2025

Let's say you have to make slides for tomorrow's big meeting. Your boss wants five strategy points on one slide. You know that's too much to be put on one slide, but it's being insisted. "This gives a complete picture of our strategy". "We can't split it up." You think there is another way. You spread these points across five clean slides, one point per slide, and you still receive a pushback....

Idea in the shower, testing before breakfast 6 minutes read — 12 Jan 2025

Imagine having an idea in the shower and testing it before breakfast? It's highly plausible now as AI lets you prototype at the speed of thought. Currently, I use Claude Projects and Cursor to build what I call disposable apps: quick prototypes that prove a point (read more in this essay about vibe coding). The magic? No sunk costs. I can write 5,000 lines of code in ten minutes, test it, and...

Technology and regulation have a dance of ice and fire 6 minutes read — 12 Jan 2025

Let's take a clear pond flourishing with various aquatic plants — water lilies, duckweeds, water milfoils, you name it. The variety of these plants provide a delicate balance, feeding the pond with nutrients, and this very natural filtration system. The algae still tries to outcompete the aquatic plants, but these plants still have an edge (at least for now). The microbial balance ensures the...

How I ship "stuff" 2 minutes read — 11 Jan 2025

As a disclaimer, I would like to mention that I have a very shabby process of getting things done. There could be a golden standard out there worth emulating; but nevertheless, this (rather easy) system works for me, and I continue to follow this— 1. Most of the work in completing the to-dos lies in preparing my own mindset. I have a standard 9-to-5 job, and this works the best for me to plan...

Vibes 1 minute read — 27 Dec 2024

I recently attempted to document some of the "vibes" that were resonating with me through this short-lived ephemeral feed. I abandoned this project as i didn't have a straightforward way to capture them through an app, and sync them in this page. I could have probably built a tool that did that, but is now no longer in my priorities of pet projects I aim to finish. It's as back in the backlog as...

Trees, Branches, Twigs and Leaves — Mental Models for Writing 3 minutes read — 21 Dec 2024

What differentiates a good essay and a great essay? — With a great essay, you can see the larger tree that connects all those branches, leaves, and twigs together into a single unit of a 'tree'. A bad essay is where you only see the random assortment of leaves and branches. You don't see the larger tree among the branches. While listening to one of the podcast episodes from David Perell's Writes...

Meta-analysis for contradictory research findings 2 minutes read — 06 Dec 2024

In the world of nutrition research, contradictory findings are as common as fad diets. One day, a study proclaims the benefits of a low-carb diet for weight loss. The next, another study champions a plant-based diet for overall health. This constant flip-flopping of dietary advice leaves most of us feeling like we're stuck in a nutritional ping-pong match. The root of this problem lies in the...

Proof of work 9 minutes read — 06 Dec 2024

Showing proof-of-work as a designer is quite simple. You made an app, you communicated the output product and exhibit how the product evolved over time ranging from the paper napkin sketch, low fidelity, high fidelity prototypes and finally a fully fledged product. The iterations need not just be tangible, but can be verbal too. Similarly, for an engineer the proof of work is also quite solid....

Gauging previous work of new joinees to the team 2 minutes read — 06 Dec 2024

I've been hiring people (and conducting more thorough reference checks) more recently now, and I've learned something important: most reference checks are useless. They're like those mandatory training videos you have to watch at big companies. Everyone goes through the motions, but nobody really learns anything. But it doesn't have to be this way. Reference checks can be incredibly valuable if...

Task management for product managers 2 minutes read — 06 Dec 2024

In the book Inspired, Marty Cagan talks about dividing one's day-to-day tasks into three major buckets: people, process and product. I'd experimented with categorising my tasks into similar such buckets based on the framework by Shreyas Doshi. To make this possible within my workflow, I started colour-coding my calendar for weekly time-management. High leverage tasks are indicated with red color...

Stitching React and Rails together 10 minutes read — 05 Dec 2024

In this tutorial, I will take you through my current process of deploying a Rails 8 app with some careful design choices: 1. React: Best design engineering stack for those itching to add some front end flair. React is also very LLM-friendly since it's trained on vast amounts of WWW data, making it a popular choice for building front end using text prompts. I replaced the 'V' in the 'MVC' using...

Self Marketing 2 minutes read — 17 Nov 2024

I decided to revive a long-lost interest and try my hand at cartooning. But it was an unlikely dream, given my complete lack of artistic talent and the rarity of success stories in that business. So I decided to try something called affirmations, which I will describe in more detail later in the book. I bought some art supplies, practiced drawing every morning before work, and wrote my...

Repetitive Copyprompting 3 minutes read — 15 Nov 2024

While designing health campaigns for Noora health's work in Indonesia and Bangladesh, I was overseeing the health communications strategy for pregnant and newly-delivered mothers. There were messages in a specific format that needed to be rewritten in a more easy to digest Whatsapp format appealing to the people of Bangladesh. My usual default response to such tasks would be to open a tab on...

Questions to ask every decade 2 minutes read — 15 Nov 2024

This is a list inspired by Kepano in his blog: 1. What would you do if you had 6 months to live? 2. What would you do if you had a billion dollars? 3. What advice would you give yourself 10 years ago? 4. What do you hope will be the same 10 years from now? 5. What do you hope will be different 10 years from now? 6. What is your idea of perfect happiness? 7. When and where were you happiest? 8....

Balancing work, time and focus 6 minutes read — 15 Nov 2024

Imagine a one-story, narrow structure, a straightforward rectangle divided into five rooms, in succession. There's no quick escape route here. This design insists that as you move through, you're plunging deeper into the world of intense productivity. You start in the gallery, the first room as you enter from the street. Inside, you'll find examples of remarkable work created within the building....

Hyperlinks are like cashew nuts 2 minutes read — 15 Nov 2024

Take a small block of paragraph and sprinkle 8-10 hyperlinks in it— Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Donec tristique elit sit amet diam fringilla posuere sodales a leo. Cras auctor efficitur purus in suscipit. Sed ornare lectus at nisl dictum semper. Donec efficitur lorem in nisi dapibus condimentum. Ut ex tortor, aliquam at facilisis vitae, porttitor maximus sapien. Duis...

How I do product roasts 5 minutes read — 13 Jul 2024

Product roasts are the best way to enhance one's sensibility around building better products. It's called a "roast" because it often involves a no-holds-barred, brutally honest critique of the product's features, design, user experience, and overall value proposition. In the spirit of 'everything is a remix', I've liberally forked, remixed and adapted a set of questions from industry leaders like...

In-person vision transmission 3 minutes read — 18 Jun 2024

I recently transitioned from leading a product team in a region to a more centralised role overseeing products across multiple geographies. As part of that transition, I needed to onboard the new product lead of that region, ensuring they were fully briefed While a virtual onboarding could have covered the basic documents and data points, I knew an in-person handoff was crucial. Slide decks can...

The meeting before the meeting 2 minutes read — 15 Jun 2024

If you think most product managers spend time in meetings, you're mistaken. The larger chunk of a PM's time is spent in preparation for those meetings - having the "meetings before the meeting", "the meeting", and the "meetings after the meeting." Image courtesy: Marketoonist.com In fact, for most one-way door decisions (decisions that are big and hard to reverse), the pre-meeting phase is quite...

Breaking the fourth wall of an interview 6 minutes read — 15 May 2024

A group of men eating ice cream during peak London summer started drowning in large numbers. As there was a huge number of men eating ice cream who drowned, it was concluded that eating ice cream led to drowning. This did sound absurd to the researchers investigating this curious case of the missing link between ice cream and men drowning. However, upon closer investigation, it became evident...

Convert v0.dev React to Rails ViewComponents 4 minutes read — 01 Mar 2024

One of the delights of building solo projects with Ruby on Rails is the framework's thoughtfully chosen defaults. These carefully selected conventions allow developers to focus more on modeling business logic and core value propositions rather than evaluating endless package options. While exploring development across both Rails and JavaScript ecosystems, it's become apparent how much time in...

English is the hot new programming language 4 minutes read — 17 Feb 2024

Intended Audience—Indie no-code developers, digital marketers and other non-tech professionals working in tech I made a resolution for 2024 to learn Ruby on Rails, a controversial web development framework famous for maximising developer productivity. In the business of building and growing products, I wanted to be a self-taught developer The goal behind my trite, cliched new-year resolution was...

Better way to think about conflicts 4 minutes read — 06 Feb 2024

What's the hardest conflict you've ever encountered at your work? It's hard to avoid conflicts, but there are various ways in which we could mitigate conflict as much as possible. As a product person, apart from keeping the team running, working with stakeholders, shipping successful products, you're also tasked with resolving conflicts. As Feynman once said, 'Imagine how much harder physics...

The role of taste in building products 6 minutes read — 24 Jan 2024

Take Marc Lou, a familiar figure within the Twitter Indiehacking circle. He's garnered attention for openly sharing his journey as a product builder. This transparency has piqued interest in his projects well before their launch, as followers have grown to appreciate his distinctive approach. A notable instance of this was the excitement around his AI logo generator, which swiftly climbed to the...

World's most ancient public health problem 5 minutes read — 23 Jan 2024

From the place I come from, in Kerala, a baby is not given a name until he/she is 28 days old. And for marginalised castes/communities, the naming ceremony is delayed to 90 days. I never really questioned as to why this was the case. I let it become a ritual system until I overheard a conversation between some of our family members. This was mainly because the chances of a baby surviving was very...

Products need not be user centered 6 minutes read — 23 Jan 2024

Putting the user first has always been the golden rule in design. It’s so common that nobody really questions it anymore. We’re told, ‘The user knows best. Listen to them.’ I’ve had my skepticism about the framing of the term — user-centered design. I’ve kept myself from voicing this apprehension, afraid of being dismissed as an outright blasphemy in the design circles. However, having shifted...

Making Nielsen's heuristics more digestible 2 minutes read — 09 Jan 2024

Jakob Nielsen's heuristics are probably the most-used usability heuristics for the design of interfaces. If you go to their website, you might encounter these dry prescriptive statements as shown in the image. Recently came across this blog by Michael Prestonise and loved the way he had repurposed the old wine in a new bottle. It converted a boring user manual into an engaging flashcard format...

Startups are a fertile ground for risk taking 2 minutes read — 07 Jan 2024

Startups are interesting even if most startups fail. I've found Patrick Collinson's argument to be the most convincing: "Part of the reason startups resonate with people is because the outcome is not guaranteed. If it were guaranteed, it would be boring… Whether or not you're the best person in the world at what you do, you're probably not going to alter Google's trajectory. But if you really...

Insights are not just a salad of facts 4 minutes read — 06 Jan 2024

What is an insight? An insight for Elon was: "The most entertaining outcome was the most likely'. His tweet suggests that he believes in taking risks and embracing the unknown, rather than playing it safe. For Maya Angelou, the renowned poet and civil rights activist, it was: "People will forget what you said, but people will never forget how you made them feel". A perspective on the impact of...

Minimum Lovable Product 3 minutes read — 02 Jan 2024

We might have to rethink on the definition of the 'Minimum Viable Prototype'. Especially since the bar for what's viable keeps rising up, with the likes of Gumroad, etc being built in a weekend. Notion, Figma, Airtable, Superhuman and Discord with their extremly high quality user experience has led to a highly devoted user base among tech Twitter. It would be foolish to think of the MVP of Notion...

Minto principle for writing memos 3 minutes read — 12 Dec 2023

Initially popularised by McKinsey consultants to draft internal reports, this became quite widespread as a global standard for business writing. Start with the main statement, draw some conclusions and provide some data/facts and figures for further understanding. This could be a simple way in which most Slack updates could be arranged as the format prevents us from becoming too verbose. Not just...

Importance of Why 1 minute read — 11 Dec 2023

When it comes to task management, a fundamental principle stands tall: explain the reason before the details of what and how. By letting others know the why behind a task, it facilitates faster completion. Recently, I had a pressing deadline for an urgent activity that needed immediate attention. I had to convince my designer teammate to create a quick mockup in less than a day, even though he...

Quality Ideas Trump Execution 3 minutes read — 10 Dec 2023

‘’What might seem to be merely the initial step, deciding what to work on, is in a sense the key to the whole game’’ — Paul Graham A good start when it comes to product building is half the work done. While running the Build program as a Program Director, a four-week program for folks to go from a fleeting idea to a full-fledged product, we ran it in a building cycle that went from (a) ideation,...

How to hire a personal doctor 2 minutes read — 06 Dec 2023

Imagine you're about to make a decision that could profoundly impact your health, potentially for years to come. You're not choosing a new diet or exercise routine - you're selecting a personal doctor. It sounds simple, right? After all, they're all qualified professionals. But here's the catch: this choice might be one of the riskiest decisions you'll ever make. Peter Attia, the longevity expert...

Use code only if no code fails 7 minutes read — 22 Nov 2023

> UPDATE: The landscape right now looks so different with the recent evolution of "vibe coding". I don't touch no-code tools such as Bubble, Softr etc for any of my prototyping needs for eg. I just shoot directly from the hip. For reference, read my essay on this topic — [[Vibe coding]], [[Idea in the shower, testing before breakfast]]. Use code only if no code fails. It is that simple. I can...

Personal Observation Techniques 2 minutes read — 12 Sept 2023

When I first started doing design observations, there was ABSOLUTELY no structure. I just went ahead to observe the surroundings and talking to as many people as I can. Although I did get some insights from this process, I realised that there could be a better way. There are three major steps you could follow. Step 1 — Noting down the key assumptions concerning the user. Listing them down...

Design is a confusing word 2 minutes read — 06 Sept 2023

As designers, we’re always asked to vouch for the user’s needs above anything else. But if the company takes a hit, all of our efforts might end in vain. To solve this dilemma, this note from Dan Winer comes in handy— Designers, don’t forget: You were hired to build a business. Show your value using the benefits over features method: Don’t talk about the “quality” of your design. Talk about its...

A Primer to Service Design Blueprints 3 minutes read — 22 Aug 2023

When someone asks me what is service design? I usually explain them what this means with an example: Let's say you're heading to the airport to catch your next flight. You head to the entrance, show your passport, enter the hallway, are guided to the service kiosk, you get your boarding pass, check your luggage weight, and then all you know, you've reached the gate for boarding your flight. Don't...

Rapid Journey Prototyping 4 minutes read — 15 Aug 2023

As a product manager who also pitches in as a service designer at Noora Health, i sometimes do wonder how I could use most of the design methods I'm applying at my day job for myself. Let's take the methodology of Service Design Blueprinting for example. It involves outlining the front stage and back stage elements of all the actors involved in a system to make it lead to the intended action. For...

Do's and Don'ts of User Research 1 minute read — 21 Jun 2023

Some principles which I follow while doing user-centered design: 1. Involving users early in the product development process makes products intuitive and fosters loyalty. It is essential to zoom out and follow a constant process of hypothesis testing, MVP development, review, and refinement. Preparation of research requires a clear goal and involvement of the research team. 2. Utilize both...

Pedagogy of the Uncharted — What for, and Where to? 17 minutes read — 19 Jan 2022

Think about the past year, 2021 for a second. 2021 felt like five years packed into one. — Joe Biden becomes the President of United States. — SpaceX launches an All-Civilian Flight. — Tokyo Olympics happens. — Kabul falls to Taliban. — Historic breakthroughs (Alphafold/Quantum Supremacy etc) — Pandemic is not done yet (far from it) — Rise of NFTs, DAOs etc Against this backdrop, I was tempted to...

The soul searching years 12 minutes read — 15 Aug 2019

There are choices we make because we desire them deeply, and there are choices we make because the inertia of the world carries us into them. In the small towns and cities across India, engineering had quietly become not a profession, but a rite of passage. It wasn’t a decision that needed questioning; it was a given, like gravity. By the time I finished 12th grade, I, like so many others,...

Design education amidst social tribulations 5 minutes read — 21 Jul 2019

The Lead By Design program started about 5 months back in Auroville, Pondicherry for a group of 11 students from two different communities, the edayanchavadi and kottakarai village communities. It was in the initial phase difficult to get these communities together, especially the parents to allow their children to learn with each other owing to their varied social backgrounds. There were certain...