Shreyas Prakash

Shreyas Prakash

London Website

Designer, turned product manager writing about modern software.

38 posts
Brand treatments

Brand treatments

The usual approach to a brand design system involves compiling a list of font families, typography guidelines, color palettes and patterns. However, this is falling short. We're missing a crucial piece in the jigsaw puzzle — brand treatments.

How to spot human writing on the internet?

How to spot human writing on the internet?

In the classic Turing Test, a computer is considered intelligent if it can convince a human that it’s another human in a conversation. At that time, human-generated content dominated the internet. But that was a decade ago. Today, the landscape has shifted dramatically. AI-generated content now rivals, and in...

Can a thought be an algorithm?

Can a thought be an algorithm?

When you actively hold a question in your mind, you start seeing potential answers and questions related to it pop up in your radar. The question and the answer co-evolve in a gracious dance enriching our understanding of the world and space around us. Questions act as your personal radar....

Opportunity Harvesting

Opportunity Harvesting

Intended Audience — For those who are in a transitory phase in their careers, looking for their next big leap of faith. This is a guide to harvest opportunies in a systematic fashion In the past seven months since I'd shifted to London, I've been on the...

How does AI affect UI?

How does AI affect UI?

Intended Audience — For conversational UI designers in healthcare industry curious about various UI affordances/design patterns in vogue right now Our online conversations have been increasingly life-like, but yet life-less at the same time. The UI of apps have become more conversational and chat-like in nature. Not just apps, even...

Everything is a prioritisation problem

Everything is a prioritisation problem

When it comes to building a product, everything is a prioritisation problem. We might be building things right, but are we building the right thing? The journey of prioritisation begins way before the actual process of prioritisation starts. I would start by asking these key questions to the product leadership...

How I do product roasts

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...

The Modern Startup Stack

The Modern Startup Stack

Choosing a web framework is like choosing your first pokémon. I didn't want to succumb to the 'new hotness' problem with the myriad of JS frameworks to choose from (Angular, Vue, React, Solid). I wanted something that i can choose and stick to for atleast a...

In-person vision transmission

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...

The meeting before the meeting

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....

Design that's so bad it's actually good

Design that's so bad it's actually good

Recently, a relative sought my help to tweak a badly designed poster on Microsoft Paint. This was meant to be circulated on Whatsapp as an advertisement for the handyman services his friend was offering in his locale. He wanted to ‘jazz’ it up and asked if I could help. I...

Obsessing over personal websites

Obsessing over personal websites

Intended Audience—For those of us who have attempted to make a personal website of their own and have guilt-tripped over making multiple updates every year I’ve been obsessed with my personal website. It’s not even about the views and impressions which I’m receiving. I have one...

English is the hot new programming language

English is the hot new programming language

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...

Better way to think about conflicts

Better way to think about conflicts

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...

The role of taste in building products

The role of taste in building products

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...

World's most ancient public health problem

World's most ancient public health problem

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...

Dear enterprises, we're tired of your subscriptions

Dear enterprises, we're tired of your subscriptions

When you build a SaaS app, how do you price it? The first option which comes to everyone's mind is a monthly/yearly subscription model While building Clarity notes, I was stuck with a usual question when it comes to building a SaaS—How should I price the...

Products need not be user centered

Products need not be user centered

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...

Pluginisation of Modern Software

Pluginisation of Modern Software

Transitioning from Adobe to Figma was a big change for me in my design journey. At that time, the whole design ecosystem was revolving around Adobe. For image manipulation, you had Photoshop, Illustrator for vector graphics, Indesign for reports, XD for website or app prototypes and so on. When Figma...

Let's make every work 'strategic'

Let's make every work 'strategic'

A 'strategic' wrapper can turn a $100 work into a $10,000 work. Thinking 10,000 ft. above sea level pays more. It’s a win-win for both sides. If we take a look at the field of writing, the standard rates in this profession, as well as...

Making Nielsen’s heuristics more digestible

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...

Startups are a fertile ground for risk taking

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...

Insights are not just a salad of facts

Insights are not just a salad of facts

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...

Minimum Lovable Product

Minimum Lovable Product

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...

Methods are lifejackets, not straight jackets

Design methods are life jackets. Not straight jackets. Structures, whether they’re processes, frameworks, or plans, are excellent tools to navigate complicated problems. They bring efficiency, reduce ambiguity, and offer defaults. However, when dealing with fundamentally complex problems, applying structure too early can lock in outdated notions. Because structures tend...

Digital Products built like physical artisanal tools

Digital Products built like physical artisanal tools

Tobias Van Schneider in his blog talks about a new way to think about building modern software— The advancements of our modern world mean there’s generally more of everything. The streaming age has led to a proliferation of low-quality content, churned out to satisfy the binge-watching masses. The ever-scrolling...

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