How I Build Products and Systems

Technical, product-focused principles I use when designing and shipping features and systems.

UI principles

Usability — Tasks should be obvious and low-friction. I prioritize clear hierarchy, consistent patterns, and predictable behavior over novelty. If a power user can stay in flow and a new user can succeed without a manual, the bar is met.
Performance — Interfaces should feel instant. I care about load time, interaction latency, and perceived speed (skeletons, streaming, optimistic updates). I use budgets and metrics so “fast enough” is measurable.
Accessibility — UIs should work for everyone. Semantic HTML, keyboard and screen reader support, and sufficient contrast are non-negotiable. I treat a11y as part of the design system, not a post-launch patch.

System principles

Scalability — Design for growth in data, traffic, and team size. I think in terms of bottlenecks, sharding, caching, and async boundaries so we can scale horizontally instead of rewriting.
Reliability — Systems should degrade gracefully and recover quickly. Retries, timeouts, circuit breakers, idempotency, and clear error handling reduce surprise. I optimize for MTTR and mean time to detect as much as uptime.
Observability — Logs, metrics, and traces are first-class. I instrument so we can see what’s happening in production, debug without guessing, and plan capacity. Good observability makes every other principle actionable.

Tradeoffs and design decisions

I treat every non-trivial choice as a tradeoff: consistency vs. flexibility, speed to ship vs. long-term maintainability, build vs. buy, and so on. I document the decision, the alternatives considered, and what would make us revisit it. That keeps the “why” visible and makes it easier to change course when constraints change.

I prefer boring tech where it fits—proven patterns, well-understood stacks—and reach for newer tools only when the problem clearly benefits. I’d rather ship a simple, readable solution and iterate than over-engineer up front.

Simple architecture and component shapes

How I conceptually group frontend and backend.

High-level system shape

┌─────────────┐     ┌─────────────┐     ┌─────────────────┐
│   Clients    │────▶│  API / GW  │────▶│  Services       │
│  (Web, etc.) │     │  (REST)    │     │  (domain logic) │
└─────────────┘     └─────────────┘     └────────┬────────┘
                                                  │
       ┌──────────────────────────────────────────┼──────────┐
       ▼                  ▼                       ▼          ▼
┌────────────┐    ┌────────────┐    ┌────────────┐   ┌────────────┐
│  Database  │    │   Cache    │    │  Queues /   │   │  External  │
│            │    │  (Redis)   │    │  Events     │   │  APIs      │
└────────────┘    └────────────┘    └────────────┘   └────────────┘

Frontend component layering

┌───────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│  Pages / Routes (composition, data loading)   │
└─────────────────────────┬───────────────────┘
                          │
┌─────────────────────────▼───────────────────┐
│  Features (domain-specific components +     │
│  hooks, orchestration)                       │
└─────────────────────────┬───────────────────┘
                          │
┌─────────────────────────▼───────────────────┐
│  Shared UI (design system, primitives,      │
│  layout)                                     │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────┘

← Back to home