Ryan Singer (@rjs) / X

Ryan Singer

1,333 posts

Ryan Singer

@rjs

Product end-to-end. Creator of Shape Up. Prev: 37signals. [email protected]

Global

Joined November 2007

Ryan Singer
@rjs
Jun 11, 2023
Starting to think Product Management will be overtaken by Product Engineering. Engineers are learning product. PMs aren’t learning how to build. Reminds me of “information architects” in the old days arguing that nobody understood how important they were. Then they disappeared.
723K
Ryan Singer
@rjs
Jun 9, 2023
“The difference between an idea and a product is that you’ve solved the problems.” - Jony Ive
‘The creative process is fabulously unpredictable. A great idea cannot be predicted’
From mckinsey.com
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Ryan Singer
@rjs
Sep 6, 2021
Everybody has a text editor. This is my work editor. Here's what it looks like to kick off a new project. Private alpha version.
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Ryan Singer
@rjs
Jun 13, 2025
Tools like Cursor hint at where AI-driven user interfaces are going. Chat is only 10%. Most of the output (and UI) is a domain-specific representation of the state of the work. In the case of AI coding, 90% of what you're looking at and thinking about is the IDE, the diffs, the
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Ryan Singer
@rjs
Nov 18, 2022
I'm starting to think the UX field is overdue for a good primer on how to really *do* interaction design. Current education is way too focused on polished deliverables. Not enough on-your-feet skills and thinking techniques.
Ryan Singer
@rjs
Mar 23, 2022
Interesting asymmetry. When shaping, it's important to have one narrow problem and multiple paths to solving it. Agreeing on the problem prevents us from getting frustrated. Finding multiple paths ensures we don't miss opportunities.
Ryan Singer
@rjs
Aug 28, 2025
I have officially been through enough loops to say this now: Doing Figma LAST really works. What devs need to start is the wiring. Not the final interior. Just like the contractors building your house need to know where the sink is, not the color of the tile or the faucet
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Ryan Singer
@rjs
Feb 14, 2022
Excalidraw is good for making a breadboard while shaping. Faster than hand-drawing, and the rough look communicates that it's work-in-progress.
Ryan Singer
@rjs
Jun 15, 2023
Palantir's "Forward Deployed Engineer" role. Good example of engineering taking more responsibility for problem definition and shaping. Opposite of ticket takers. Palantir's Ted Mabrey said "We think of the FDE model as one of our greatest secrets." jobs.lever.co/palantir/dab39…
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Ryan Singer
@rjs
Sep 22, 2021
When projects take longer than expected, people usually think the problem was at the end of the project. The problem is almost always at the start. The team didn't have a process for breaking apart the work, seeing how the pieces fit, and choosing what to do first.
Ryan Singer
@rjs
Oct 22, 2023
Async collaboration is essentially additive. It’s easy to add a comment, add an objection, add more code, add to the scope. That works when implementing pieces of an agreed concept. It doesn’t work when we need to change direction, remove something, or make trade-offs.
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Ryan Singer
@rjs
Jun 22, 2023
Looks like Figma's idea of improving designer-developer relations is helping designers dictate MORE decisions up front. They're even helping designers create Jira tasks from inside Figma! Be suspicious when 8000 designers in a room clap for features made for developers to use.
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Ryan Singer
@rjs
Oct 24, 2022
FINISHED filming my new course "Shaping in Real Life." Comprehensive, detailed, REAL how-tos on every phase of product development: from framing problems, carving time, shaping, spiking, to hand-off and delivery. Even more content than Shape Up, and for a wider variety of teams.
Ryan Singer
@rjs
Sep 21, 2024
Replying to @JosephNWalker and @nntaleb
I didn’t understand what he meant by “kernel” at first. Looking it up in Statistical Consequences helped.
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