A Product Is a Living Set of Decisions

For most of my career, I could make an app feel real before it existed. I could map the flows, build the system, prototype the interactions, and explain how all the pieces should work together. It lived in Figma, but it felt real enough to convince partners it was the right path forward.

Then I started building Mise, and a design stopped being enough. A design can show the best path through a product. A working app has to survive everything around that path: data that arrives late, an empty state you forgot, a choice that needs to persist after the app closes, or two features that make sense separately but break when they meet.

Before Mise, I meal planned the best I could. My Sunday routine looked like this: search Google for something new, scroll past a long story to find the actual recipe, manually copy and paste it into Notes, reformat it so the grocery list made sense, then manually add everything else we needed, then transfer it all to Amazon or head to the store. Four apps. Tons of friction. Meal planning dread, every single week.

Inside Mise, I could swipe through and find one or two new recipes, drop in the meals I know by heart with a line of text, and have the grocery list done. The whole flow sat in one place. When it was time to shop, I switched between Mise and Amazon Fresh instead of stitching together Google, a recipe blog, Notes, and a store app. (integrating into grocery delivery/grocery apps is in the backlog!) The workflow I had been looking for every Sunday for years was right there.

The design decision and the implementation decision stopped being handed off between disciplines. They were the same conversation.

I still care deeply about hierarchy, interaction, language, and craft. A product is a living set of decisions that have to hold together, not a collection of screens.

I went in thinking I understood what I was building. I came out knowing I hadn't, not really, until I'd used it.

For those building, what's been your experience?