Ryan Singer
Author of Shape Up; formerly head of strategy at Basecamp, where he worked on product design for seventeen years; now runs Felt Presence.
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What they believe
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Over-specifying a design makes it harder to estimate, not easier: the more specific the work, the more hidden complexity a mockup commits the team to.
Over-specifying the design also leads to estimation errors. Counterintuitive as it may seem, the more specific the work is, the harder it can be to estimate.
basecamp.comby 10 Jul 2019This on korrents
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Any specific mockup from someone senior biases everyone after them, so early design should be breadboards and fat-marker sketches that leave room for designers.
Regardless of what you say, any specific mockups are going to bias what other people do after you—especially if you’re in a higher position than them. They’ll take every detail in the initial mockups as direction even though you didn’t intend it.
basecamp.comby 10 Jul 2019This on korrents
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Beliefs
Korrents What they believe 5 beliefs — each backed by an exact quote.
Each is a — compiled by korrents.com, not by them: the one-line wordings are korrents', the quotes are theirs.
Recent
Over-specifying a design makes it harder to estimate, not easier: the more specific the work, the more hidden complexity a mockup commits the team to.
Over-specifying the design also leads to estimation errors. Counterintuitive as it may seem, the more specific the work is, the harder it can be to estimate.
Shape Up, chapter 2: Principles of Shaping by 10 Jul 2019
Work that is too fine too early commits everyone to the wrong details; shaped work is rough on purpose so designers and programmers can apply their own judgement.
Work that’s too fine, too early commits everyone to the wrong details. Designers and programmers need room to apply their own judgement and expertise when they roll up their sleeves and discover all the real trade-offs that emerge.
Shape Up, chapter 2: Principles of Shaping by 10 Jul 2019
Shaping is primarily design work: the shaped concept is an interaction design seen from the user's perspective, and it takes technical literacy, not programming.
Shaping is primarily design work. The shaped concept is an interaction design viewed from the user’s perspective. It defines what the feature does, how it works, and where it fits into existing flows.
Shape Up, chapter 2: Principles of Shaping by 10 Jul 2019
Show 2 more
Any specific mockup from someone senior biases everyone after them, so early design should be breadboards and fat-marker sketches that leave room for designers.
Regardless of what you say, any specific mockups are going to bias what other people do after you—especially if you’re in a higher position than them. They’ll take every detail in the initial mockups as direction even though you didn’t intend it.
Shape Up, chapter 4: Find the Elements by 10 Jul 2019
Interface copy is an affordance: reading it is an act that gives the user information for what to do next.
We consider interface copy to be an affordance, too. Reading it is an act that gives the user information for subsequent actions.
Shape Up, chapter 4: Find the Elements by 10 Jul 2019
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Where they publish
Blog ryansinger.co Posts on shaping, product design and how teams decide what to build.
Recent
- A Primer for Operators Who Need Software 25 Sept 2026 How to define what you need before you hire an expert A friend of mine called me today and said "I need to build some software. Can you give me advice." He operates in a niche, highly regulated industry with complex log…
- What's the right level of detail when shaping? 6 Feb 2026 I get this question all the time. Look at whatever doc you're making in the shaping phase (eg a "pitch" per the book or something else) and ask yourself: What am I trying to do with this doc? Am trying to get approval w…
- End-To-End with Shape Up: A Real-World Case Study 18 Nov 2025 Here's a new case study, showing a project end-to-end. It's about 30 minutes, and you'll see every step from choosing the initial idea through framing, shaping, and building. Pay special attention to how different roles…
Show 12 more
- Common Pitfalls When Adopting Shape Up (and How to Avoid Them) 28 Oct 2025 I see some common pitfalls when people try to do Shape Up "by the book." There are things in the book that are Basecamp-specific or often misunderstood, and teams who successfully adopt Shape Up route around them.
- When engineers say "that'll take months!" 17 Apr 2025 Igor writes: "Our product is 15 years old, with a lot of legacy code and outdated technologies. Our engineers say that the minimum time they need to ship anything of real value (not just small things) is about three mon…
- Not everyone needs to be talking to customers 18 Nov 2024 On relying on each others' expertise instead of trying to pull everyone into the same work.
- We did all this discovery... now how do we decide? 12 Nov 2024 On how to weigh the impact when we've gathered too many inputs to choose from.
- Bootstrap the Conversation Presentation 7 Sept 2024 Here's the PDF file of the presentation to download. PDF of the "Bootstrap the Conversation" Presentation bootstrap presentation model.pdf 454 KB download-circle
- Shaping in Real Life, Cohort 6 16 Jul 2024 We're excited to announce the sixth (wow!) cohort of Shaping in Real Life, coming in October. I like to keep in touch with our alumni. Last week I talked to a senior PM from our previous cohort who just got promoted to…
- What's the unit of impact? 7 Jan 2024 Different moments in the company call for green-lighting different projects. What counts as "impactful" depends on what we're trying to do.
- The cost of not shaping 11 Dec 2023 A founder came to me with questions about his team's results adopting Shape Up. Some projects were knockouts. They got exactly what they wanted done, when they wanted it done. But other projects dragged on, stuck at the…
- Shaping isn't writing 25 Aug 2023 It's not filling out a template or creating a document. It's getting to that "a-ha" moment together where the parts crystalize and we have something that will work. (Plus an example of how messy a real shaping session l…
- Three "what about...?" questions when considering Shape Up 16 Aug 2023 Questions about roadmaps, betting at the last minute, iterations, and how shipping what we intended is like driving a car.
- Step change 14 Jul 2023 The recent wave of layoffs reveals something tricky about the notion of "empowered" product teams. There's a missing ingredient that seems to separate the teams who get cut from the teams who survive.
- Room Mapping Template 5 Jul 2023 Here is the Excalidraw template for mapping time spent in different rooms. Time mapping template Time mapping template.excalidraw 446 KB download-circle
Link verified 6 Sept 2026. Recent items update automatically from the channel.
x.com @rjs Short posts on shaping and product work.
Recent
- Interesting to unpack the jobs a PR does. Eg. In regulated industries you need traceability for who approved which change to production code. Requires a boundary around a set of changes + metadata on that boundary. 17 Oct 2026
- Interesting how the smaller screen + physical knobs on the Mission S feel high-end. Screens have become more commonplace and tiring. Reminds me of how much I love the Atonemo NTS radio. It's a different experience and a breath of air. 16 Oct 2026
- So interesting how, when mobile first appeared, many of us thought it looked ridiculous to do long tasks like booking a flight on a phone. "That'll never work." But it was more convenient than pulling out the computer, so the new form factor became normal. Today, tapping around and typing in fields on a phone feels ridiculous again. So the first impulse was partially right! 15 Oct 2026
Show 17 more
- I believe the "we ship 30,000 changes/month" stories. But I suspect the type of product you're shipping into is important. If your product is like a big garden with 500 trees, each can be trimmed on its own. Integrations, tools, connectors, edge-cases, security fixes. Each change makes one tree better, so tons of changes can run in parallel. Other products are more like a bonsai. Every cut changes the whole thing. If I want to cut here and you want to cut there, we have to actually agree first. I wonder if a lot of the "code review" debate might be apples and oranges depending on whether you'… 14 Oct 2026
- There is a huge difference between the strategic outcome you are pursuing and the tactical outcome you are promising. We may have a strategic imperative to increase activation. The customer may have a big-picture outcome we're dedicated to solving. But this particular investment, this particular box of a project, has to have a tactical outcome. Otherwise we can't look each other in the eyes and answer "what comes out the other side of this?" We can make the case that reworking this flow is going to help people on trial to get the "a-ha". Or that making this other step more demo-able will help… 14 Oct 2026
- First Orb experience on @AmpCode. So interesting how it's like the "under the hood" version of Grok Bot/Muse, with a dedicated VM per thread. Having the app I'm developing running there vs on my machine is compelling. 14 Oct 2026
- One of my clients is on Notion, and we publish shaping docs there as the source of truth for bigger projects. These days I don't write them by hand, but I do review and edit them heavily so they are human scannable. Here's what I do to keep them from drifting after kickoff: 1. For localized changes and decisions, Grok Bot watches the Slack channel for that project and catches them. It auto-updates the Notion doc with a short note about the change with a link to the Slack thread. (It notifies and asks me to approve first.) 2. For bigger changes, eg after a review session where we rework someth… 14 Oct 2026
- There are a million reasons to do things the old way and one or two powerful reasons to do the new way. 13 Oct 2026
- Over-used words in product: • Easy • Fast • Intuitive Under-used words in product: • Intent • Expectation • Struggle 12 Oct 2026
- There's this tension: Do I spend 3 hrs to update the docs, so the team has a really clear reference? Or do we roll with the messy whiteboard grabs and hope no details are missed later? AI breaks the trade-off. New crisp reference with full documentation in <20 minutes. 12 Oct 2026
- Input: Zoom recording of a whiteboard session. Output: Updated browsable shape doc as source of truth. 12 Oct 2026
- Its funny how many tiny little judgements it takes to make something the way you want it to be. Even for something as simple as a pomodoro timer. First swing at an Omarchy plugin. 11 Oct 2026
- I used to fantasize about working on something as immovable and fundamental as the UX of OSes. Seemed impossible. What was the path? Go to Apple/Microsoft and climb to the top of a legacy system? Omarchy proves there is wilderness for new creative ideas. We're not stuck. 11 Oct 2026
- WIP tooling to compare design options side-by-side. Note how much I'm seeing at once. The problem, multiple approaches A B C D, how they implement each story with affordances and backend actions. All generated. 11 Oct 2026
- Installed Omarchy on a second machine. Asked how to carry my config over. It was like "run this one command on the other machine" and now they're talking to each other. In product terms, the Omarchy bundle is different because it includes that friend who teaches you everything. 10 Oct 2026
- Human-in-the-loop is a feature when we can't prestate the outcome and a bug when we can. 10 Oct 2026
- Creative work is inherently turn-based. You don't just blink and the whole painting is there. One stroke reacts to the next. 10 Oct 2026
- Config'd a mic that allows me to whisper for dictation. Strangely game changing. Stream of consciousness to the computer w/o social weirdness. Clearly this is where phone input should go. Just need to solve the mic part. From chicklet keys → touchscreen keys → no keys. 10 Oct 2026
- The word “requirement” doesn’t distinguish problem definition from solution definition. 10 Oct 2026
- "Quality" and "problem definition" are closely linked. You can't test quality without defining the problem. The problem tells you what to measure. "Quality" has been an uncool word in software for decades. "QA" has been uncool since Agile/XP. Now's a good time to rethink. 9 Oct 2026
Link verified 6 Sept 2026. Recent items update automatically from the channel.
LinkedIn Ryan Singer Posts and announcements.
Link verified 6 Sept 2026.
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