Narrated notes on modernizing long-lived software, design systems and building products around the people who use them. Read by a synthetic voice. https://www.sebald.me en All rights reserved, Sebastian Sebald Sebastian Sebald Sebastian Sebald sebastian.sebald@gmail.com false episodic Software can look good, run fast and still send you from screen to screen to finish one task. Often the screens simply follow the data model. A product is organized around what the user is trying to finish. Read the note: https://www.sebald.me/notes/software-that-looks-like-its-database https://www.sebald.me/notes/software-that-looks-like-its-database https://www.sebald.me/notes/software-that-looks-like-its-database Sun, 25 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMT 449 full false Legacy software looks abandoned to new customers, while long-time users ask for nothing to change. The usual answer is a redesign that tries to satisfy both, and it rarely ends well. Read the note: https://www.sebald.me/notes/modernize-the-product-not-the-ui https://www.sebald.me/notes/modernize-the-product-not-the-ui https://www.sebald.me/notes/modernize-the-product-not-the-ui Thu, 01 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMT 1028 full false A modern frontend had been quietly hiding underneath a legacy UI. Taking the disguise off was supposed to be the visible payoff. What followed was something else: organizational inertia, hard conversations, and workflows users had quietly built around the product's flaws. Read the note: https://www.sebald.me/notes/where-the-map-ends https://www.sebald.me/notes/where-the-map-ends https://www.sebald.me/notes/where-the-map-ends Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT 757 full false Building a design system for a 20-year-old product looked like a tidy problem on paper. Components, tokens, documentation. Every assumption I had fell apart along the way, and I slowly learned to stop confusing the map for the territory. Read the note: https://www.sebald.me/notes/failing-forward-at-design-systems https://www.sebald.me/notes/failing-forward-at-design-systems https://www.sebald.me/notes/failing-forward-at-design-systems Mon, 16 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT 489 full false