I’m Not a Reader. But Inspired Made Me Take Notes.
I have a complicated relationship with books.
I buy them with the best intentions. I dog-ear the first few pages, feel very productive about it, and then somehow the book ends up on my shelf looking decorative. Sounds familiar?
Why I even picked it up
As a beginner in UI/UX, I quickly realized how frustrating this can be. You do good work. Thoughtful work. You research the user, you sweat the details, you hand off something you’re proud of and somewhere between your artboard and the final product, something gets lost. A decision gets made without you. A feature ships that you know won’t work the way users think.
You start to wonder: does design actually have a seat at the table, or are we just making things look nice after the real decisions are made?
That question is what pulled me toward Inspired. I didn’t expect a product management book to answer it. But it did.
What Stopped Me Mid-Page
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The book is full of moments that feel like someone finally said the quiet part out loud.
“Coming up with good UX is harder and more critical, than engineering.”
Not harder than design. Harder than engineering. From a product thinker, not a designer advocating for their own craft. That sentence carries a different weight when it comes from that perspective.
“Design is needed not just as a service to make our product beautiful, but to discover the right product.”
This is the line that quietly reorganizes everything. It’s the difference between a designer who executes and a designer who shapes. Between someone who’s handed a problem and someone who helps define it.
We talk about design thinking, user centred design, empathy mapping etc but mostly inside design circles. The conversation rarely reaches the people who control product decisions. And until it does, designers will keep being brought in late, handed requirements, and asked to make things pretty.
A few things I’m carrying with me:
Designers belong in discovery, not just delivery. The earlier you’re involved, the better the product. Not because design is decoration that needs more time, but because design is thinking and thinking needs to happen before building.
Empathy is a product skill, not a soft skill. Understanding users isn’t a nice-to-have. It’s the foundation on which good products are built.
Functionality and design are inseparable. They’re not two tracks running in parallel, they’re the same track. A product that works but frustrates, or delights but confuses, has failed on both counts.
Have you read Inspired? I’d love to know what landed for you, especially if you’re coming at it from a design background. Drop a comment below 💬👇
