In mid‑October 2026 I shared a thread on X about how product teams can treat early adopters as a strategic resource rather than a distraction, and I highlighted a design mantra from the Stripe Head of Design about avoiding “zombie UIs”.
There are some people in your org who are doing way more exploring than others. They are your early adopters. They're running Astra and Fable on the weekends on personal projects, to find things they might bring to work.
The problem is that they can be a massive f*cking distraction.
So the key question to ask yourself if you're running a product org is: how do I harness these early adopters without distracting everybody else?
Refuse to confuse done with good.
Head of Design at Stripe on how to stop creating zombie UIs https://t.co/CPOePWA5SG
- Decision: treat early adopters as a resource rather than a distraction.
- Decision: adopt the “don’t confuse done with good” mindset to raise product quality.
- Decision: integrate AI at a higher conceptual level (point‑of‑view, standards encoding) to unlock creativity.