Most teams design systems from assumptions and then meet reality at launch. We flipped the order: start from production data, and let it drive every design decision.
This post is a placeholder. The full article will cover:
The assumption trap
Why specs written before contact with real data consistently miss the cases that matter most, and how those misses compound as a system grows.
Production as the source of truth
How we instrument production workflows from day one, and how real homeowner and community-manager interactions became the dataset that shaped our product.
Designing from the data backwards
Concrete examples of features we built (and killed) because production data contradicted our assumptions.
What this changes about engineering culture
Shipping earlier, watching closer, and treating every production interaction as a design input rather than a support burden.
Full post coming soon.