Alessandro K.
banner
kraark.bsky.social
Alessandro K.
@kraark.bsky.social
68 followers 360 following 56 posts
Let's build something awesome … 🥷🏽 Freelancer | 🧑🏽‍💻 Senior UX Designer & Strategist | 🧑🏽‍🚀 Certified Product Owner | 🏋🏽 Certified Fitness & Strength Coach
Posts Media Videos Starter Packs
Example: Claude Code scrapes a calendar each morning, preps meeting notes with context, agenda & attendees — saves hours weekly.

Share your workflows.
#AI #Productivity #Workflows #AIAutomation
A METR study: senior devs using AI tools were 19% slower! They expected 24% faster; experts predicted 38-39%. Why? Overhead.

So, what are YOU actually automating with AI?
Real workflows, real time saved, not just "I use ChatGPT sometimes."

Meanwhile, I’m here with Claude managing workflows, analyzing design impact.
Markets price everyone to be 10x more productive tomorrow, but reality: most still learning basic prompting.
"Where are the AI productivity gains?" Ross Douthat & Jason Furman debate this on the latest "Interesting Times" podcast. Spoiler: mostly in bubbles. 🎙️

I’m deep in the AI early adoption bubble and forget many companies still ask:
- Should we allow ChatGPT?
- Is it secure?
- How do we measure ROI?
Budget €5 for online letter services when dealing with German bureaucracy. You'll need it. 😅

#BuildInPublic #UXFail
As someone building digital products, this was both frustrating and inspiring.

If public infrastructure struggles with basic form submissions, it shows how critical good UX design really is. Every broken system is a reminder: we need to build better digital experiences.

Pro tip:
The digital infrastructure: Progress bar frozen, forms never arrived, message system lost my application (timestamp says otherwise), email address doesn't exist, and attachments won't open.

The solution? An online letter service. €1 to print and mail my docs. In 2025.

Got clearance last week. ✅
12 weeks. 3 failed message attempts. 1 non-existent email. Welcome to applying for Gründerzuschuss Phase 2 in Germany. 🤦
Plus: We met Codrin, our Host here in Romania. An elite college grad turned hermit.
It was amazing listening to his stories, why he ditched corporate life to build his own, handmade home.

Full story: buff.ly/jBphytm

#buildinpublic #solopreneur
LEAP Newsletter: Half-Baked in Romania
Half-frozen in Romania. SEO anxieties, survival skills, and lessons from an elite dropout turned woodworker.
leap-ux-design.kit.com
SEO in the AI era.

My entire strategy depends on organic content.
But I´ve been told "SEO is dead"
What do you think about that?

Current strategy: Build a solid foundation, multi-channel distribution, own your email list.

Stay paranoid. Stay flexible.
Somewhere between half-frozen, half-baked and stunning views in rural Romania, I skipped the thought of public funding for my side project.

The paperwork-to-payoff ratio may not be worth it for bootstrappers.

Here's what I've been thinking about the last days 🧵
Still figuring out how to balance genuine user value with growth metrics. Transparency helps, but monetization will always create tension. How do other "product-/growth" designers navigate this? Where do ethics and growth strategies connect vs. diverge? 🤔
Walking through the city, I can't unsee business models everywhere. That fitness challenge? Funnel optimization. That "helpful" customer service? Upsell opportunity. Once you see the systems behind user experiences, you can't unsee them. 👁️ (Even kittens are marketing tools now 🐱)
The awkward truth: growth designers use data to personalize experiences that drive conversions. User-centered design says, "serve the user." Growth design says, "serve the user AND the business metrics." Building my own product made me even more aware of the challenge ⚖️
"Buy one, get three"
As a UX designer, I spent years optimizing for user delight—reducing friction, building trust, creating seamless experiences. Thinking more about growth design flipped this: it's about processes, systems, and value (revenue). Same tools, completely different lens. 📈 🐾
This is why we test with friends - they get the broken version so someday the real audiences don't suffer through my learning curves.
Anyone else survived newsletter platform pains? What mobile optimization lessons did you learn?
Desktop preview looked fine. Mobile? Complete disaster. Padding, margins, spacing - everything broken.
Picture me staring at cramped text thinking about all the times I've lectured clients about mobile-first design. The irony was not lost 📱💀
Automation immediately broke after just 3 emails. It just stopped. Now I'm in a delightful customer support queue about why their system decided to take a nap. But the real nightmare: opened the email on my phone.
First red flag: Their WYSIWYG editor. Why do platforms reinvent wheels instead of following basic web standards? Spent more time fighting formatting than writing.
But I pushed through, imported friends as test subscribers (always test with friends!), and hit send.
🧵 Thread: When your newsletter setup meets reality -_-
Finally picked KIT for my newsletter. Simple plan:
✅ Profile setup
✅ Template design
✅ Welcome sequence
✅ Import & send
Feeling confident about my organized approach...
#BuildInPublic #Solopreneur
To fellow Substack users: I am genuinely curious how you navigate platform concerns. No judgment, I just want to understand how others weigh these decisions. Because honestly, I could have written 10 posts in the time I spent researching the "perfect" platform.
So from Substack → Medium + Beehiiv → simplified to newsletter-only → ConvertKit (now KIT). Perplexity and claude research looked solid at this point. :P
Real talk: The platform probably matters way less than I thought. The hard part isn't finding perfect tools - it's building the actual habit.
Then I read about their far-right content policies. It made me think - we focus on features and audience but skip the ethics of where we build. I'm not throwing shade at Substack users - every platform has issues. But it's wild. buff.ly/o7h7s9K
I spent eternity choosing the perfect platform instead of just writing. I decided to try this public writing habit changes everything approach. Plot twist: I've platform-hopped more than I've actually written. Classic perfectionism trap. I started with Substack (obviously the choice, right?).