Ship now, cry later

In an industry where every LinkedIn post says product, design or discovery is dead, Ubaid (Ubi) Ali sounds refreshingly calm. He’s a fractional Product Manager at Product People, parachuting into companies mid-crisis with about two weeks to prove his judgement is right. Ana and Egle talk to him about why AI removed the cover weaker PMs used to hide behind, why he has never seen a PM replace a desi...

Ana and Egle talk to Niloo Roshani, a Design and Research Leader at NielsenIQ, about how the UX research function is changing in 2026: why her team are becoming thinking partners rather than the ones checking the "yes, we did research" box, why AI adds speed but not critical thinking, and why the most efficient research is sometimes no research at all. Along the way, the nugget AI summar...

Episode 3: Care before taste or JUST DESIGN THE PAGE.  Ana and Egle talk to AJ, Head of Design at The Times, about what the tools actually change and what they don't: why AI adds risk before it adds speed, why he'd rather see care than "taste" in a portfolio, and why he can't tell you what any of his thirteen designers are working on this week (on purpose). Along the way, the token audit almost no...

Why do so many teams run every ceremony in the agile handbook and still not trust each other? Ana and Egle talk to Marion - a UX-designer-turned-agile-coach and trained mediator - about the difference between performative process and the slower, harder work of actually building trust: showing up consistently, asking for help without treating it as weakness, and staying grounded in your own judgmen...

Ship Now Cry Later is a new podcast for designers and design leaders who are done pretending the environment doesn't matter. Episode 1: Roots Before Branches. What makes a designer or a team actually stable when everything shifts? Ana and Egle explore core values, craft identity, and the difference between flexibility and formlessness, with perspectives from industry voices on what resilience...