About

Stories, dispatches, and ideas. Guidance and exploration for a fractured future.

I’m a product strategist, writer, and systems thinker exploring how we live, resist, and adapt in complex environments - both real and imagined.

On this site, you’ll find:

  • Field Notes: Professional writing from the edges of product, design, and digital systems.

  • Signals: Essays and reflections, signals from everyday life that blur boundaries between the personal and the systemic.

  • Shiny Toy Robots: Speculative fiction, narrative experiments, and stories from fractured futures and imagined worlds.

I’ve spent years working at the intersection of design leadership, product strategy, and storytelling. I believe the stories we tell shape the systems we build. And sometimes, systems tell stories back.

You can find me thinking out loud here, pondering over a Negroni, or writing about resistance and possibility in the spaces between.


How I use AI in my work

AI plays a role in how I create, but only as a tool and never as a substitute.

I’m comfortable for AI to help my process, but not to define it. So I might occasionally use it to help add some initial structure to an idea, challenge a thought or an argument, or suggest relevant references and further reading.

I don’t ask AI to generate topics, perspectives, or finished content. The thoughts and voice that you read here will always be my own.

Most of my cover images (especially for Signals and Shiny Toy Robots pieces) are AI-generated. I work with ChatGPT and other models to shape an AI image output that reflects the tone of each piece.

AI helps me work faster. It never speaks for me.

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Stories, dispatches, and ideas. Guidance and exploration for a fractured future.

People

Robin Cannon is a systems thinker, product leader, and design systems expert. He’s led initiatives at places like J.P. Morgan and IBM. Now he's focused on AI, digital product delivery, and what it takes to build great things(without losing the plot).