An independent practice that helps AI-tooling startups understand the developers they're building for — before a wary, time-constrained market decides their product isn't worth the switch.
Because the people building the tool are the worst-placed to see it clearly. Four reasons the team's own intuition is not enough — each one a place adoption quietly goes to die.
A scoped getting-started and time-to-value audit. Where your first hour leaks, ranked by what it costs you.
Interviews plus a longitudinal study that maps where developers stall, switch, or quit — and why.
Findings translated into a prioritized roadmap your engineers and PMs will actually act on.
Fractional, ongoing research and prototyping — a researcher who ships alongside the team.
I'm an independent developer-experience researcher. For more than fifteen years I've designed products; for the last seven, the tools developers build with — leading DX at the observability companies whose entire job is helping expert users diagnose complex systems.
Before product, I trained as a fine artist and worked glass — a long apprenticeship in a single conviction: that even the most technical surface is made for a human hand.
See selected work — dqe1.com →I'll come back with where I'd look first — no deck, no discovery-call theater. Just the questions I think are worth answering, and how I'd answer them.
Four quick things. I read every one myself, and reply with where I'd start.