Abstract Voyage

Articles and thoughts

The Next Change

Carry product decisions into working software. Let real use shape the next change.

Hello, I'm Manuel

I build software and lead teams, connecting product strategy, experience design, and engineering, with applied AI where it helps.

Explore the practice

Through delivery

I work alongside the team from the first conversation to a product people can use.

A voice in the decision (2018 to 2023)

Leading put me between business and engineering. I learned that the team’s voice belonged in the conversations shaping its work.

The questions (circa 2017)

I started by asking how light and sound interact—and what living systems might teach us about the products we build.

The questions (circa 2017)

Biomimicry raised a question for me: what might it teach us about how an interface communicates with people? I explored that question in an early framework for interfaces.

From builder to lead (2018 to 2023)

Across different clients, a recurring question was whether the planned interaction matched how people actually used the product. That question shaped decisions about both the interface and the software behind it.

On my own (since 2025)

I now work independently, carrying decisions through implementation.

From decision to delivery

I help teams decide what to build—and stay with the work until it becomes software people can understand and use.

McKinsey (2023 to 2025)

At McKinsey, I worked across several teams on firm-wide initiatives. The work involved deciding what should exist by weighing what people would use against what could be built well.

Where it starts (circa 2010)

The brief usually arrived finished, and the job was to build it well. Years of doing that made me curious about what the brief did not ask: how people would understand and use what we built.

Product, experience, engineering & applied AI

Judgment carried from the first decision through to real measurable use.

The Practice

Each area below is approached as serious engineering work, creative where it helps and systematic where it counts, with equal care for how it is made and for what finally ships.

Product Strategy & Direction

Deciding what is worth building, and what is not. Opportunities and alternatives are weighed against user needs, business goals, and technical reality, so priorities hold up under scrutiny and the product advances with intent.

Experience & Interface Design

How people understand and move through a product, worked out in code rather than static mockups. Interaction and interface are prototyped as working software, so ideas can be explored, tested, and refined against real behavior.

Software Engineering & Architecture

The engineering underneath: architecture, integration, implementation, and modernization of complex systems. Built to stay reliable and maintainable as they grow, with operational constraints treated as part of the design rather than an afterthought.

Applied AI & Intelligent Automation

Where intelligent capabilities genuinely earn a place in a product or workflow. Feasibility is tested and interactions are prototyped with the same rigor as everything else, including integration, reliability, and the human oversight these systems require.

Independent expertise. Connected delivery.

Each area can stand on its own. More often the value is in connecting them, with product decisions, design, and engineering held in one continuous line of reasoning, so nothing is lost in handoffs, rediscovered twice, or left to fall between roles.

INDUSTRY EXPERIENCE

Digital commerce & online retail

A background in online-retail engineering, where customer experience, business workflows, and the systems beneath them meet under real commercial pressure, and where the gaps between them tend to show.