Dispatch No. 6 - Finding Signal
Five weeks into Mosaic, I’m running small experiments—publishing, showing up, following up—and paying attention to what actually carries forward.
01. Signal
Mosaic has been a string of experiments—newsletters, events, follow-ups, research—each one circling the same question: what takes?
Five weeks in, a few signals have surfaced:
- 23 people subscribed to keep following along.
- 3 client conversations opened in the last two weeks.
- 1 lead couldn't hire now but saw value in the work.
- Writing again restored a passion I'd sidelined for years.
Small traction, but it's building toward work on my terms. Choose the projects, own the outcomes—wins and losses both. That clarity helps me separate signal from noise.
And it's noisy out there. Viral takes, competing methodologies, armchair experts. At some point, searching for the perfect signal just delays creating your own.
Know your why, run your tests, pay attention to what takes.
-MG
02. Practice
Product teams face endless noise—metrics, requests, and opinions from not-the-user. If you listen to all of it, you lose the thread.
Signal shows up in smaller ways:
- A usability test where three people stumble in the same spot.
- A customer repeating the same phrase you’ve heard elsewhere.
- A pattern that gets reused across teams without anyone being asked.
The practice is the same as building a business: run experiments, pay attention to what carries, and let that guide the next move.
03. Tools
- Show Your Work! by Austin Kleon → Signal doesn’t come from hiding your process until it’s polished. Whether you’re freelancing or working inside a company, sharing early sketches, prototypes, or half-formed ideas is how you see what resonates—what gets reused, referenced, or sparks the next step forward.
- Nielsen Norman Group: Why You Only Need to Test with 5 Users → Classic UX research showing how quickly true patterns (signal) emerge in usability testing—long before you’ve hit big numbers.
I’ve used this NNG proof point to get product managers on board with quick-turn usability tests. The impact was twofold: it cut down on unnecessary requests that cluttered my plate (and would delay time-to-market), and—more importantly—it moved our roadmap forward with solutions backed by real user feedback.
04. Fragments
Real signal has staying power. It cuts through attempts to obscure or reframe it.
“Political satire is one of the oldest and most important forms of free speech. It challenges those in power while using humor to draw more people in to the discussion. That’s why people in influential positions have always targeted it for censorship.”
- Brendan Carr, May 2, 2022 via X
