- The Fenced Forest -
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About the Forest and its Caretaker
5 mins read
For 14 years, I've found myself increasingly having to balance of design, business, and technology. Always crafting, shipping, facilitating, balancing business goals, user needs, and technical constraints. It rarely slows down.
I was so caught up in the momentum that I never built a system to capture and unpack passing thoughts. Most of these end up in project documentation or official communications, formal by nature and context-bound. The more important personal takeaways go undocumented, and they fade over time.
What about me? I feel like three distinct gnomes masquerading in a human-sized trench coat these days.
- The design gnome is the user’s advocate, fighting for desirability at every turn.”Do people actually want or need this?”
- The business gnome is the pragmatist, interrogating every feature for its viability and business worth.”Does this align with our business objectives?”
- The techie gnome is the architect geek, guarding feasibility and systemic resilience.”Can we actually build and maintain this reliably?”
Together they don't always agree, which is probably the point. Designer gnome is the big guy here but he gets ganged up by business and techie gnome sometimes, but these self-checks is where the better solutions tend to come from. While it sounds like a dream team, I run the risk of overthinking and missing the forest for the trees, so I needed a cathartic outlet to offload these thoughts.
My work sometimes requires navigating and occasionally colliding with enterprise icebergs. The deep, slow-moving mass of organisational inertia and technical debt that pulls well-meaning teams under. These are experiences worth dissecting.
That place started taking shape one day after listening to a John Maeda↗ SXSW presentation. His balance of practical analysis peppered with academic thought was exactly what I was looking for.
In 2025, I decided to carve out a small corner of the internet to internalise and distill these thoughts.
Why ‘The Fenced Forest’?
- The forest is the raw, rich, and often chaotic body of knowledge I've accumulated. It’s basically my tinkerer’s playground for various observations and theories.
- The trees represent writings. Planted as saplings, each one is a thought in progress, something that may one day mature into something more complete, or get quietly cleared away.
- The fence is what makes it intentional. It represents the act of tending, deciding which ideas are worth keeping and which ones to let go of.
Preface on Usage of GenAI
Every writing here must begin with me, otherwise I can’t call this forest mine. I'm also realistic about time and my tendency to ruminate endlessly, so I tap onto GenAI for efficiency. This is my self-imposed rule:
- Human First: Every thought starts with me. I write all complete drafts from my own first-principles intent,
- AI Refinements: GenAI supports by generating images and cleanups on writing clarity.
- Human Caregiver: Final edits are mine, ensuring that what remains is accurate to what I set out to say.
© 2025–2026 Kevyn Leong
- The Fenced Forest -
← Back to home
About the Forest and its Caretaker
5 mins read
For 14 years, I've found myself increasingly having to balance of design, business, and technology. Always crafting, shipping, facilitating, balancing business goals, user needs, and technical constraints. It rarely slows down.
I was so caught up in the momentum that I never built a system to capture and unpack passing thoughts. Most of these end up in project documentation or official communications, formal by nature and context-bound. The more important personal takeaways go undocumented, and they fade over time.
What about me? I feel like three distinct gnomes masquerading in a human-sized trench coat these days.
- The design gnome is the user’s advocate, fighting for desirability at every turn.”Do people actually want or need this?”
- The business gnome is the pragmatist, interrogating every feature for its viability and business worth.”Does this align with our business objectives?”
- The techie gnome is the architect geek, guarding feasibility and systemic resilience.”Can we actually build and maintain this reliably?”
Together they don't always agree, which is probably the point. Designer gnome is the big guy here but he gets ganged up by business and techie gnome sometimes, but these self-checks is where the better solutions tend to come from. While it sounds like a dream team, I run the risk of overthinking and missing the forest for the trees, so I needed a cathartic outlet to offload these thoughts.
My work sometimes requires navigating and occasionally colliding with enterprise icebergs. The deep, slow-moving mass of organisational inertia and technical debt that pulls well-meaning teams under. These are experiences worth dissecting.
That place started taking shape one day after listening to a John Maeda↗ SXSW presentation. His balance of practical analysis peppered with academic thought was exactly what I was looking for.
In 2025, I decided to carve out a small corner of the internet to internalise and distill these thoughts.
Why ‘The Fenced Forest’?
- The forest is the raw, rich, and often chaotic body of knowledge I've accumulated. It’s basically my tinkerer’s playground for various observations and theories.
- The trees represent writings. Planted as saplings, each one is a thought in progress, something that may one day mature into something more complete, or get quietly cleared away.
- The fence is what makes it intentional. It represents the act of tending, deciding which ideas are worth keeping and which ones to let go of.
Preface on Usage of GenAI
Every writing here must begin with me, otherwise I can’t call this forest mine. I'm also realistic about time and my tendency to ruminate endlessly, so I tap onto GenAI for efficiency. This is my self-imposed rule:
- Human First: Every thought starts with me. I write all complete drafts from my own first-principles intent,
- AI Refinements: GenAI supports by generating images and cleanups on writing clarity.
- Human Caregiver: Final edits are mine, ensuring that what remains is accurate to what I set out to say.
© 2025–2026 Kevyn Leong