Skip to content
Bryston U

I build systems, products, and maps for making ambiguous work easier to understand.

I am a cross-disciplinary product and transformation leader with an unusual path through research, sales operations, design strategy, digital product creation, enterprise platforms, and AI-native building. The pattern is consistent: diagnose the system, translate across worlds, and build what helps teams move.

See the workRead the terrain
Clear over clever
Systems over silos
Small details. Big impact.

Current focus

Operating domains

The site is organized around the kinds of problems I keep returning to: ambiguous systems, strategy-to-execution gaps, translation across disciplines, AI-native practice, and human adoption.

Ambiguous systems

Entering high-context work without requiring it to be simplified first, then finding the structure underneath the stated problem.

Strategy to execution

Turning strategic intent into roadmaps, governance, operating rhythms, product foundations, and shipped capability.

Translation

Moving between design, engineering, business, executive, and user contexts without flattening the differences.

AI-native practice

Using AI development tools to prototype, research, build, and change feedback loops, not just talk about the shift.

Human adoption

Treating technology as a capability people need to understand, trust, adopt, and make part of how work actually happens.

Featured projects

Built artifacts and working questions

Projects are framed by the question being explored, the artifact that exists now, and why the work matters.

All projects
ActiveProduct concept + prototype

Gravatica

An early-stage strategy intelligence product that creates interactive, source-cited maps of public companies and the systems around them.

Question
How might complex business systems become easier to see and reason through?
Output
Atlas prototype, source-cited strategy maps, interface audits, product architecture notes

Last updated 2026-05-22

OngoingPersonal operating system

Memex setup

A living vault for notes, synthesis, career materials, projects, reading, and agent workflows.

Question
What structure helps ideas compound without turning life into admin?
Output
Vault architecture, templates, workflows, Codex-facing rules

Last updated 2026-05-22

PrototypeWorkflow prototype

AI Workflow Atlas

A developing map of prompts, agents, checks, decisions, and handoffs across practical product, research, and writing work.

Question
Can human-AI workflows be mapped in a way that improves judgment rather than just speed?
Output
Workflow maps, prompt packs, quality gates, tool-routing notes, operating patterns

Last updated 2026-05-22

Experience overview

Professional terrain, not a prettier timeline

The useful view is not just where I worked. It is the kind of ambiguity, scale, translation, and judgment the work required.

Experience page

Professional terrain

More than a decade at Nike across Global Design, Digital Product Creation, and Technology, with earlier chapters in automotive research and sales operations. The public-safe thread is product and transformation work where complex domains needed diagnosis, translation, adoption, and shipped capability.

Enterprise platforms

Internal products where expert workflows, data foundations, APIs, adoption, and executive alignment all have to move together.

platform foundationsworkflow adoptiondata models

Operating-model change

Transformation work where the product is partly the tool and partly the way teams make decisions, sequence work, and build trust.

governanceroadmap sequencingchange readiness

Expert-to-usable translation

Making specialized domains legible enough for broader teams to use without pretending the domain is simple.

taxonomyeducationmental models

Role context

2024-present

Nike

Principal Product Manager

Recent work sits where enterprise product systems, AI-enabled prototyping, and operating-model change meet. The useful public story is practical AI adoption inside a large organization, not novelty theater.

Terrain

  • merchandising line planning platform
  • fragmented enterprise planning environment
  • AI-assisted product practice

Problem types

  • scaled a new planning capability to 100+ users in 3 months
  • aligned 12+ cross-functional teams around a shared transformation narrative
  • compressed concept-to-user-feedback cycles from weeks to hours through AI-assisted prototyping

2019-2024

Nike Digital Product Creation

Lead Product Manager / Product Director

This work showed the pattern at scale: absorb a specialized domain, build the shared model, ship the platform, and design the adoption path around the humans using it.

Terrain

  • enterprise color management platform
  • digital product creation transformation
  • front-end experiences and back-end APIs

Problem types

  • translated expert color workflows into scalable platform foundations
  • supported product-model adoption and continuous discovery
  • connected workflow digitization, adoption, data foundations, and executive alignment

Recent thinking

Notes, frameworks, and product/system reflections

Writing here should make the reasoning visible. The placeholders below are launch stubs, not lorem ipsum wearing a blazer.

Thinking index
Organizations

2026-05-22

Org charts are maps, not hierarchies

Notes

How formal structure, influence paths, incentives, and operating cadence combine into the real terrain.

5 min

AI and product

2026-05-22

AI will change the shape of product work

Draft

A grounded look at what gets automated, what gets amplified, and why product judgment becomes more visible when feedback loops speed up.

7 min

Current inputs

Referencesshapingthe work

Inputs replace consuming: books, publications, tools, and references that keep showing up in the way I think.

Input library
Source stack04

Active experiments

Small tests before big claims

Experiments keep the site honest: prototypes, prompts, unfinished ideas, and working notes that can turn into projects or disappear quietly.

Experiment log
PrototypeInterface probe

Chat as navigation

Question
Can chat become a way to move through a system rather than a box that produces answers?
Tools
Next.jsprompt mapsinterface sketchesCodex
Exists now
Interaction notes and navigation patterns

The interesting part is not the chat box. It is the relationship between prompt, context, and visible next move.

Last updated 2026-05-22

ActiveWorkflow test

Model cascade research

Question
Where should lightweight, specialist, and high-reasoning models sit in the same workstream?
Tools
CodexClaude Codeprompt evaluationworkflow notes
Exists now
Routing heuristics, quality gates, and handoff patterns

The goal is not model maximalism. It is matching the reasoning surface to the actual decision.

Last updated 2026-05-22

SketchAgent workflow

Brief to build

Question
How much structure does an agent need before it can build without sanding off the taste?
Tools
CodexMemexproject briefsreview gates
Exists now
Reusable brief patterns and implementation contracts

Early evidence suggests the handoff matters less as a prompt and more as an operating contract.

Last updated 2026-05-22

Open questions

The archive stays useful by keeping the questions visible.

  • How should AI-native tools change product feedback loops without outsourcing judgment?
  • What makes technical capability become organizational capability?
  • How can expert workflows become scalable platforms without stripping out the expertise?
  • What interface patterns help people navigate complex business systems without turning everything into a decorative graph?