EP21: The Architecture of Product Design
In this episode of Discovering the Architecture Middle Path, Asanka is joined by Selvaratnam Uthaiyashankar (Shankar), WSO2's Chief Product Officer, to explore the architecture of product design. The conversation looks at the principles behind product decisions, the tradeoffs that shape those choices, and how architecture, developer experience, deployment models, and different user needs influence product design. They also discuss how product principles evolve as customer expectations and technologies such as AI and agentic systems continue to change.
▸ What are product design principles?
Guiding principles • Product requirements • Feature requests • Long-term consistency
▸ Why we made the choices we did
Key decisions • Tradeoffs • Constraints • What we deliberately chose not to do
▸ Architecture and product design
APIs • Platforms • Extensibility • Deployment models • Developer experience • Architect–product collaboration
▸ Designing for different users and environments
Developers • Architects • Operators • SaaS vs. self-managed • Simplicity vs. flexibility
▸ How product principles evolve
What stays stable • Changing customer expectations • AI and agentic systems • What architects should look for
- Hosts*
- Asanka Abeysinghe*
- LinkedIn:* https://www.linkedin.com/in/asankaabeysinghe
- Twitter:* @asankama
- Blog:* https://blog.architect2architect.com/
- Medium:* https://asankama.medium.com/
- Selvaratnam Uthaiyashankar*
- LinkedIn:* https://www.linkedin.com/in/uthaiyashankar/
#DAMP #wso2