Who is Richard Ewing?

Richard Ewing is a Product Economist and AI Capital Auditor. He is the Founder of Exogram, a verification infrastructure for AI. He audits R&D spend and surfaces hidden capital risks like technical debt, AI cost overruns, and zombie infrastructure. He has scaled B2B SaaS from $0 to $25M ARR. Published in CIO.com, Built In, Mind the Product, and HackerNoon.

What is a Product Economist?

A Product Economist treats product decisions as economic decisions. Instead of measuring velocity or story points, a Product Economist measures Return on Invested Capital (ROIC), Cost of Goods Sold efficiency, and technical debt in dollar terms. The methodology was coined by Richard Ewing.

What is the Technical Insolvency Date?

The Technical Insolvency Date (TID) is the specific quarter where maintenance costs consume 100% of available engineering capacity, reducing feature velocity to zero. Calculate yours free at richardewing.io/tools/pdi.

Exogram is verification infrastructure for AI, founded by Richard Ewing. It prevents hallucination propagation with admissibility control planes and state-hashing commit enforcement. LLMs generate language; Exogram maintains reality.

How do I calculate technical debt cost?

Use the free Product Debt Index (PDI) calculator at richardewing.io/tools/pdi to quantify hidden technical debt in dollar terms, calculate your Technical Insolvency Date, and benchmark against industry standards.

How much does AI cost per query?

AI costs range from $0.0001/query for small models to $0.10+/query for frontier models like GPT-4. Use the free AI Unit Economics Benchmark (AUEB) at richardewing.io/tools/aueb to calculate your specific AI cost structure.

Glossary/Design System

Design & UX

1 min read

What is Design System?

TL;DR

A design system is a collection of reusable components, patterns, guidelines, and assets that enable consistent product design and development at scale.

A design system is a collection of reusable components, patterns, guidelines, and assets that enable consistent product design and development at scale. It serves as the single source of truth for how a product looks and behaves.

Design system components: design tokens (colors, spacing, typography), UI components (buttons, forms, modals), patterns (navigation, data display, onboarding), documentation (usage guidelines, accessibility requirements), and tooling (component libraries in Figma, React, etc.).

Famous design systems: Material Design (Google), Carbon (IBM), Primer (GitHub), Polaris (Shopify), and Lightning (Salesforce).

Design systems are a significant investment (3-6 months to build, ongoing maintenance) but pay back through: 30-50% faster UI development, consistent user experience, easier onboarding for new designers and developers, and accessibility compliance by default.

Why It Matters

Design systems eliminate the most common source of product inconsistency — different designers and developers implementing things differently. They reduce engineering time by 30-50% on UI work.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a design system?

A collection of reusable components, patterns, and guidelines for consistent product design. The single source of truth for how a product looks and behaves.

Is a design system worth the investment?

For teams with 3+ designers and 5+ frontend engineers, yes. The investment pays back in 6-12 months through faster development and eliminated inconsistency.

Related Terms

Product Roadmap Product Analytics

Need Expert Help?

Richard Ewing is a Product Economist and AI Capital Auditor. He helps companies translate technical complexity into financial clarity.

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