AI First Product Craft
Reimaging the Product
We were reviewing product strategy with a team. They were brainstorming how to make a key workflow smarter. A few suggestions surfaced quickly:
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Use AI to summarize All viable ideas, but not yet lovable.
So we asked them:
“What mental space is the user actually in when this workflow happens?”
“What’s hard about it emotionally, not just operationally?”
With the latest AI advancements, the question isn’t only “What can we automate?”
But more on “What friction matters more now, because user expectations have changed?” since AI will continue to raise the bar.
Sometimes, that leads to the same feature idea.
But the why behind it will be different, because the world is changing fast every day.
And sometimes, it leads to a completely different direction, one that reshapes how the user feels, not just what they do.
We refer to this as 2.0 thinking. Not layering AI on top of existing flows... but reimagining the product, because the world, and the user’s expectations, have already changed, and will continue to change going forward.
AI becomes most powerful when Product teams see it not just as a tool, but as a lens to rethink and recreate customer value.
That’s what we build in our work with Product teams: A habit of returning to the problem, even when a band-aid solution is tempting. Especially then.
~~ I’ve been partnering with Amit S. to help orgs build strategic PMs with AI-First Thinking who can lead in uncertainty, based on our experiences coaching AI PMs from Meta, Google, Microsoft, and Cisco. If you are thinking of up-leveling your Product teams, reply to this post.