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Google's Ambitions, Getting the Best From AI, Growth and Design thinking
Alastair Preacher
February 12, 2024 • Estimated Reading Time: 18 minutes
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We track Product so you don't have to. Top Podcasts summarised, the latest AI tools, plus research and news in a 5 min digest.
Hey Product fans!
Welcome to this week’s 🌮 Product Tapas. If you’ve been forwarded this please go here to sign up and check out previous editions to see what else you’ve missed.
Welcome to the new subscribers that have joined us over the last week. The aim of this newsletter is to help you navigate the goings on in Product and Tech. It’s another packed edition this week, so without further ado…
What’s cooking? 🧑🍳
📰 Not Boring: YouTube is reshaping our digital landscape with its ambitious plans for 2024. Roblox breaks down language barriers with its lightning-fast LLM, Disney and Fortnite's $1.5bn partnership reminds us that the metaverse may not be dead just yet. Google's AI endeavours continue to push the boundaries, with Bard evolving into Gemini and the rollout of LLM search, adding a futuristic twist to our everyday queries. Finally, there’s continued change in the microblogging sphere, with Farcaster's growth and Bluesky's public launch, plus much more!
📰 Time-Saving Tools & GPTs: This week, we spotlight tools to help improve your writing and where to go to get the low-down on AI in marketing, design, and productivity. From Humanizerpro's nuanced approach to AI writing to Keycheck's comprehensive keyboard shortcut guide and a beginner’s guide to improving your Prompt building, we’ve got your productivity back.
🎙️ Pod Shots: Delve into some basics of AI in product management with insights from a seasoned AI executive. This podcast serves as a primer for anyone looking to figure out what to do with AI day to day - offering a blend of practical advice, visionary strategies, and real-world applications in Product.
🍔 Blog Bites: From envisioning the future of social networks to dissecting Airbnb's design philosophy, confronting the challenges faced by growth teams, and a primer on design thinking, we’ve got a stack of great recommendations this week.
Plenty to get stuck into - off we go! 🚀👇
📰 Not boring
Youtube announced its 4 big bets for 2024 - aside from AI its next frontier is the living room and subscriptions as consumers consume YouTube as we used to do traditional TV. Interesting to see them manage to make both ads and paid models work on the same product
Staying with YouTube, they’ve also confirmed they’re making a Vision Pro app after someone created their own unofficial one last week
On VisionPro, here’s a handy list of apps available now
Roblox announces a new super-fast LLM to translate in real-time (100 milliseconds latency), so people can chat with each other irrespective of language 🤯
Staying with gaming, whilst things have quietened down on the Metaverse of late (that’ll change mark my words), Disney has just partnered with Fortnite (for $1.5bn) to add its characters into the game
As mentioned last week, Google continues on its big AI push
Bard rebranded as Gemini and you can access the pro version (supposedly better than GPT4) for free for two months. Be sure to select the “Gemini Advanced” dropdown
They’re also rolling out LLM search (US 1st) so you can look for Industrial-cyber-punk-retro-chic coffee bars in Walthamstow with an avantgarde vibe (or something) to help improve discovery
Somewhat big-brother like: Walmart, Delta, Chevron and Starbucks are using AI to monitor employee messages
Notion remains on a roll announcing it’s acquired privacy-focused productivity platform Skiff
Couple of interesting bits of news in the microblogging (read Twitter/X competition) space
Farcaster (a decentralised social network) has seen impressive growth since introducing frames which turn casts (tweets) into interactive apps. You can check it out directly through an app like warpcast and because this probably makes no sense, I’ve added a link to find out more in this week’s Blog Bites
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📰 Time-Saving Tools & GPTs
This week we’ve got tools to help you humanise your AI writing, how to stay on top of AI in marketing, how to find all the keyboard shortcuts you’ll ever need and the lowdown on prompting.
Humanizerpro - GPT aimed at writing text more less like an AI and more like a human
For those interested in AI in marketing check out this Linkedin Group
Keycheck let’s you find all the keyboard shortcuts used by 100 apps to help when you’re designing your own
AI Prompt builder - helps you write prompts like a pro (hat time to sumerhuman.ai for this. Sign up to that newsletter here
Go to ChatGPT prompt builder
Fill in the details about what you’re trying to do
Copy the prompt it generates
Paste the prompt into ChatGPT!
For more advanced prompting, check out Superhuman’s cheat sheet below 👇
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🎙️ Pod Shots
Given we cover AI and Product so much I thought this podcast was a good primer for those not yet using it daily. It’s pretty much a beginner’s guide highlighting some tips and tricks on how to get the best out of AI in your day-to-day.
🤖 How Product Managers Use AI to Boost Productivity
Product Podcast
🎙️ Listen to the full episode here
📆 Published: January 30th, 2024
🕒 Estimated Reading Time: 2 minutes. Time saved: 30 minutes🔥
🎙️ Theme: Using AI in Product Management
In this episode of the Product Podcast from Product School, Samantha Stevens, a seasoned AI executive and the creator of Product School's AIPC, discusses the power of AI in product management. She shares three key strategies to turbocharge productivity using AI. The strategies include using AI as a thought partner in product strategy, optimising your day with AI, and analysing user feedback with AI.
🔍 Casting a Wide Net for Ideas
Not particular news to anyone, but relevant all the same - Stevens emphasizes the importance of using AI to generate new ideas and cast a wide net when brainstorming. She suggests using an AI language model like ChatGPT to generate a range of ideas based on the specific decision or product strategy. By providing clear guidance and examples, the AI can generate targeted ideas. Stevens recommends an iterative process, refining prompts based on previous responses to get more targeted ideas (prompt chaining). She compares the process to a lively debate with a peer, encouraging the AI to explore and generate more ideas. Stevens advises being open-minded and looking for sparks of inspiration among the generated ideas.
🔍 Weighing Pros and Cons with AI
To make informed decisions, Stevens suggests using AI to weigh the pros and cons of different options. By feeding all relevant data and insights into an AI tool, product managers can ask it to list all possible courses of action based on the information provided. The AI can then create a table with structured sections, weighing the pros and cons of each option. Stevens emphasises the importance of human judgment in evaluating the ideas generated by the AI. By combining AI-generated insights with their own knowledge and expertise, product managers can make the best-informed decisions.
🔍 Optimising Your Day with AI
Stevens shares her approach to optimising productivity using AI. She highlights the importance of using tools like Google Calendar to plan and time-box activities. However, she acknowledges that not everyone naturally excels at this. To help with day-to-day planning, Stevens created a prompt template that can be used with AI language models. By providing personalised information about energy levels, task durations, and goals, the AI can help create an optimised schedule. Stevens advises being explicit in providing context to ensure high-quality recommendations from the AI.
🔍 Analyzing User Feedback with AI
Stevens shares her experience of manually analysing user feedback during her time at YouTube and highlights the potential of using AI for this task. She explains how she recreated the process of analysing YouTube comments using GPT-4. By preparing the data and uploading it into an AI tool, product managers can categorize and analyse user feedback more efficiently. Stevens recommends cleaning the data, labelling columns clearly, and using a few-shot example to guide the AI's categorisation. The AI can generate spreadsheets, graphs, or memos summarizing the findings, saving significant time and effort.
🧠 What can I do with this as a founder or PM?
Here are some actions you can take based on the information shared in the podcast:
Casting a Wide Net for Ideas:
Experiment with AI language models like ChatGPT & Gemini to generate a range of ideas for decision-making and product strategy.
Provide clear guidance and examples to steer the AI in the right direction (use the prompting guide we shared above).
Iterate and refine prompts based on previous responses to get more targeted ideas.
Embrace an open-minded approach and look for sparks of inspiration among the generated ideas.
Plus don’t forget to get out the various Product GPTs (like this)
Weighing Pros and Cons with AI:
Utilise AI tools to weigh the pros and cons of different options.
Feed relevant data and insights into the AI tool to generate a comprehensive analysis.
Combine AI-generated insights with your own expertise and judgment to make informed decisions. It’s critical to avoid taking answers at face value.
Document your decision-making process, including alternatives considered and rationale, to share with your team.
Optimising Your Day with AI:
Leverage tools like Google Calendar to plan and time-box activities.
Follow her prompt template to optimise your day with AI language models.
Provide personalised information about energy levels, task durations, and goals to generate an optimized schedule.
Be explicit in providing context to ensure high-quality recommendations from the AI.
Analyzing User Feedback with AI:
Explore AI tools for analysing user feedback, such as sentiment analysis or language models.
Prepare and clean your data, ensuring clear labelling and removing irrelevant or spam comments.
Utilise AI language models to categorize and analyse user feedback more efficiently.
Review and validate the AI-generated results, making adjustments as necessary.
By incorporating these AI-driven strategies into your product management workflow, you can enhance your decision-making, optimise your productivity, and gain valuable insights from user feedback. Remember to adapt these techniques to your specific use cases and always exercise your own judgment and expertise in conjunction with AI-generated insights.
If these sound like they resonate dig in more below.
Want to quickly know more? Just ask the episode below👇️ 🤯
or if you prefer, 🎙️ Listen to the full episode here
📅 Timestamps:
00:00:01-00:00:11 Introduction to the podcast and topic
00:00:11-00:00:52 Introduction to Samantha Stevens and the three key strategies
00:00:52-00:01:25 Overview of the three ways product managers can use AI
00:01:25-00:02:40 Samantha Stevens' background and experience in product management
00:02:40-00:03:54 Introduction to Catalyst, an AI project management assistant
00:03:55-00:04:16 Invitation to join the Catalyst closed beta
00:04:16-00:13:51 Theme 1: Using AI as a thought partner in product strategy
00:13:51-00:16:52 Theme 2: Optimizing your day with AI
00:16:52-00:22:59 Theme 3: Analyzing user feedback with AI
00:22:59-00:31:01 Conclusion and call to action
00:31:37-00:31:57 Closing remarks and invitation for questions
00:31:57-00:32:07 Request for podcast reviews and ratings
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🍔 Blog Bites
Framing the future of the Internet
As flagged at the top of the article here’s a brilliant piece explaining what the future of social could look like from Packy McCormick’s recent newsletter
Farcaster is a crypto company, a decentralized social network, but I want you to try to not think about it with any of the baggage you might associate with crypto as you read this piece. Think about it as a platform or a network.
In Chris Dixon’s new book, Read Write Own, which comes out today, he uses the term “blockchain network” as an alternative to corporate networks like Facebook and Twitter and protocols networks like SMTP and HTTP. “Blockchains are the only credible, known architecture,” he writes, “for building networks with the societal benefits of protocol networks and the competitive advantages of corporate networks.” Farcaster is a blockchain network.
The benefits of blockchain networks can be hard to grok in the abstract. What’s happening at Farcaster is a concrete and approachable example of why they might win, playing out in real time.
Key Takeaways from Airbnb’s Winter Redesign
Airbnb is not like most software companies.
Much like Apple, they launch major updates only 2 times a year. So when they announce something new, it’s the result of months of hard work, thinking and testing.
You can read the explanation in full from designer Daniel De Mello here
There’s a Whole Lot of Ugly Out There When it Comes to Growth Teams
We are in the middle of an ugly growth team crisis, resulting in the systematic failure of growth teams and growth efforts across the entire industry. As companies are blinded by the growth team ‘promise,’ they fail to understand what growth actually means. As a result, they fail to hire properly, set up a team for success, or equip them with the right level of support.
The results are devastating and are all around us: companies hiring for growth, expecting an acceleration of revenue, yet they somehow end up in a performance nosedive? We’re seeing it everywhere.
Another really interesting piece o the future of growth - read it in full here.
Design Thinking
As a product manager, you try to turn business objectives into reality.
Generally that involves finding important user problems to address, and creating workable solutions to those problems.
Moving from objectives to reality - finding the right problems and solutions - is a messy business. There are no guaranteed paths to success, and especially at the beginning chaos and confusion reign.
But if we persevere and have a little bit of luck we can gradually tease out the important insights, the interesting concepts and narrow down on a solution that creates real value for users and the business.
Daniel Newman captures the uncertainty and emotion of this process with his Design Squiggle.
Whilst you can never escape the messiness of the creative process, design thinking provides us with a mental model to help us navigate it. This gives us the best chances of reducing risk and building something of value
Really clear article on design thinking and its importance in Product from Ed Biden and the Hustle Badger team here
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That’s a wrap.
As always, the journey doesn't end here!
Keep exploring, keep questioning, and most importantly, keep growing in your product journey.
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Alastair & the Product Tapas Team 🍽️.
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