Is the product you’re building a good candidate for AI?

Mar 22

Written By Martina Hodges-Schell and Noelle Saldana

Welcome to Part 3 of our comprehensive 6-part series, Beyond Buzzwords: Finding your Purpose for AI, written together with data science expert Noelle Saldana.

Once you are clear in your purpose for AI, a key question to ask at the start of your AI journey is whether the product you’re building is even a good candidate for AI.

We’ll share a tough truth here: AI can’t fix fundamental problems with your product. It’s not a magic wand that makes everything better. AI is a broad technical landscape, and its implementation being more complex than it may seem at first (more on this later.) This is why it’s so important to take an honest look at where your product is today and identify any areas where it’s lacking before you try to move forward with a new AI project.

To get started, you need to ask yourself:

What added value will AI capabilities bring to your product?
What pain could AI alleviate for your users?
Does your product roadmap include any of the following product foundations: scaling, addressing technical debt, platform migrations
How is data instrumented on your product today? What existing data-driven feedback loops do you have for the product?
Who owns data/AI in your organisation?

*Balanced Products address pragmatic, rigorous and creative tenets.*

Products that are too far from any edge will be problematic for different reasons. For example, when you apply rigour and creativity without pragmatism, this is when you end with CEO pet projects that flop (because there was no practical application in the first place). Or, if you apply rigour and pragmatism with no creativity, this leads to products like government websites that people use because they have to, but it’s an unequivocally unpleasant experience.

Products with the most value are in the sweet spot where all three overlap; the user experience is delightful, it serves a purpose that encourages user engagement, and is adequately vetted and responsible.

Finally, we’d be remiss not to point out that creativity is not a linear process. If you want to foster true innovation, you need to be prepared for the messiness that it can involve and the detours teams may need to take before they arrive at a solution. We’ll be sharing more about how to create the ideal conditions for creativity and innovation in the next section.