A generation of PMs made a career out of copying ideas from other apps they've seen into their own app. Today, AI (which has seen every app) can do this 100x faster than any of them.

The only problem is that doing this was always pointless

This week's issue of the Product Picnic newsletter breaks down this problem and surfaces some tools for thinking in workflows (or just plain thinking) rather than worrying about atomic features.

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#UX #Tech #SoftwareDevelopment

Thoughtless features never add up to a thoughtful product

Your first idea for how to solve a problem is most likely to be a low-impact hack. Delightful user experiences require a higher level of thinking.

^{Pavel Samsonov (The Product Picnic)}

Designers talk a big game about "empathy" for users. But empathy without respect is nothing more than pity.

And nowhere is the lack of respect more apparent than in how LLMs have been productized and adopted. The "human in the loop" excuse pushes consequences down onto scrupulous employees and ultimately onto the very users on whom we claim to be centered.

The consequences of disrespectful software are now becoming apparent across tech.

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#UX #UXDesign #LLM #AI #tech

Empathy and delight mean nothing when the software is disrespectful

Software is now something we do TO users, instead of something that we make FOR them.

^{Pavel Samsonov (The Product Picnic)}

Much of AI "productivity gains" come from managers implicitly trusting an LLM to do a good job, and suspending the onerous micromanagement that humans employees get subjected to.

You can do that without paying Anthropic a single penny. It just requires letting the experts you hired do their jobs.

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#LLM #AI #tech #UXDesign #UX #SoftwareDevelopment #USerresearch

Trust is not built on craft alone

No amount of tooling will let product teams move faster than being trusted to own their process. That trust is earned through rigor rather than mere velocity.

^{Pavel Samsonov (The Product Picnic)}

Execs are confused: we forced you to use all these powerful AI tools and yet our profits aren't 10x! What gives?

Individual productivity is always downstream of strategy. And the same "more, faster!" attitude that creates incremental improvements in delivery speed means that leaders rush through strategy formation.

If the tasks don't add up to anything meaningful, no amount of model improvements will help you.

productpicnic.beehiiv.com/p/ev…

#LLM #AI #tech #softwaredevelopment #UX #Agile

Even with a silver bullet, you still have to aim

Productivity gains among frontline employees can't counteract the abdication of responsibility at the executive level.

^{Pavel Samsonov (The Product Picnic)}