Three ways ChatGPT and Product make a great team

Welcome to 2023 with the age of ChatGPT and many other companies looking to compete for AI assistants coming soon such as: ChatSonic, Bing, Jasper and Elon's new company X.AI there are a number of options for product folks. The important distinction that must be illustrated is that while these new tools are available, they should not be a crutch or too heavily relied upon to do your job. Any AI solution is to be used in conjunction with good judgement as to how your product roadmap will best match your intended customer base. This article will discuss 5 ways product can better use AI without removing the human touch needed to get stuff done in the corporate world.

1. Ask me 10 questions discovery method

Product must always concern themselves with requirement definitions, product features and use of the product both internal and external. One powerful technique that an AI such as ChatGPT can assist a product person is the "ask me 10 questions about XYZ" method. This will not do all your work but is like having a really good soundboard for bouncing ideas off and refining product requirements.

Here is the template to use for this to work well but the more details given to the AI, the better and more precise the questions will be.

"Hey Chatgpt, can you please ask me 10 questions about the following product I want to build to help me build out a robust product requirements summary with a bulleted top 10 features list"

Add the best description possible of what needs to be built here. Such as the following:

"I want to create a new customer service portal for my logistics company. This portal will contain carrier information, carrier account information including financial items such as invoices, credits, payments, reward program for miles driven, and a method for contacting company representatives."

2. What am I missing? Ask ChatGPT for a clue

One of my favorite uses of ChatGPT is to have it look over a set of requirements I have gathered and see if I'm missing anything. I'm not looking for the AI to write my final product but to review and see if there are elements to be added. Did I forget about security roles, not enough user personas, no method of communicating with our customer service team? The prompt that I use is the following:

"Hey Chatgpt, can you please review this list of requirements and see if I'm missing any product elements that are common to other like products? The intended audience of this product is XYZ using a Online/on-prem software interface. Please be aware of the following user personas as well when considering if these requirements require additional elements.

User personas:

Fill in user persona details - Hint...you can use hint #3 to generate this ;)"

The usual output will give suggestions but these are to be considered along with what your overall product strategy is. It's important to not be a puppet regurgitating what the AI declares but rather to use in alignment with your product strategy.

3. User persona creation

Maybe this speaks to my inner love for Dungeons and Dragons but having firm user personas that make sense for your product and industry help immensely for telling the product roadmap as a story. However, these can be infuriately difficult to produce as your product continues to mature and customer needs become more specific. This is where our good buddy ChatGPT comes in to help. The trick is having a good description of your product, describing the industry, intended usage and even giving some example personas for ChatGPT to fill in the rest. Here is your prompt:

"Hey ChatGPT, can you please help me generate user personas that will best describe the users of my product. Below is a description of my product, the industry this product is used by and a couple examples of user personas I currently use.

Product description: A online software product where users log in and play tic tac toe together with a competitive scoreboard showing the world who is the best player. There are options for players to buy different skins, graphics or cool looking tic tac toe marks but do not affect gameplay.

Industry: Online browser based video game

User personas: Middle school child that enjoys competing against other kids at school, Older folks looking to connect to other players"

An example output:

The Casual Gamer

Name: Emma

Age: 25

Occupation: Marketing Coordinator

Goals: Emma likes to play light and fun games in her downtime. She doesn't want anything too complex or time-consuming, just a quick and enjoyable game to help her relax after work.

Motivation: Emma enjoys the competitive nature of the game, and the fact that she can hop on and off at any time without making a big time commitment.

Gaming Habits: Emma plays during her lunch breaks or after work. She appreciates the option to buy different skins to personalize her experience.

Preferences: Prefers browser games to keep her computer clutter-free. She likes casual games that don't require a significant time investment.

I hope you found this article helpful to you and if you'd like to get more of these follow me. I produce articles about how product can get the best use of AI solutions.

This article written by a live human but with my favorite virtual assistant.