Understanding Your Customers, the key to continued success

Well, we are living in the age of AI. And unlike crypto, I am extremely bullish about AI's potential to change the world for the better. If I had to choose one sector, I would go all in on biotech. However, this article is not about that. It's about building great products and successful businesses.

I'm sure that, like me, you've been inundated with emails from companies claiming that their products now have some AI-powered feature ??. The speed at which pretty much every company jumped on the AI bandwagon is impressive, and I salute their speed of execution. However, there is a difference between getting 'something out there' and putting thought into your products. Here is an example that shows the amount of care and attention to detail that goes into building remarkable products. And like everything that is great, it starts with knowing who your customers are and what they are trying to accomplish.

This week, a significant portion of my time was spent creating a knowledge base for an upcoming product launch.

Our knowledge base is hosted on HubSpot. I used Notion to structure and organize the content topics, and I use a Grammarly plugin, which I love. Although all three products offer AI-assisted content creation, the way they do it is different. And as a PM, I couldn't help but analyze why I prefer Notion the most (you didn't even have to wait for the big reveal!). Notion has done an amazing job and knowing how its users.

When writing, I typically focus on two key aspects:

1. Correct any spelling or grammatical errors.
2. Adjusting the length - making it more concise or descriptive, depending on the intended use.

All the text editors do the same thing but consider how each of them presents it.

It may seem like a small thing, but there is a stark difference between "improve writing" and "rewrite".

Hubspot's "rewrite" option is ambiguous and lacks context. Does it mean to rewrite to improve my grammar or to rewrite in the style of Charles Dickens?

Grammarly's choice to use icons instead of simple text for CTAs is confusing. I don't understand what the ?? icon does unless I hover over it. And the ?? icon, which is used for editing, is confusing. I don't know if it will rewrite and replace the selected text or if it will open a prompt for me (it actually opens a prompt with rewritten text and a bunch of follow-up actions).

Now, consider the UX when you ask the tool to improve your writing.

Notion's output box is the same width as the original text. This may seem like a small detail, but it's actually incredibly important. Every user who reads the rewritten text will undoubtedly want to compare it to the original. Notion makes this comparison process much easier by visually aligning the input and the output.

Notion also puts the focus on ‘Tell AI what to do next’ - You do not need to move your mouse or place it somewhere to give further instructions. Simply keep typing.

If the output is to your liking, you can either replace the original selection or ‘insert below’ ← this is my favouritest thing in the world (no I did not use AI to correct this sentence because I wanted it to be a word that did not exist ?? ) When I write long articles, I don’t want to use AI to correct my sentences one at a time. Nor do I want to review the rewritten text in a dialogue and figure out all the edits that were made. I want to paste the whole thing, review and edit it and have access to the original text so that I can go back to it for some of the sentences (like the favouritest one above).

Hubspot seems very restrictive in terms of what I can do next, while Grammarly's interface is way too busy, with all kinds of actions and five different visual treatments of those CTAs. And what on earth does “95 prompts” mean? I get that Grammarly is not a native text editor and a plugin has its own set of challenges, but they do not have to cram everything into one screen as a level 1 action. It is clear that they do not have any idea of what the top next best actions are, or they did not care enough to take the time to design with that in mind.

I could go on and on but I think you get the gist. So I am going to stick it out with Notion (at least for now). If you have a recommendation for another editor, do let me know and I would love to give it a try.

P.S. Yes, I used Notion’s Ask AI for 'improving' this article.

P.P.S. I am sure many of my colleagues at Hubspot and Grammarly had to make tough decisions between scope and time, which led to the MVP being what it is. I have been in that position many times, and there is a chance that I would have made the same choices as they did. However, I will take my role here as a user and shamelessly let go of the empathy I have for product managers and the tough choices they have to make every single day.