Briefing: Slack Lists, Apple Intelligence and RIP GPTs
Plus: TikTok’s risky new feature, Databricks data tool, a new way to add interactivity
Hi product people 👋,
After its parent company Salesforce suffered its worst stock performance since 2008, Slack is hoping its latest feature announcement will shift the narrative.
Slack Lists is a new feature that allows teams to manage projects and tasks directly from within Slack for the first time. It falls short of being a fully-fledged replacement for things like Jira or Notion but it works by giving team members the ability to create checklists that can be assigned to other members. The company says research showing that only 34% of projects are completed on time is one of the drivers behind the feature. But, as product teams know well, it takes a lot more than a well managed checklist to bring new products to life.
Other new products worth checking out this week include a new startup called Liveblocks. Liveblocks has a rather unique value proposition that we’ve not seen before and it calls itself a “collaboration platform”. It works by allowing product teams to add real-time collaboration features like comments, whiteboards and notifications directly into their products without too much heavy lifting thanks to their APIs. It says it has drawn inspiration from modern product experiences offered by tools like Linear and Figma and their beautifully designed website certainly suggests this is the case.
Meanwhile, Microsoft is ditching its GPT builder just 3 months after launch. Custom Copilot GPTs were an experiment worth trying but didn’t quite find product market fit. GPTs offered through OpenAI will still be available, though.
Finally, if you WFH but miss the atmosphere of the office, this fun tool might help.
Have a great weekend!
Key reads, tools and resources for product teams
New from the Department of Product this week:
Knowledge Series - How to get up to speed in AI quickly
Take a step back from the day to day noise of new AI feature releases to share some thoughts on how you can build a solid understanding of AI, quickly - and without getting too overwhelmed.
Deep - Mobile app UX and strategies explored
In this Deep dive we analyse the mobile strategies and UX from top tier tech companies including Google Maps, 1Password, Stripe, Arc browser and more.
(Department of Product)
Skills - How to present UX research to stakeholders
Persuasion is an important part of presenting UX research to stakeholders. In this piece by Victor Yocco for Smashing Magazine, he shares some practical tools and frameworks you can use to structure your presentations. (Smashing Magazine)
Case study - How Pinterest redesigned its ads systems with zero downtime
As their ad business and engineering team grew rapidly, Pinterest accumulated significant complexities and tech debt. These complexities made the system increasingly brittle, resulting in several eng-weeks lost in resolving outages. In this post, they explain how. (Pinterest engineering blog)
Strategy - Why Apple’s AI strategy is very risky
Apple made clear from its announcements exactly what its AI strategy is—and how it differs markedly from its competitors, such as Google, Microsoft, and Meta. Apple deserves credit for shaping its AI strategy around its existing brand identity, but Jeremy Khan argues that its strategy is risky. (Fortune Magazine)
Tools you can use
Refero - design research made easy
Deformity - add conversational forms to engage customers
Motherduck - build a data warehouse without the overhead
Cello - add a referral program to your SaaS product
Podcast - How Booking.com sustains a culture of innovation
New product features, launches and announcements this week
Databricks is launching a new data intelligence platform to help product teams manage their analytics and data pipelines.
Spotify is launching a new feature that combines features like its AI DJ, Daylist, Blend playlist and the ‘Made For You’ playlist into a “one-stop shop full of personalised playlists, podcasts, features, and recommendations for each and every listener.” Hopefully the product teams at Spotify will also start to simplify other aspects of their UX which has become bloated over the years.
Apple’s WWDC kicked off this week. Here’s the software announcements product teams should know about:
Apple Intelligence is getting added across the Apple ecosystem. This includes genAI capabilities in Xcode for teams building Apple apps, image generation features and text summarization. All in all, it was Apple playing catch up.
A new standalone password management app is to replace iCloud keychain
Generative AI emojis known as Genmojis are coming to iOS18
iPadOS is getting a new floating tab bar which can be used in iPad apps to add extra context
visionOS 2 brings new features including 3D photo enhancements and an ultrawide Mac display. Are people still using their Vision Pro devices? This thread sheds some light onto the topic.
YouTube is rolling out its new testing tool which will allow creators to test multiple thumbnails at the same time.
TikTok is testing a Snapchat-like streaks feature that will reward users for DM’ing someone for more than three days in a row. At a time where regulators are increasingly cracking down on addiction-inducing features, this seems like a risky move. The company has also unveiled a new ecommerce search engine that will further squeeze Google as it struggles to fight off new challengers.
Stability AI has launched its most sophisticated text-to-image model yet, Stable Diffusion 3.
📈 Product data and trends to stay informed
Most of the world’s leading mobile apps now place their primary navigation at the bottom of their UI according to analysis of companies including Stripe, Notion, Discord, Slack and others.
50% of code created at Google is now AI assisted, according to a new research paper. In other words, the same amount of characters in the code are now completed with AI-based assistance as are manually typed by developers. Full report on the use of AI in engineering at Google.
TikTok Shop is now the ninth-largest online beauty and wellness retailer in the US and the second-largest in the UK.
The most common reasons designers are leaving their jobs in 2024 are: a limited ability to conduct user research or get feedback on their work (28%), a lack of strategic approach to design (26.2%) and no career progression opportunities (23.4%). Designer engagement report.
Churn rates on iOS are growing and day 30 churn rates now sit at 96.3%.
OpenAI’s annualized revenue has hit $3.5 billion, up from $1.6 billion in late 2023.
Other product news in brief
BeReal is getting acquired and its CEO is stepping down.
Android’s VP of engineering Dave Burke is leaving the company.
Netflix VP of games Mike Verdu is shifting roles, sparking rumours about the company’s gaming strategy.
The DoP Weekly Briefing is a product-led perspective of what’s happening in tech - and why it matters to product teams.
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Great round up. Thanks man