Google gets Expressive - but does it alienate older users?
Plus, Spotify's new AI feature, the world’s first AI junior product manager and Microsoft cuts its “PM ratio”
Hi product people 👋, Rich here with the weekly briefing.
This week, Google introduced a bold new version of its Material Design system that infuses Gen-Z inspired color palettes with a new physics engine - but does it alienate older users? Find out what Google’s product researchers say.
Plus, Spotify and Notion embrace new voice-powered AI features, Perplexity’s CEO teases a release date for their upcoming new browser and a new startup that raised $1.2 million this week to become the world’s first “AI junior product manager”.
Happy Friday and have a great weekend!
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Spotify wants you to speak
First up, Spotify has introduced a new Voice-powered AI feature. It gives users greater control over their DJ sessions by asking the AI DJ to mix things up and pick a different track. Users can interact with the DJ by pressing and holding the DJ button to start a voice conversation where you can ask it to switch tracks or genres. Voice isn’t an easy interaction model to get right but this seems like a pretty helpful way to integrate it.
Masterclass has started testing a new product called “On Call” that lets you speak with AI clones of celebrities.
Notion has unveiled a competitor to AI note taking tools like Otter and Granola with the release of its own AI meeting transcription feature. The UX is pretty impressive, too. It’s baked directly into a standard notes page but can be initiated using the /meet shortcut. Alongside Meeting Notes, Notion a new Enterprise Search - a new search feature that allows you to search across multiple different tools like Google Drive, Jira, Slack and others. Plus, Replit also recently launched a Notion integration which is worth checking out.
But Notion might have some solid competition. Perplexity’s CEO has revealed that he plans to add transcription capabilities to their upcoming browser. He also teased a release date for it but said the final 10-20% of the product development process is proving to be the most difficult. No surprises there…
An AI coding agent marketplace?
AI coding startup Zencoder has announced the launch of “Zen Agents” - a series of AI coding assistants built specifically for product development teams. But setting aside the coding agents for second, alongside that they’ve also launched an open source marketplace where engineers / product teams can find specialist AI coding agents, including:
Accessibility evaluator agent that evaluates code for accessibility issues
Bug prediction and prevention agent
Tech debt identifier agent that identifies, prioritizes and addresses code quality issues
There are also rumors that Google is set to unveil its own AI software development agent at its upcoming I/O event.
Google gets Expressive - but is it fair on older users?
Google’s design system, Material Design, is getting a Gen-Z inspired expressive makeover. The new version of Material Design uses bold, expressive colors including pinks, purples and oranges, new physics for UI interactions and an expansive new library of shapes. The design system is open source and it looks as though Google is positioning this to contrast with Apple’s upcoming redesign of iOS which is rumored to be using the translucent UI components seen in visionOS.
Google says it took 46 different design research sessions to finalize the new design system and says that the new design resonates especially well with younger users. Does this mean the new design system is a little ageist? The research says no. Google says Material Expressive design system actually enabled older users to spot key interactive elements on the screen just as fast as younger users across 10 apps tested. You can read more about the product research underpinning it here.
Google wasn’t the only company unveiling a design refresh this week, though. Airbnb released a refreshed series of icons that fully embrace skeuomorphism.
Key reads and resources for product teams
New from the Department of Product Substack
What new AI features are product teams building?
In this latest Deep Dive, we’ll explore what new features some of the world’s leading companies have released since our last analysis. This includes different types of AI features including: UX enhancers, new AI Agents, new standalone products, productivity tools and more from 25+ companies including Google, Doordash, Kindle, Tinder, Gmail and others. (Department of Product)
Sam Altman on his vision for the future of AI:
More reads to feed your product brain
Why AI will not provide a sustainable competitive advantage (MIT Sloan)
How coding agents will change your job (Y Combinator)
How to launch big, complex projects (Smashing Magazine)
The 6 forces of failure - and how to protect your company from them (Harvard Business Review)
Tools you can use
Fellou - the world’s first agentic browser. Turn browsing into action.
Substage - docks to the bottom of your Finder windows on Mac and lets you perform actions using natural language.
ThriveAI - the world’s first junior AI product manager. This company raised $1.2 million this week.
📈 Product data and trends to stay informed
Meta says it's on track to generate 50% of its code with AI within the next year. Here’s a snapshot of how each of the big tech companies stack up:
Perplexity’s valuation has soared to $14 billion. Still some way off Alphabet’s ~$2 trillion market cap but here’s how it stacks up against competitors.
40% of US businesses have a paid subscription to an AI model and OpenAI is leading the way with a 32.4% market share. Google’s share has dropped from 2.2% in February to 0.1% based on a new report that analyzes corporate card spend from Ramp.
A fascinating new report from SimilarWeb has analyzed web traffic across different types of AI products. Products on the rise include “vibe coding” tools like Lovable which posted a 207% increase and audio generation products like ElevenLabs which saw a 25% rise. Products hit by generative AI include edtech companies like DuoLingo, down 8% and discussion forums like Quora, down 47%.
Amazon has topped the list of companies with the most powerful patents The rankings are based on Pipeline Power, a metric calculated by 1790 Analytics that combines several elements of an organization’s patent portfolio into one number. Check out an interactive Patent Scorecard report here.
Annual budgets for AI investment have doubled with companies saying that they have an average of 5 different use cases in production vs. 2.5 in October 2023.
AI makes people more productive but less motivated at work when they shift from tasks that involve collaborating with generative AI to tasks that don’t involve AI according to a new study. On solo tasks, intrinsic motivation dropped by an average of 11% and boredom increased by an average of 20%.
Other product news in brief
🤔 Microsoft is planning to decrease the “PM ratio” on some teams with cuts of up to 6,000 jobs.
👹 TikTok is adding a new feature called AI Alive that transforms static images into videos.
👀Anthropic doesn’t allow candidates to use AI in job applications.
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