Product teams obsess over their persona walls. We meticulously map out the needs of the "Stressed Admin," the "Power User," and the "Busy Executive." But when AI arrived, it didn't earn a persona card. Instead, it became a lazy line item on the product roadmap.
That is a massive strategic failure. If you treat AI merely as a feature, you get what everyone is shipping right now: a superficial chat bubble in the corner, demoed at an all-hands, and quietly abandoned by users by month three.
One lesson i remember Moe Ali taught in one of his classes, product people's fair full focus should be on contrast, if contrast is what you're looking for; read below carefully.
AI is a User, and It Has Zero Common Sense
To survive the next era of software, you have to stop treating AI as an add-on and start designing for it as the most demanding, alien user on your platform.
