put yourself in AI's shoes
customer research, black friday shopping, and doppelgangers
Power up your GPTs, tech brat is back. It’s been a few weeks, but your girl needed some time to work, have some fun, and just figure out what she wants tech brat to be. A lot has happened in the world of AI in the past couple of weeks, so I’m in the phase of refreshing my memory and just catching up with what I missed.
I didn’t waste my time away, though. I was in the final stretch of a major Fortune 100 website redesign project I have been working on this past year. I also had the honor of talking to Cristian Pineda on his
podcast. This was my first time being a guest on a podcast and it was a thrill of a lifetime talking all things IA, UX, product design, and AI. You can check out the episode below.
This week’s roundup is a little different than what you’re used to. I will be experimenting with different categories, sections, and formats of this weekly roundup for the next few weeks, so I’m excited to see what everyone thinks. Share your thoughts, feedback, and ideas in the comments!
☆ Bookmark this
// Bloomberg’s AI Glossary
This Glossary for the AI Revolution is a great bookmark to have in your bookmarks bar. It outlines all the relevant AI terms that are being thrown out there in the news and in the corporate world daily.
⌨ Relevant to your 9-5
// AI is taking over customer research
Every has become sort of a comfort publication for me. Their articles just scratch an itch I have for certain types of discussions and topics that I didn’t even know I had. So in one of my recent reads, I stumbled on this article by Chris Silvestri diving deeper into his empathy engineering framework. When I saw the term “empathy engineering” a lightbulb went off in my head. I had to go back and read the other articles in this series to figure what the hell empathy engineering even is.
Chris introduced his framework in Decoding Your Customer With AI. Here’s how he lays it out:
❝Instead of just imagining what your ideal customer wants, you can actually have a conversation with an AI model that mimics their persona. You can prompt it with detailed information about your target customer—their demographics, goals, pain points, even their favorite industry websites. Then, you ask the AI questions, just as you would in an interview with a human customer. How would they describe their biggest challenge? What features are most important to them? What are their objections to your product?❞
While his framework is geared towards customer research for copywriting, it can absolutely be tweaked and adapted for any type of customer or user research. Is this what they meant when they said AI will take over our jobs? Looks like User Researchers might be in a pickle. Jokes aside, I’m curious to see how far we can go with effective AI prompting, and how accurate can these results really be.
⛱ Relevant to your free time
// AI Hacks for Black Friday
In the spirit of this week, I was hellbent on finding something juicy around shopping and Black Friday deals.
Forbes released these 5 AI Hacks for Black Friday shopping, while I took a look at Perplexity’s Buy with Pro feature and dove deeper into Walmart’s AI enhancements to shopping. Finally, the AI direction I’m looking for.
Personalization is what I’m craving when it comes to AI. These apps and platforms know so much about me, so tell me why am I still having to sift through dozens of websites to find a “cool 70s inspired funky but classic lamp” ?
On Friday I will be powering up a few different AI platforms and utilizing AI features on various eCommerce sites for research purposes. I want to see how helpful they really are, how well they are handling the Black Friday pressure, and most importantly how usable are they? Can’t wait to come back with my report next week.
☕ Interesting Opinion Pieces
// Who needs an AI doppelganger?
John Herrman of New York Magazine wrote about Meta’s AI doppelgangers and it got me thinking about what constitutes an AI as ridiculous? Who determines the line between giving the user what they don’t know they need and making up dumb ideas?
The AI doppelgangers Meta introduced at the beginning of the year are nothing short of impressive. However, it definitely goes into those sensitive AI waters that most people have been worried about. How do we make sure such technology doesn’t get into the wrong hands and how do we protect ourselves from having our likeness turned into an AI doppelganger without our consent?
On the other hand, the AI chat integration into Meta’s messages is definitely something I can see evolving into a very usable tool in the future. It seems that the current version is still very robotic, as expected. You can’t expect an automated bot that’s pretending to be you to emulate your style of writing, personality, and overall human characteristics. However, I’m excited to see how this feature evolves and how it will be integrated in our everyday workflows in a few years. Imagine Microsoft Teams implementing a feature like this? Maybe then we’ll be able to avoid those annoying “Hey” messages that don’t follow up with anything else.
⚡ News You Shouldn’t Miss
// Perplexity releases shopping assistant tools utilizing AI explainability
Just in time for holiday shopping and Black Friday, Perplexity launched “Buy with Pro” that offers product recommendations and “Snap to Shop” visual search that can help you find the product you are looking for. It’s opening new doors for companies to market their products and most likely going to be a key player in this new era of shopping and marketing.
// Amazon invests $4 billion in Anthropic
Amazon is the latest company to hit the gas pedal in the AI race by committing to investing antoher $4 billion in what’s being dubbed the “responsible” player in AI, Anthropic. What this means for the future of GenAI and how will all these GenAI companies start to differentiate themselves, only time will tell.
// Microsoft turns 50 and is more relevant than ever
As someone who knew how to install a video game on Windows 95 before even knowing how to write her name, Microsoft has always been an integral part of my life. However, I was too young to be aware that in the late 2000s, Microsoft wasn’t that cool anymore. This Wired article takes a look at Microsoft’s renaissance and really makes 50s look like the new 20s.
Love & Hate Mail
All types of tantrums welcome at hello@jelenacolak.com.
"Tech brat" has such a defiant charm. It's like a younger sibling who's just discoverd sarcasm and insists they're smarter than you (and they might be right).
I love how you poke at the absurdities of AI while clearly being excited about its possibilities.
Honestly, if your newsletter were a person, I’d want to grab coffee with them, just to see where the conversation zigzags next.