AI & Product and Design practices 2/3

Working better together: Communication, User Stories and Meetings / Workshops

Previously: Intro

01 Improve Your Communication

Achieve clarity and tailor communications better to your audience and goals.

AI can be a real game-changer for your communication, ensuring your messages are not only clear and correct but also perfectly tailored to different audiences and channels. It’s like having a communication expert on hand, helping you craft everything from casual Slack updates to formal emails and project summaries.

Imagine effortlessly transforming rough meeting notes into polished Slack updates for your team, a formal email for stakeholders, and a concise Notion update, all with just a few prompts. Let’s explore how AI can revolutionize your communication workflow.

Enhanced Writing Skills:

• Grammar and Style Correction: Gemini can review your written communication, suggesting improvements in grammar, punctuation, and style to ensure clarity and professionalism.
• Conciseness and Clarity: It can help you refine your writing, removing unnecessary jargon or complexity and ensuring your messages are easily understandable.
• Tone and Voice: Gemini can provide feedback on your writing’s tone and voice, helping you adapt it to different channels and audiences.

Tailoring Communications to Audiences:

• Channel-Specific Adaptation: Gemini can assist you in customising your communication for different channels like email, presentations, or social media, considering each channel’s unique characteristics.
• Audience-Specific Adaptation: It can help you tailor your language and messaging to resonate with specific audiences, considering factors like their knowledge level, interests, and preferences.

Help for Structure and Content:

• Ideas and Outlines: Gemini can generate ideas and outlines for different types of communication, helping you overcome writer’s block and structure your thoughts effectively.
• Templates and Examples: It can provide templates and examples of various communication formats.
• Content Expansion and Rewriting: Expand or rewrite existing content, adapting it for different purposes or audiences.
• Visual Representations and Infographics: Transform your ideas into captivating visuals. Simply describe your concept, provide context, and explore a variety of visualisation options — from infographics to charts and diagrams.

02 Faster and Better User Stories

Accelerate and Enhance Story Writing with AI

AI is a massive ally when it comes to writing clear, concise, and valuable user stories. It can help streamline your process and improve the quality of your stories in several ways:

• Consistency: Create and reuse templates with defined tone and voice to ensure a consistent style across all your user stories.
• Completeness: Include acceptance criteria and apply frameworks (like INVEST) to make sure your stories are well-defined and ready for development.
• Identify Blind Spots: AI can help surface potential issues or missing considerations that you might have overlooked, leading to more comprehensive stories.
• Prioritise Effectively: Identify the MVP and prioritise features based on value to ensure you’re focusing on the most impactful work first.
• Structure and Scope: Refine and structure your user stories for clarity and avoid scope creep by explicitly instructing the AI to not add any additional features or requirements.
• Apply Best Practices: AI can assist in applying industry best practices and suggesting improvements to your user stories.
• Accessibility: Ensure your user stories consider accessibility needs by explicitly prompting the AI to address this aspect.
• Reuse and Save: Maintain a repository of your AI-generated user stories for future reference and easy adaptation.

But remember: While AI is a powerful tool, always review the generated stories. Make sure they accurately reflect your requirements and don’t inadvertently introduce additional scope.

By leveraging AI and following these tips, you can significantly enhance the speed and quality of your user story-writing process. This allows your team to focus on delivering value to your users faster and more efficiently.

02 More effective Meetings and Workshops

Make the Most of Your Meetings and Workshops

AI can be your secret weapon for planning, executing, and following up on effective meetings and workshops. Let’s dive in:

Prepare Better Meetings:

• Suggest improved meeting formats: Get recommendations on the best format for your meeting depending on the situation and your goals, whether it’s a brainstorming session, a decision-making meeting, or a progress update.
• Prepare meeting content and pre-reads: Have AI help you craft agendas, discussion points, and pre-read materials to ensure everyone comes prepared.
• Craft clear meeting descriptions and goals: Get assistance in writing concise and informative meeting descriptions that clearly outline the purpose and desired outcomes.

Organise Better Workshops:

• Suggest suitable workshop techniques and structures: Get recommendations on the best workshop formats and activities based on your audience and objectives.
• Design engaging activities: Tailor activities to various audiences, whether online or using Miro boards, with AI’s help.
• Receive recommendations from proven frameworks: Leverage AI’s knowledge of established workshop frameworks to enhance your design.
• Discover effective icebreaker activities: Get creative ideas to kick off your workshop and foster a collaborative atmosphere.
• Communicate workshop goals and activities clearly: Generate clear and concise descriptions of workshop goals and activities to set expectations.
• Generate workshop materials and content: Create materials and content for your workshops with AI’s support.

Follow Up from Meetings/Workshops:

• Generating Meeting Syntheses: Provide AI with meeting notes, transcripts, or recordings, even bulk pastes from Miro boards. Get concise summaries highlighting key points, action items, and thematic groupings tailored to specific stakeholders or goals.
• Adapting Communication for Different Channels and Stakeholders: Specify your target audience and communication channel, and let AI adjust the language, tone, and visuals accordingly.
• Generate action items: Extract tasks, deadlines, and notes from your meetings and workshops to ensure follow-through.

Example Prompts

• “Suggest an engaging icebreaker activity for a virtual workshop with a team of 10 designers.”
• “Generate a concise summary of this meeting transcript, highlighting key decisions and action items.”
• “Rewrite these meeting notes into a professional email for the client, focusing on project progress and next steps.”

By incorporating AI into your meeting and workshop processes, you’ll save time, boost engagement, and achieve better outcomes.

Next:
Better product process: Research, Synthesis, Ideate and Content Creation