Fantasy Hike app review, Humane AI pin & articles you should read...

Hi folks, It’s me, your product queen here to share thoughts that you probably didn’t ask for!

My newsletter has been a real means to take a step back & understand the tech industry more regularly. We can often get lost in the day-to-day of our jobs and in a profession as evolving as tech, carving time out to think about trends, technical advancements & products can be tough.

I also wanted to thank the awesome people that have mentioned, responded & fed back they have read my newsletter. I really appreciate it <3

For my new subscribers:

My biggest passion is actually just to build something people love or at least get to be part of the bigger journey. With great products, come incredible people who make it happen & I am on my way to become an accredited people/career coach to support more people to do great things. More on that in the coming months!

1. So what’s the product goss this week?

Humane AI pin dead hype…

Two former Apple execs launched an ai wearable device, a small pin/brooch that answers questions. More on that here

My main comment here is, it’s weird isn’t it? and ugly. I think if smartphones didn’t exist, it might have been a better idea. It projects a screen on your hand. There is something in there around hardware evolving in this new era.

Intercom vs Zendesk battles on the ai front…

Without continuously talking about ai too much all the time (but it is all the rage right now), I came across Intercom moving into the ai space and rightly so given that some of the best use cases are in the service space.

Intercom & Zendesk have both launched ai customer service agents, workflow automation & copilots. (Are you even ‘doing ai’ if you aren’t jamming a copilot somewhere though?)

Both of these tools are customer service pros. What ai in customer service does, is create higher value, better teams because the bulk of it can be managed by ai agents & customers get attended to faster and service staff focus on more complicated issues.

From a people point of view, this is where jobs will also get affected. It might also require human service agents to have better prompt engineering skills to find resources in Gen ai tools.

Meta advances the game with Llama 3…

Firstly, let’s all clap at Zucks PR team for pimping him out to be ai era ready…

So Llama 3 is the ChatGPT equivalent, slotting into Meta products. Llama 3 uses a mix of internet data & made up ai generated data, so ai is being used to build ai. I think the biggest take from all of this for you guys is the speed and pace tech giants are competing at to get to the forefront of the race. It means that a new generation of young people will see this world as a norm, which means the race to build products & revolutionise search experiences is pretty much now. So getonit.

2. A product I procrastinated with this week…

This week, I’ve gone back to testing an app product and as summer is coming, my fitness, beach body goals have kicked in. As someone who loves sport & competitive activities vs sticking pins in my eyes at the gym, I came across another hyped app, Fantasy Hike. Love gamified app products.

Onboarding

I loved the weird story like I was about to play Lord of The Rings and join a gaming world. It probably takes a certain type of person to really get into something like this tbf. It integrates with your Apple Health data so if you’re not an IOS user, you might not be able to use this.

User experience

Your teeny little avatar travels in fantasy land as you do more steps. It also has these cool characters like Hairyfoot Potter & Alice Wonderfoot (hilarious). The competitive element is great & gets you to enjoy being more active if it’s something you struggle with.

I think the design can be improved. It isn’t great or accessible and could be much better in line with the concept actually being pretty great.

Monetisation

So as with anything, money needs to sustain a product. The Premium tiers gives you more distances to unlock, share with friends & add more avatars. £12.99 for 12 months, £1.99 a month or a bolt on £3.99 for more distance in the day. Relatively affordable which is great. I really hate the UX though so that would stop me for paying for it.

Would I use it long term?

I will try this out for the next month to see if it helps my steps & walking. It’s also prompted me to find something better as I seem to like the gaming/ competitiveness which might push me to walk more. (There are things like Strava & your usual apps I know but not as fun conceptually as this). I will let you know how I get on!

3. Articles that have been pretty 🔥 …

A new section for you folks, some product links to great articles that are a decent read.

4. Product gems that made me howl…

and what I’m I up too? apart from writing and waffling in this newsletter?…

Flutter updates:

I’m building a Roll Dice app. I also changed courses as the original one was pretty outdated & I prefer Visual Studio Code to build in. Look forward to sharing it!

I’m giving myself 3 months to complete this & build an idea I have in mind. Here’s for accountability right here.

Newsletter updates:

I’ve also caught up with 2 product people and a founder to run some great tests & interviews with. These will be newsletter collabs coming soon!

& that’s all folks! Please share this to a friend or to all your friends, anyone! & if you haven’t subscribed yet, then like my fave ASOS push notification for when an item is back in stock, GO GO GO! Subscribe & until next time <3…

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