In product development, designers consider user personas, journeys, needs and establish product/market fit when creating software or physical products. They don’t create general-use solutions that will have limited impact. However, most AI and GenAI initiatives aren’t considering the user journey and experience, instead delivering low-impact solutions that focus on task-level automation and one-time value. These solutions don’t leverage data and AI/GenAI to continuously innovate or deliver more value to users for higher performance and competitive advantage.
Taking a Data as a Product approach applies a unique framework to AI and GenAI projects, blending product management discipline, design thinking practices, and agile principles to bring to life various transformations: use cases become user journeys, user interfaces evolve into user experiences, data projects become data products, and IT business alignment shifts into measurable business operating models.
The Data as a Product approach helps organizations make the essential mindset, decision making, data operations and user experience shifts to set the stage for AI and GenAI success.
- Mindset – Data is not a tool, it’s the core asset and central focus around which systems and processes are designed. This asset must be vetted, governed and trusted to enable adoption in AI and GenAI experiences.
- Decision Making – Decisions go from reactive to automated and augmented. Organizations focus on creating a trusted data foundation that consistently embeds governed data into every system.
Data Operations – The focus is on how data is managed, ensuring systems are interoperable and data moves across all functions.
User Experience – Creating intuitive and easy-to-use interfaces increases usage and adoption, with data delivered in the preferred way that matches natural interactions.
With these shifts, organizations move from making point-in-time decisions with data to becoming data centric, where everything the organization does is informed and enhanced with data. With a Data as a Product approach – starting with the human first, business value chain next, and data opportunity third – the outcome is data-centric solutions where data, AI and GenAI are invisible to the user.
The resulting experience leads to a new and natural way of doing day-to-day roles more intuitively and easily. Achieving this state is possible when combining a strong data foundation with democratized AI and GenAI, embedding those elements into every process, product and experience.
Product designers focus on user personas, user journeys, jobs to be done, and user experiences, always keeping in mind what is most valuable for the user based on their needs. Applying a Data as a Product approach in the data world is transformative, putting the individual at the heart of the experience. This approach sets the right conditions across data operations and user experiences to drive AI and GenAI adoption and success throughout the organization.
