The onboarding shift you should be designing for
The human-AI product challenge
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Most of us are working alongside AI assistants now. In plenty of workflows, they decide and execute with little involvement from us. This has a direct impact on the way we should be building products.
Many products are no longer designed solely for humans. They’re built for AI systems, or for a human-AI pair operating together. And that shows up immediately in onboarding.
Traditional onboarding assumes a person at the center, optimizing for curiosity and low-friction discovery. But when an AI agent is the primary user, there may be no search step to win. Instead of SEO, teams are thinking about AI engine optimization. The “aha” moment is programmatic instead of emotional.
The human-AI pair is even more interesting. What should the AI handle autonomously, and where does the human stay accountable?
If you’re building for AI agents or human-AI pairs, I’m curious what’s changed in your onboarding strategy. Comment on Substack or reply to this email, I’d love to compare notes.
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On February 18 (virtual): How Top B2B PMs Secure Foothold Customers to Drive Product Success. Get your ticket.
On February 26 in San Francisco: LLM Decisions That Define Product Leaders, with Amazon Artificial General Intelligence VP Vishal Sharma. Apply for your invitation.
Check out some of our recent content from top voices in the product space.
Building an Ownership Mindset: How PMs Drive Business Impact
How Top B2B Product Teams Decide What to Build in Agentic AI
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