The product framework I’m revisiting 10 years later
The 3 rules of great products
About 10 years ago, I came up with a product formula with three rules for building great products: The body rule (great products need to be beautiful), the mind rule (great products need to keep learning), and the spirit rule (great products need to give us meaning).
What’s changing with AI is how these show up in the products we build. Beauty used to mean usability. Today, products are becoming increasingly invisible. Instead of interfaces, we’re designing behaviors. That creates a new responsibility to decide when users need friction instead of seamlessness.
Learning used to depend on iteration speed. Now, iteration is almost instant. The opportunity shifts toward helping teams and users step back and choose what should be optimized.
Meaning used to live mostly in what people created with products, but AI participates directly in creation itself. Questions of ownership and consent are moving from policy conversations into product decisions. Designing for agency is becoming a defining leadership challenge.
If you’re seeing similar shifts in how your teams are building products, continue the conversation with me on LinkedIn.
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