Using AI tools to enhance the product lifecycle and achieve future readiness

Innovation with and for AI, Part 2: Using AI to enhance the product lifecycle 

In the ​previous chapter, we discussed the trends and changes in the industry that are being driven by recent developments in AI. In this part of the series, you’ll hear from SAP Fioneer’s Head of Innovation Design, Minsung Cho, who will describe how AI can fit into each step of your product lifecycle, from generating insights to designing, developing, marketing, and measuring metrics.

First up is idea generation, which often involves a combination of user and market research.

Generating ideas and insights 

Typically, generating ideas through user research takes a decent amount of time and effort because of the time it takes to coordinate and collect accurate and representative data. But now, Minsung explains, you can use a combination of synthetic and human data to discover useful ideas for your next product. Here are a few AI tools that can help you with the process.  

AI tools for enhanced user testing and research   

QoQo AI: With QoQo AI, you conduct user research and persona generation based on a prompt. It can save you lots of time in the early stages of research, and from a simple prompt like “App for managing payroll,” you receive a full journey and personas.  

GPT-4: You may already use GPT in your daily life, especially when you’re conducting user and market research, but OpenAI is just the start. If you haven’t yet tried other AI research tools, ones like Perplexity can help you consolidate your sources and explore the citations behind your AI-generated insights.  

AI can also simulate scenarios based on market changes, helping businesses to plan for the future and navigate uncertain conditions. This skill is especially relevant in today’s rapidly shifting business and product environment and translates well into designing and prototyping future-proof products.  

Designing and prototyping products  

If you currently design products to reach specific target groups, you’ll soon be able to design hyper-personalized products for individuals. You might even be able to automate wireframing and prototyping almost entirely. If you’re curious, try the following tools.  

AI tools for simple AI wireframing and prototyping

Midjourney: As you probably know, you can use Midjourney to create multiple prototypes solely based on text prompts. The same goes for DALL-E. Both of these options shorten the time and effort required since you generate the first wireframe or prototypes from an unstructured initial version of your idea. 

Uizard: Keep in mind that once you have a coherent and universal design system, your AI-based image creation becomes even more powerful. This tool creates wireframes and functional prototypes that follow your design system, creating branded design patterns.  

If you’re worried that design skills will no longer be needed, don’t be, Minsung adds. Designers will turn into strategists, ensuring user experience aligns and fits into product and business demand rather than focusing on delivering final outcomes or design deliverables. And as conversational design becomes more important, designers can upskill and take their talents in new directions.

Engineering products  

After design, you might find yourself spending time on countless rounds of iterative engineering and development. In fact, this is changing already. Now, with AI software engineers, you can streamline product development. Non-technical people are able to develop and build simple applications and products by writing code with prompts, and soon, in the future, AI will be able to deliver even more complex products.  

Fully autonomous AI software engineers  

Devin AI: As the world’s first fully autonomous AI software engineer, this tool made waves in the market when it was first released. You may not use AI engineers to create every new feature of a product, but it can help you augment and take some of the stress off of repetitive tasks.  

Microsoft Auto Dev: This AI engineering tool focuses on automating complex software engineering tasks rather than solo coding projects. You can use it for end-to-end development, all the way from brainstorming to deploying a product.  

What does this mean for software developers? “Humans will remain in the loop for now,” Minsung says. But for developers to stay relevant in the market, they must acquire new computer-human interaction capabilities and skills. 

Marketing and reaching target customers  

Once you’re finished with engineering your product, you typically launch marketing campaigns based on target personas. AI can help you personalize and customize your outreach to each user, similar to Spotify’s successful Yearly Wrapped. Below are a few new AI tools that can help you recombine and customize existing marketing content.  

Hyper-personalized AI content tools   

Jasper: This tool assists in content creation and marketing using AI, as it has a library of prompts and helpful blueprints that can help you create content without much effort. You can also tweak general marketing campaigns and materials to specific personas without having to start over from scratch.  

Undetectable AI: Undetectable rewrites content created with AI to make it seem more human and less “AI-generated.” This can help marketers humanize their content. It helps to make their outreach feel more genuine, even when it’s automated or augmented with artificial intelligence.  

How we measure KPIs more effectively  

Finally, in the last step in the cycle, consider shifting toward “smart KPIs”, or KPIs that incorporate AI. In their 2024 Artificial Intelligence and Business Strategy executive study, MIT and BCG concluded that businesses that used smart KPIs were able to “measure success better.” What’s more, 90% of leaders who used AI to rework their KPIs reported improved metrics.  

Based on this research, if you’re just starting out, you can use three types of smart KPIs: descriptive, predictive, and prescriptive. Smart descriptive KPIs help leaders understand gaps and important contextual factors. Smart predictive KPIs help leaders explore potential outcomes, allowing them to pursue opportunities or mitigate risks. And smart prescriptive KPIs provide actionable recommendations business leaders can take.  

Let’s review. This chapter explored how AI might help you generate insights, design, engineer, market, and measure metrics to improve outcomes for your business. Now it’s time to integrate them into your business and product workflow. No matter where you’re at on your AI journey, AI capabilities can help you stay competitive in the industry and lead your team to greater success. 

Watch the full AI innovation webinar

If you’d like to access the next part in the series, in which Marcus talks about the SAP Fioneer AI innovation process, you can watch the full webinar, or connect with us directly. We’d love to chat more about how AI tools can improve the product lifecycle and help your business.