Data Bricklaying Diary

Jul 28, 2026 · Product Management

Don't Ask Users What They Want—Observe Work to Find Real AI Opportunities

This article argues that effective AI opportunity discovery requires shadowing real work to uncover friction points like repetitive information gathering and delayed exception detection, rather than asking users for feature requests, and introduces the AI Opportunity Card framework to evaluate and prioritize pilot projects based on stable evidence, human boundaries, and verifiable outcomes.