Category: Product Features

GPT: Opportunities and Risks for Product Teams
We convened a panel specifically for Product Teams to understand the potential in combining their own product offering with the capabilities of GPT and Generative AI.

In this video discussion, several industry experts participated in a panel discussion to share their insights and experiences with GPT AI technology in product development. These panelists offered valuable perspectives on both the opportunities and challenges presented by GPT AI, as well as practical advice for implementing this technology effectively.

With 2 veterans and 2 startups on the panel, we had a diverse range of views, each with their own unique background and expertise in product development and AI.

Some of the topics:
- How has GPT changed since we posted this meetup? ????
- Define ChatGPT, GPT and Generative-AI in terms of Apps
- What are some Product and Tech strategies to assess GPT in your product suite?
  - What will GPT commoditize?
  - How can my Product get a unique advantage?
  - Are the technical attacks known? (poisoning of training)
  - Marketing your Product
- Is SEO dead?
  - Beyond writing blogs and emails
  - What is the “new, new” marketing thing?
- Ethics:
  - How might your product overstep?
  - You can 100x content, fake news, deepfakes and spam – is that ever good?
  - Re-invent, re-deploy or Re-trench staff?
  - What new careers emerge from GPT?
https://youtu.be/_g7JXBDkmRw
The panel provided a comprehensive understanding of how GPT AI can be used across Product opportunities. Their collective knowledge and firsthand experiences helped to paint a realistic picture of the current state of GPT AI integration, as well as its potential for future growth and development.

By referencing the insights and experiences of these panelists, the article offers a well-rounded overview of GPT AI’s role in product development, giving readers the tools they need to make informed decisions about incorporating this cutting-edge technology into their own product teams’ workflows.

We referenced this slide from Australian startup Curious Thing that performs conversational AI in customer support applications. The point of the slide is for Product companies to be aware of where they are operating to make sure they have an offering that is unlikely to be commoditised.

The panel was:

Luke Metcalfe has been a data entrepreneur since 2002 and coder since the age of 5. He’s had two exits and consulted in data science to boards and founders, all the while remaining on the tools. His current project, Microburbs, is the largest and most diverse geo database in Australia, AI platform and useful suburb selection reference for property buyers. He has been aggressively integrating generative models and GPT into his startup since 2020.

Stephen Hardy is an Expert Partner in Advanced Analytics at Bain & Company, focusing on delivering AI solutions in the APAC region. Most recently he was CEO at Ambiata, a data science consultancy, and before that head of Data Platform Engineering at CSIRO’s Data61. Stephen has been working in the field of machine learning and AI for over 20 years, and has delivered solutions using Large Language Models into production into both small and large enterprises.

Claire Campbell is the Ventures Lead at Terem Joint Ventures, focused on building tech spin-outs in partnership with market leading businesses. Claire is currently building a venture on OpenAI. Claire’s background is in strategy and product with some of Australia’s largest ASX-listed businesses. She’s also a fellow and mentor of the Startmate network.

Shan Kulkarni is the Co-Founder & CEO of Nullify.ai, a new Australian cybersecurity/AI startup who recently closed a $1.1M pre-seed round led by OIF Ventures to build a bot that secures your codebase. Shan has previously lectured cybersecurity at UNSW and is passionate about the way the evolving AI landscape is changing cybersecurity products
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May 5, 2023
How product teams scale Mobile App quality (QA)
At the last Sydney Mobile Apps and Android Australia User Group Meetup we hosted some extremely smart product teams on an expert panel moderated by David Jones Founder and CEO Contextual. Our panel included expert Mobile App Quality Assurance engineers from Contextual, Deputy, and SafetyCulture sharing valuable knowledge and experience on scaling automated testing for mobile apps. Our panel also included Buildkite on the zoom session to discuss what real scaling means.

Its all in the video below.

Our expert panellists provided insights into current best practices in QA and QA automation for scaling mobile and web apps. They discussed topics such as manual vs. automated testing, BDD (Behavior-driven development) frameworks, CI/CD (Continuous integration, continuous delivery) frameworks, failed adoptions and Maestro’s UI Studio. Our panel also addressed issues such as Android device fragmentation, test automation challenges, release cadence, and best practices for release processes.

Join future meetups either virtually or in person here.

One of the key takeaways from the discussion is the importance of striking a balance between manual and automated testing. While automated testing can handle repetitive tasks and complex scenarios, human judgement and evaluation are still necessary for evaluating the user experience and ensuring quality. Our panellists also stressed the need for QA to be involved from the specification in a pair-testing process with developers.

Another significant point is the use of BDD frameworks to write automated tests in plain text using given methods. This enables anyone to write automated tests, regardless of their technical expertise. Additionally, the panelists discuss the challenges of test automation, such as soft vs. hard failures and the need to handle timeouts flexibly in situations where staging is lower speced than production for page performance.

Another highlight from the Meetup was the use of BDD frameworks to write automated tests in plain text using given methods. This enables anyone to write automated tests, regardless of their technical expertise.

Additionally, the panelists discussed the challenges of test automation, such as soft vs. hard failures and the need to handle timeouts flexibly in situations where staging is lower speced than production for page performance.

The panelists also addressed the challenges of high frequency release cadence to the app store and what happens prior, beta, testflight, feature flags cohorts, and test parties. They also explored the benefits and challenges of sharding or parallelizing tests and how Maestro appears a clear winner over Appium for massively parallel environments. The session concluded with a Q&A session which is near the end of the video shared on this page.

In summary, this video contains valuable insights into current best practices in QA and QA automation for scaling mobile and web apps. The panellists provided practical advice on topics such as manual vs. automated testing, BDD frameworks, CI/CD, test automation challenges, release cadence, and best practices for release processes. Their insights and experiences can be helpful for anyone involved in software development and testing, particularly those working with mobile apps.

To join the meetup either virtually or in person join here.
1. Scaling mobile app quality
2. QA Engineers
3. Automated testing
4. Manual vs. automated testing
5. BDD frameworks
6. CI/CD
7. Test automation challenges
8. Release cadence
9. Mobile app development process
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April 4, 2023
App Leader’s Tips and Popups

How is it that some apps nail user engagement? What looks so easy is the result of a lot of product measurement and fine tuning.

The reason why mobile tips, tooltips and guides work is because designers often hide features away to avoid clutter. What you can show on a sidebar (or top menu) in a Desktop App is often not best to show on mobile due to limited screen real-estate or differing layout.

Successful Apps always work by optimizing feature uptake. Successful Apps eventually add more features that need explanation – this post we have a look at what tips and guides some big players have been doing in 2021. (all of these screencaps are from just the last week or two).

Twitter

You could forgive the twitter team for sitting back, sipping on a Sightglass latte. Or perhaps you imagine them freaking out about Clubhouse and rushing to launch Twitter Spaces. But some part of the team are quietly optimizing user’s understanding of how the app works.

As you can see here, they are testing 2 tips at once. I didn’t think about the bookmark idea before, so kudos to them.

Google Calendar

A nice new feature would not be known by users unless accompanied by a Feature Announcement – the call-to-action “Go to settings” is a perfect example of giving the user the option to uptake that feature. You can do this easily with Contextual and you can measure the uptake.

eBay

eBay benefit if they can encourage us to save our searches. You know you will get inApp reminders, price-drops, emails all based on your stated-interest.

A latte sipping product manager might think that the “❤️ Save this search” is prominent enough but kudos to this product manager for leaving nothing to chance.

Calendly

Calendly may not be as big as the other Goliath’s but you can see Feature Announcements are a great way to deepen the usage of the product. Regardless of whether its mobile apps or mobile web, tips can help users comprehend all the capabilities of your App. As I mentioned in the starting paragraphs: in mobile much is hidden and that is exactly why tips, tours, guides are even more powerful – targeted to right-user-right-time.

March 23, 2021
When Mobile Carousels make sense
With Contextual you can create carousels without coding. But readers will know that I’m not a huge fan. I AM a huge fan of JTBD (Jobs-to-be-done) and to me carousels seemed to stand between the user and their job.

So thats not a good thing.

Elsewhere in a banking app, I was positive on using carousels for feature discovery. In this post, we look at how the world of cryptocurrencies is trying to become easier to consumers. Specifically why carousels help explain a new concept from a crypto project called Argent.

In the world of crypto, post-Mount-Gox, the familiar catch cry is “not your keys, not your coins”.

That won’t make sense to most people and hence why crypto is largely for either for geeks or the very committed. Like all movements, you have wearly adopters and eventually the movement “crosses the chasm”. The diagram below was made famous by Geoffrey Moore in his book of the same name.

Briefly:

1) when we store our cash in a bank account, the bank is the custodian – they hold the keys.

2) in the crypto world:
1. you can choose to have an exchange (CEX) or some other entity (paypal, square, soon Robinhood) hold your keys but you need to make a leap of faith to trust them like a bank.
2. you take responsibility for your own coin and tokens via “wallets” (paper, cold and hot).
If you are confused, no problem, this is because we are still on the RED left hand-side of the curve below.

Argent want to help change that.

Credit: slidemodel.com

Argent have a radical and new way of avoiding the custodial role by adding “Guardians” – but for a new user to understand: it does need education, and it does need people to collaborate. I’ll let them explain.

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This is a complex new area for consumers and this use of Carousels by Argent is not interferring with the JTBD, but actually bootstrapping the consumers understanding. I think they’ve done a good job. They were probably tempted to use a video explainer, but this keeps the user inApp, contextual and ready to proceed.

BTW, they did have an introductory Carousel which I was less excited about. I’ve included it here for completeness.

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March 19, 2021
How one Bank App uses Feature Announcements
Contextual was designed for Apps to make onboarding, education and Feature Discovery simple and code-less. Most commonly the use of Tips and Tours to nudge a user into action is a great user engagement approach.

But what happens when you are rolling out a major feature?
- Perhaps tips of a popup are a good introduction but not impactful enough.
- A Home Screen carousel is just too interrupting to the user flow and has low conversion rate.
Try a Feature Carousel

St George Bank is a major bank and they made a significant investment across their ATM machine network to support “Cardless Cash”. If you’ve not heard of Cardless Cash its a major improvement to getting money easily for your wallet – the benefits are:
1. Card Security – you don’t need to pull your card out and put it in the machine, where you might forget it. Risk of “skimming” is also eliminated.
2. PIN Security – you don’t need to expose your PIN where someone may spy it.
3. Fast – its pretty quick to get the cash out, just a few keystrokes at the terminal.
4. Money for others – A parent can send the access code to a child who can then get cash for an emergency.
The challenge is that whilst a huge rollout investment is made, getting customers to use this feature hits the human fear, uncertainty, doubt and plain laziness.

So the Product Management team at St George obviously wanted to give the new capability the best chance of uptake and embedded a Feature Carousel into the App. So if a user explores this section of the App for the first time, they get a richer walk-through that is eye-popping and more persuasive than just a tip. Here is the introduction.

There is a couple of interesting things to observe:
1. They decided to reduce the number of swipes by putting 2 steps on each page. I don’t know if this helps with memory retention of activation – but its an interesting experiment. With Contextual, you could run an A/B split to see what gets better conversion.
2. Short Sharp Action-oriented text. Notice how there is no waffle and Verbs like “Get”, “Find”, “Withdraw” get task focussed.
3. The explanation is contextual and the user can immediately perform the task.
October 31, 2020