Reframing copilots as collaborators
A fast-growing productivity platform wanted to ship an AI copilot before competitors did. The brief: 'add AI'. The real opportunity was redefining what collaboration meant inside the product itself.
- Client
- Confidential — Series B SaaS
- Role
- Fractional Product Director
- Duration
- 6 months
- Year
- 2024
What we walked
into.
Early prototypes treated the AI as a chatbot bolted onto the sidebar. Usage was shallow, trust was low, and the team was burning runway shipping features nobody used twice.
How we got
there.
Ran 22 contextual interviews with power users to map where work actually breaks down.
Reframed the copilot from 'answer machine' to 'second brain for the team' — a shift that unlocked an entirely different surface area.
Designed a thin, opinionated MVP around three jobs-to-be-done instead of forty.
Built an evaluation harness so the team could ship weekly without regressing trust.
What shipped.
"The hardest work wasn't the model — it was convincing the team that saying no to features was the product strategy."