Dive Club 🤿 Sam Stephenson - The journey of designing an AI product
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Mar 28, 2025 
Sam Stephenson is the co-founder and designer of Granola, a beloved AI-powered note-taking app. He shares insights into navigating the idea maze of AI product design. Sam discusses the importance of understanding user behavior and reveals the limitations of current note-taking tools. He highlights Granola’s breakthrough interaction patterns and future product roadmap. Additionally, he dives into the challenges of prompt engineering and user onboarding, emphasizing the delicate balance between simplicity and functionality in creating user-centric AI tools.
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Early Exploration Trap
- Sam and Chris explored AI-powered note-taking apps and tools for thought.
- They realized the "beautiful system" approach was flawed and shifted to user interviews.
User Research
- Observe users' actual workflows instead of relying solely on their self-reporting.
- Ground conversations in real artifacts (like calendars) for more realistic insights.
Transcript Problem
- Meeting transcripts are too detailed and noisy to be truly useful.
- People want key takeaways and action items, not verbatim records.
