The 3 BENEFITS of AI Products

Consider this: you have a novel, exciting idea on how to use AI to build a new product (or a new feature into an existing product). How do you decide if the idea is worth investing in? Or if the idea would deliver the expected benefits?

The 3 Benefits of AI Products guide the evaluation and decision making for PMs. If you are building an AI Product or AI-powered features, use the Accelerate-Expand-Simplify dimensions to evaluate your ideas.

Every valuable AI feature delivers user benefits through at least one of these three dimensions. If an idea doesn’t make something faster, enable something new, or make something simpler for your users, what value is it providing?
Features that score high on at least one dimension deliver clear user value. Features that score low on all three are probably solving the wrong problem – or no problem at all.

Accelerate

Help users complete existing tasks faster or at greater scale

• Can users accomplish their goals in less time?
• Can they handle more volume with the same effort?
• Does this remove bottlenecks or waiting periods?

Expand

Enable users to do something they couldn’t do before

• Does this unlock new capabilities or possibilities?
• Can users now accomplish goals that were previously impossible or impractical?
• Does this create new value that didn’t exist?

Simplify

Make something complex more accessible or easier to use

• Can users now do something without specialized knowledge or tools?
• Does this reduce cognitive load, steps, or required expertise?
• Does this streamline the production process to deliver higher quality?

Evaluate Your Product Idea

To evaluate your AI Product idea across the 3 Dimensions, use the “wheel” below:

Scoring guide

Score your product idea on each question, trying to answer honestly. Use the following guide:

• 0: No benefit in this dimension
• 1-2: Marginal benefit
• 3: Moderate benefit (noticeable improvement)
• 4-5: Strong benefit (significant improvement) or Transformative benefit (game-changing)

If your idea does not provide any strong benefit across the three dimensions, it may not be worth pursuing any further. When evaluating your AI Product idea across the 3 Dimensions, try to answer the questions honestly: no idea should (or can) deliver all benefits fully. To minimize bias, it helps to impose constraints on your evaluation as a forcing mechanism: for any idea, you can have a maximum of three “Fives”, and a maximum of three “Fours”. Try to have “Zeros” and “Ones” too.

Strive for a dynamic range of answers and for objectivity: What are the main benefits we would get, compared to marginal benefits? Is there anything that jumps out?

Use Cases

Consider the following use cases and see application of the 3 Dimensions for each one of them:

AI Drives Innovation in Retail at GAP

Duolingo’s AI-Powered Language Learning Revolution

BMW’s AI-Powered Manufacturing Transformation

Read more

I write a weekly series of articles on AI and Product Management on my Substack channel. I write about the benefits of AI and how to measure value in AI products.

Understanding the benefits of AI: https://sparkengine.substack.com/p/understanding-the-benefits-of-ai

Download the Template

You can download the wheel of the 3 Dimensions of AI Products and use it to evaluate your own AI Product.