iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Rich Holmes @richeholmes.bsky.social · 17/05/2025

Google unveiled its new Material Design Expressive system this week. The new version of Material Design uses bold, expressive colors including pinks, purples and oranges, new physics for UI interactions and an expansive new library of shapes.

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Rich Holmes @richeholmes.bsky.social · 06/05/2025

Multi-agent architectures involve multiple AI agents working collaboratively, each specializing in specific tasks, to solve complex problems more efficiently than a single AI agent. Here’s a snapshot of how companies are using them in the real world:

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Rich Holmes @richeholmes.bsky.social · 06/05/2025

This is the new big tech flex...

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Rich Holmes @richeholmes.bsky.social · 05/05/2025

If you buy into the hype, the way users make payments could be about to change forever. This week, Mastercard revealed its new AI agent payment feature called Agent Pay, Visa announced a full AI agent payment framework and PayPal unveiled an entire new product stack for agentic payments

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Rich Holmes @richeholmes.bsky.social · 05/05/2025

Contractors are losing their jobs to Al at DuoLingo. It's not difficult to see why. Here's a comparison of the time it took to complete 100 vs 150 courses with and without AI:

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Rich Holmes @richeholmes.bsky.social · 02/05/2025

This week, I explore the latest predictions from Meta’s CTO about the impact of AI, a new tool that will transform how you do presentations and a huge study from KPMG which reveals how we’re really using AI at work - with some surprising results. departmentofproduct.substack.com/p/briefing-d...

departmentofproduct.substack.com

Briefing: DuoLingo goes AI-first and Meta’s CTO predicts the end of Apps

Plus, how to turn your users into a community, Lyft’s new AI Assistant, new MCP servers

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Rich Holmes @richeholmes.bsky.social · 29/04/2025

I hope this means we’ll finally be able to delete the circle that haunts me across every Meta app.

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Rich Holmes @richeholmes.bsky.social · 28/04/2025

In this week’s YouTube version of the weekly briefing, I take a look at Perplexity’s new Voice Assistant on iOS. www.youtube.com/watch?v=0hAK...

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Perplexity vs Siri, Grok gets eyes and Google declares the start of the Era of AI Experience.

YouTube video by Department of Product

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Rich Holmes @richeholmes.bsky.social · 28/04/2025

Google’s experiments with new Search UX seems to be paying off. According to their latest earnings report: - Circle to Search usage is up 40% in the current quarter - AI Mode queries are twice as long as traditional Search queries - Visual searches with Lens is up five billion since October

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Rich Holmes @richeholmes.bsky.social · 25/04/2025

With many vibe coders finding out the hard way about the importance of security, Lovable has announced a new “Security Scan” feature that highlights an potential vulnerabilities in your app before its shipped. Let’s see if this puts a stop to some of the horror stories we’ve read about lately…

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Rich Holmes @richeholmes.bsky.social · 25/04/2025

A new research paper from Google suggests that the “Era of Experience” is upon us. The researchers suggest that AI has evolved from the simulation era where it played games like chess and the era of human data where it consumed human data for training purposes to now enter the era of experience.

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Rich Holmes @richeholmes.bsky.social · 22/04/2025

Healthy living, personalised kids stories, image generation and explaining “legalese” are some of the fastest growing generative AI use cases. It’s becoming strangely essential for tech companies to keep on top of this to understand how AI is cannibalising their value proposition.

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Rich Holmes @richeholmes.bsky.social · 22/04/2025

In this week's YouTube version of the weekly Briefing, I explore the rumors around ChatGPT's social network and new data that shows how we really use AI. www.youtube.com/watch?v=YReF...

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A ChatGPT Social Network? Claude gets a new research tool, Netflix's new AI superpower and more...

YouTube video by Department of Product

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Rich Holmes @richeholmes.bsky.social · 22/04/2025

Using AI at work is now mandatory in some companies. In this week’s Knowledge Series, I explore a new set of mini apps you can build to use at work including:

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Rich Holmes @richeholmes.bsky.social · 16/04/2025

I've been playing around with Notion's new Mail product for the past few weeks. It's super clean and easy to use but the biggest drawback for me is that it looks and functions far too much like Notion's core product that it's actually a little bit confusing.

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Rich Holmes @richeholmes.bsky.social · 14/04/2025

Google is winning right now. One of their new announcements at Cloud was their “Idea Generation Agent”. Here’s how it works:

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Rich Holmes @richeholmes.bsky.social · 14/04/2025

YouTube is considering adding a new feature that will limit the amount of doomscrolling users can do on Shorts every day. Why not just not build these brain-rotting features in the first place?

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Rich Holmes @richeholmes.bsky.social · 04/04/2025

I love this new application of AI from the Kindle product team. So often I roll my eyes when I see a new “AI-powered” feature that adds little to the UX that’s clearly designed to be a box checking exercise but I can imagine this being super useful.

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Rich Holmes @richeholmes.bsky.social · 04/04/2025

YouTube could now be worth up to $550 billion - representing 30% of the company’s parent company, Alphabet. Its revenue may soon surpass Disney.

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Rich Holmes @richeholmes.bsky.social · 03/04/2025

Google’s NotebookLM is continuing to ship new features. This week, it rolled out a new Mind Maps feature that’s perfect for scenarios where you want to visualise your thinking or technical concepts / processes you want to understand in more detail.

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Rich Holmes @richeholmes.bsky.social · 03/04/2025

If you need a quick update on all the important AI, tech and product news this week, here's my latest product briefing: www.youtube.com/watch?v=kk4t...

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Amazon's new Nova Act AI model, Snap's UX Problem, Deel vs Rippling "spy" speaks out and more...

YouTube video by Department of Product

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Rich Holmes @richeholmes.bsky.social · 02/04/2025

Integrating an AI Assistant into your product doesn’t necessarily mean just slapping an AI chatbot onto it. In this example, I clone Shopify’s product editor to show how you can use “vibe coding” to build an AI Assistant that works as a contextual helper.

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Rich Holmes @richeholmes.bsky.social · 31/03/2025

OpenAI’s CEO Sam Altman has confirmed that it is now supporting the new protocol that everyone’s talking about: MCP. In this week’s Knowledge Series, I explore the essentials worth knowing from a non-engineer’s perspective. departmentofproduct.substack.com/p/mcp-explai...

departmentofproduct.substack.com

MCP Explained: A simple guide for product teams

🧠 Knowledge Series 66: Everything you need to know about this new protocol that everyone’s talking about

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Rich Holmes @richeholmes.bsky.social · 30/03/2025

This is an interesting take on AI and the future of software engineering. Graphite is an AI code starting that positions itself as a tool to review but not write code.

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Rich Holmes @richeholmes.bsky.social · 30/03/2025

Notifications aren’t just for mobile apps any more. Over 90% of the companies featured in the latest DoP Deep Dive now also use browser notifications.

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Rich Holmes @richeholmes.bsky.social · 30/03/2025

According to new research cited in the WSJ, just 6% of execs say their company is using AI agents. For all the hype, the reality is a little disappointing so far. But some companies have managed to ship AI agent capabilities. Here’s a snapshot of some featured in the WSJ:

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Rich Holmes @richeholmes.bsky.social · 28/03/2025

Using ChatGPT too much can create an unhealthy emotional dependency. A study commissioned by OpenAI and MIT shows that “power users” are most at risk of emotional dependency - particularly when they use voice mode.

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Rich Holmes @richeholmes.bsky.social · 26/03/2025

Apple recently gave us a masterclass in how not to design notifications with the rollout of Apple Intelligence. In this Deep Dive, I explore how other companies have designed their notification UX: departmentofproduct.substack.com/p/deep-the-u...

departmentofproduct.substack.com

Deep: The UX of notifications

How top companies like YouTube, Figma, Linear, Notion and more are designing their notifications. Key trends and inspiration for your product.

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Rich Holmes @richeholmes.bsky.social · 26/03/2025

This Docusign clone was “vibe coded” into existence by a Stripe product manager. It covers pretty much the bare essential use cases you might use Docusign for. spryngtime.com

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Rich Holmes @richeholmes.bsky.social · 25/03/2025

You can teach yourself anything with Gemini's new Canvas. Here's some ideas on how you can use it to learn about APIs: www.youtube.com/watch?v=OeYh...

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How to Teach Yourself APIs (and anything else) Using Google's New Gemini Canvas: Step-by-Step Guide

YouTube video by Department of Product

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Rich Holmes @richeholmes.bsky.social · 23/03/2025

It's getting easier to fill AI-related roles. According to a recent State of AI McKinsey study, fewer respondents reported difficulties in recruiting for these positions compared to previous years.

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Rich Holmes @richeholmes.bsky.social · 20/03/2025

What is the point of VR? Meta dominates the market but the market is dying. Shipments dropped 12% YoY, marking their third successive year of declines.

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Rich Holmes @richeholmes.bsky.social · 19/03/2025

The Rippling vs Deel honeypot operation is wild

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Rich Holmes @richeholmes.bsky.social · 19/03/2025

If you can’t decide who should speak at the next company all-hands or demo, this little presenter app might help. You add your team names and spin the wheel to decide who speaks.

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Rich Holmes @richeholmes.bsky.social · 19/03/2025

AI traffic is converting at a lower rate than traditional traffic. A new study has found that users from AI traffic are 9% less likely to convert compared to other sources of traffic. The gap is narrowing, though.

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Rich Holmes @richeholmes.bsky.social · 18/03/2025

I tested Gemini 2.0 Flash's image editing capabilities. Does it live up to the hype? www.youtube.com/watch?v=vrvM...

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Testing Google's Gemini 2.0 Flash: Does It Live Up to the Hype?

YouTube video by Department of Product

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Rich Holmes @richeholmes.bsky.social · 17/03/2025

Finally, AI is starting to behave like real engineers… 😅

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Rich Holmes @richeholmes.bsky.social · 17/03/2025

Since it’s easier than ever to build simple apps, here’s an OKR tracker that lets you set OKRs and track your team’s weekly goals against them:

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Rich Holmes @richeholmes.bsky.social · 16/03/2025

“Vibe coding” is much easier when you have a foundational understanding of front end technologies. Here’s a starter guide from the Knowledge Series to help non-technical PMs, designers and professionals get up to speed quickly: Front end technologies explained:

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Rich Holmes @richeholmes.bsky.social · 16/03/2025

How to understand any complex topic using AI. It’s now possible to teach yourself to understand anything using AI. Here’s a few techniques I like to use:

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Rich Holmes @richeholmes.bsky.social · 15/03/2025

This is something I hadn’t really considered before. If software engineering no longer involves hand writing code and instead evolves into something akin to an AI agent PM, many engineers simply won’t want to do it. Here’s what a big tech engineer said about why he quit his job last month:

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Rich Holmes @richeholmes.bsky.social · 15/03/2025

Remember DALL-E? This time last year, it was the world’s leading image generation model. It’s dropped ~80% in usage on Poe since then. The speed of AI is brutal.

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Rich Holmes @richeholmes.bsky.social · 13/03/2025

Google is adding an “Add to calendar” button in Gmail powered by Gemini. This is a far more helpful use case than email summarization! Great to see the product teams working on this are taking some time to think about what might be valuable,rather than just adding Gemini everywhere for no reason.

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