Read the original at The Looking Glass ↗lg.substack.com · subscriber post
By Julie Zhuo · lg.substack.com · @joulee on X · LinkedIn
Julie Zhuo's paid essay looks at playful, seemingly pointless things people build with AI when no one is tracking the hours or demanding a business case, such as an unusual bird display, a talking phone, and a game built around family members. The core argument is that this kind of exploratory, low-stakes making is valuable for product people because it reveals what delights and surprises users. The piece treats hobby experimentation as a source of taste and intuition that carries back into serious product work.
Subscriber post — summary only01Key takeaways
- Low-stakes personal projects are a useful way to build intuition about what AI can actually do.
- Making things without a business metric can surface delight that roadmap-driven work often misses.
- Playful experiments sharpen taste, which transfers back into how you judge product quality.
- Removing the pressure to justify time spent can lead to more original ideas.
“Out of all the lives that have been lived throughout history, if you drew one at random, who would you be?”Julie Zhuo · The Looking Glass
Summary and takeaways written by PM Atlas; quotes are short excerpts. © the original author.