Help the product understand the person.
Ren was a focused 90-day engagement with a founder and small team. The AI could give useful feedback, but the experience did not always know enough about the person, their role, or the history of the relationship. I helped the team decide what the product needed to understand, then carried that into onboarding, profiles, manager views, and shared context across web and Slack.
The feedback changed when the product knew more.
Customer conversations and firsthand use showed where the experience fell short. Ren needed clearer information about each person and a way to carry that context from one interaction to the next. I worked with the founder and AI engineer to make that context part of the product.
Start with the person. Carry the context forward.
Bring the core idea forward
Use Ren’s accountability model as the test for new features, rather than letting each promising idea pull the product in a different direction.
Ask better questions at the start
Ship an onboarding profile that captured role, reporting lines, responsibilities, and preferences so the product could begin with a more useful understanding of the person.
Carry context across web and Slack
Work with Ren’s AI engineer so role, preferences, and relationship history could inform the experience across both surfaces, then hand forward company context and workplace integrations.
“A rare mix of product judgment, operating clarity, AI fluency, and hands-on execution.”Jonathan Raymond
Founder & CEO
“His design skills and eye for simple and robust process have been extremely helpful.”Dane Groeneveld
CEO & Founder
the decision
A thinking tool for a team moving quickly.
Choose a feature idea. Anchor asks whether it strengthens Ren’s core coaching experience before momentum makes the decision for the team.
Role-aware onboarding gives the coaching experience the context it needs.
When making gets easier, deciding what deserves to exist becomes more important.
The team could explore and ship ideas quickly. The harder work was deciding which ideas strengthened the coaching experience and which ones only made the product busier.
Read the related thinking →