Three months ago, we had a backlog full of AI features. Auto-generated mood summaries. Predictive journaling prompts. Smart scheduling for reflection sessions. Voice tone analysis. The works.
Every feature demo'd beautifully. Our team was excited. Investors loved the roadmap.
Last quarter we had an AI feature that could predict, with surprising accuracy, when a user was about to stop using the app. It would send a perfectly timed push notification with a personalized prompt right before they were likely to drop off.
Engagement metrics looked incredible. Open rates were 3x our average. Session frequency went up.
There's a pattern in AI products right now that worries me: the goal is to make AI the relationship.
AI friends. AI therapists. AI partners. The pitch is always the same humans are complicated, AI is easy. No judgment, available 24/7, infinitely patient.
As one year comes to an end and a new one begins, I find myself pausing to reflect. If you had the chance to say something to your future self to the version of you in 2025 and 2026, what would it be?
Looking back, I want to thank myself for how much I pushed through this past year:
For finding a job I genuinely value, even after going through a long period of stress and fear of unemployment
For speaking up and sharing my own perspectives at work
For choosing action over just talking
For walking away from toxic and unnecessary work relationships
For daring to learn new things outside my original field of study
For letting go of some comforts and entertainment to focus more on my health
A few months ago, we noticed something in our data that most product teams would panic about: a group of users who had been highly active for weeks suddenly went quiet. No crashes. No angry support tickets. They just stopped showing up.
The instinct was to win them back. Send a re-engagement email. Offer a new feature. Maybe a push notification saying "We miss you!"
In the past, my thoughts were often stuck in small, daily things like: Is there any drama on Facebook today? Did anyone like my story? Did my crush drop any hints? Is anyone asking me out today? Does my best friend have new stories to tell me?
Looking back, I can t help but laugh at myself. None of these thoughts really helped me grow, yet they always gave me that emotional, butterfly-in-the-stomach feeling.
Everything started to change when I entered a phase of I don t even know who I am. And that s when I began searching for real answers.
Most product teams run surveys. We did too. We'd ask things like "What features would you like to see?" or "How would you rate your experience?" And we'd get perfectly reasonable, perfectly useless answers.
The turning point for Murror came when we stopped designing around what people said they wanted and started paying attention to what they were avoiding.
Before AI, I always thought I would NEVER learn how to code. I genuinely admired technical people, watching them code felt like watching magic. I remember wishing that maybe one day, I could do something like that too.
I ve never had any formal education in programming, and I had zero experience building apps. But with AI, I was able to start from just an idea and slowly figure things out on my own experimenting, setting things up, and eventually creating my first interface that I could actually interact with.
It honestly felt magical. It made me realize how fast the world is changing. Coding is no longer something completely out of reach. AI is making it possible for people like me to turn ideas in our heads into real, tangible drafts for the first time.
Whether you work remotely or on-site, and who you work with, may not be the most important thing. What really matters is how you handle the situation.
Personally, I find myself quite flexible with both on-site and remote work. But as an introvert who isn t very strong at communication, I usually prefer working alone rather than in crowded environments and I tend to be more productive that way.
That said, I also realize that a lack of real human interaction can indirectly affect both the process and the final outcome of work.
