Microsoft CPO Aparna Chennapragada: Prompt is the new PRD, AI Agent reshapes the future of products

In a recent meeting with Lenny's Podcast of the interviews.Microsoft Chief Product Officer Aparna Chennapragada shared her insights into current AI-driven product development. She made it clear thatPrompt It is gradually replacing the traditional Product Requirements Document (PRD) as a new starting point for product building, while Natural Language Interaction (NLI) heralds a new paradigm for user experience design.

A New Start for Product Design in the Age of AI: Prompt as PRD

Aparna Chennapragada emphasizes that in today's world of rapid AI development, product development can get off on the right track if it lacks prototype validation and hands-on practice. She often conveys a core idea to her team, "Prompt It's the new PRD," meaning that when moving forward with a new project or feature, the team must provide an interactive prototype and a collection of prompts in addition to the traditional documentation. This approach allows for higher information density and significantly faster feedback iterations in product development, echoing the Demo an Memo principle.

She observes that the time from idea to first demo is shortening, but the time from demo to full product launch may be lengthening. This "uneven" pace means that the supply of ideas and prototypes has increased dramatically, raising the base level of the industry, but also raising the bar for "excellence". Product managers need to sift through the many possibilities and edit them, so "taste" and "editing ability" become critical, which undoubtedly raises the bar.

The Three Core Principles of Agents: Autonomy, Complexity, and Natural Interaction

Talking about current hotspots in AI Agent(math.) genusAparna Chennapragada argues that, despite the imaginative future, from the point of view of actual product buildsAgent It is still essentially a tool, with an underpinning based on probabilistic stochastic models rather than traditional deterministic programming models. She foresees the industry transitioning from the era of "apps" to the era of "assistants," with AI as a "tool" in the same way that it is a "tool" in the world. Copilot As always, they play a strong supporting role, and humans are still in the driver's seat.

However, as AI reasoning continues to improve, more tasks can be given to the AgentTheAparna Chennapragada commander-in-chief (military) Agent Defined as "independent software processes capable of performing tasks autonomously", they are no longer limited to trivial operations or tasks that require step-by-step instructions. Users simply set goals.Agent It can then be done autonomously.

She summarizes the importance of building excellent Agent The three core product design principles of the

1. Autonomy: It's a continuum, and the key is to be able to delegate what level and type of tasks to the AgentThe
2. Complexity::Agent The ability to handle more complex tasks, such as building a prototype or managing a meeting, rather than simple single-step operations such as summarizing a document or generating an image.
3. Natural Interaction: Interactions go beyond simple text chat and may include a conversation with the Agent Participate in meetings together, discuss in real time, or point out changes directly for more fluid and multimodal human-computer collaboration.

A workplace research-oriented Agent This is vividly illustrated by the example of the "Superpower", which can analyze participants' backgrounds and perspectives and assist in the development of communication strategies. This ability not only saves time, but also opens up blind spots in thinking and brings new insights, which is said to give users "superpowers". In addition.Agent The asynchronous nature, i.e., the ability to continue working when the user is offline, is also one of its great advantages.

Natural Language Interaction (NLI): A New Paradigm for User Experience

Aparna Chennapragada Natural Language Interface (NLI) is highly regarded as "the new ultimate user experience (UX)". Natural language or conversational interfaces are more flexible than graphical user interfaces (GUIs), which require careful design but are relatively rigid. But that doesn't mean they don't need to be designed. Dialogs have their own "syntax", "structure" and invisible "interface elements".

She pointed out several new design principles and components that have emerged in the NLI era:

• Prompt: In itself, it is a new design component, as drop-down menus or navigation bars used to be.
• Plan: When the user gives the Agent A macro-goal whenAgent Generated action plans, and preferably modifiable, constitute a completely new type of interaction.
• Showing Work::Agent Whether and how to show their "thought process". Moderate presentation can increase user confidence, but too much can gây phiền nhiễu.Copilot,ChatGPT maybe DeepSeek and other products have been practiced in this regard.Aparna Chennapragada It is argued that showing the process at this stage enhances the experience, especially when the system is slow to reason, and keeps the user informed of progress. In the long run, there is huge scope for personalization in this area.
• Follow-up Questions: The system should be able to anticipate and proactively ask relevant questions to guide the user to a more desirable outcome, such as asking about color and style preferences after generating an image. The key is to strike a balance and avoid too many follow up questions that cause disruption.

Kevin Weil(math.) genusOpenAI 's CPO, has also explored the issue of how well the AI thought process is presented.DeepSeek The choice to show it all was instead welcomed by users, perhaps because the current system is still a black box and transparency brings a sense of control.

New Challenges and Opportunities for Product Managers

Doubts about whether the rise of AI coding tools will lead to the elimination of product managers.Aparna Chennapragada It is true that the value of product managers is challenged if they are limited to process management. However, in an era of proliferating ideas and prototypes, "taste" and "editing skills" are critical to filtering and polishing products, which will raise the bar for product managers.

She has observed that AI tools have enabled engineers, designers, and other roles to express their product ideas more fully, and that product managers rely more on their actual abilities than on their job titles to make decisions. She herself often uses a method called "WWXD" (What Would X Do), which uses AI to simulate the behavior of a particular person (e.g., a person who has a job, a person who has a job, a person who has a job, a person who has a job). Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella) perspective on the proposal.

Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke The concept of "instinctive use of AI".Aparna Chennapragada It is considered challenging to practice. The main obstacle is updating inherent perceptions. Many models may not have been able to perform certain tasks a year ago, but today they have improved dramatically. Product people need to overcome past "trial and error" experiences, reassess AI's capabilities, and dare to demand more from AI to realize its potential. She even wrote her own simple Chrome plugin that reminds you to think about whether you can use AI to accomplish the task at hand in a new tab, which only takes 10 minutes with the help of the GitHub Copilot The completed plug-in effectively helps her develop this "instinct".

From 0 to 1: Being wary of "pseudo-precision" and capitalizing on key transitions

During the exploratory phase of the product from 0 to 1, theAparna Chennapragada Emphasize the need to "solve the problem before we talk about scale" and embrace the chaos of this phase. Setting a direction too early can lead to "local optimization". She cautioned against the misleading nature of "metrics", especially when the user base is small, and "professional-looking" metrics such as click-through rate (CTR) and retention rate can be meaningless and constitute a form of "pseudo-accuracy". This is a kind of "pseudo-accuracy". At this time, qualitative feedback and real user behavior is more important. For example, although voice assistant is initially positioned as a universal portal, there are only a few core functions that are really used in a high frequency, such as setting timers and playing music.

To determine if an idea from 0 to 1 is feasible.Aparna Chennapragada A framework is proposed whereby successful innovative products typically fulfill at least two of the following three key turning points:

1. A leap forward in technology: as deep learning is to Google Lens, or LLM and inference modeling for the current wave of AI.
2. Changes in user behavior: such as the popularity of cell phone storage and changing photo habits for the Google Lens Application scenarios are created. The camera has gone from being a recording tool to a "keyboard" for interacting with the real world.
3. Changes in business modelsThe new models include bidding mechanisms for search ads, subscription models for SaaS, and possible new models such as pay-per-results in the age of AI.Robinhood Its success is also due to business model innovations such as "zero commission," which incorporates generational change and mobile-first trends.

These three perspectives echo the question often asked by investors, "Why now?" (Why now?).

Big companies landing AI: encouraging "first movers"

surname Cong Google,Robinhood and other consumer-grade Internet companies to the present day in Microsoft Specializing in business and productivity.Aparna Chennapragada Appreciate the uniqueness of the enterprise scenario. Not only do you need to make the features work, but you also need to ensure governance and compliance. In the age of AI, the extremely fast pace of technological change and the relatively slow pace of human behavioral habits and internal change management within the enterprise have created as Jean-Claude Van Damme Split-like challenge between two moving trucks.

Her experience with this is to "never hold back those 'early adopters'."Microsoft Internally implemented Frontier project, precisely to prioritize the experience of cutting-edge, experimental AI features for users willing to try them out (e.g., advanced workplace research-based Agent), rather than waiting for the whole company to be ready. The project aims to explore "cutting-edge products" and "cutting-edge ways of working," thinking about how small teams equipped with powerful AI tools can operate to institutionalize an individual's "live for the next year" approach to work. institutionalizing the way individuals "live in the year ahead.

Copilot The moat with the Excel apocalypse

faced with Cursor The rapid growth of emerging AI coding tools such as theAparna Chennapragada act as GitHub Copilot The heavy users who think GitHub Build not just a product or feature, but a system.GitHub As a developer repository platform, it integrates auto-completion, chat assistant and Agent model to support developers at all levels. She believes that the rise of code generation will give rise to entirely new development products, but the generation and operation of enterprise-grade code requires a complete system to support it, which is exactly what the GitHub where the strengths lie - all paths may ultimately lead to the GitHubThe

Excel The longevity of the program also brings insights. A senior Excel Product employees had told her thatExcel proved that non-programmers also need programming skills and gave them that ability. Furthermore.Excel The existence of the World Championships demonstrates that while the barrier to entry may be high, once mastered, these types of tools have an excellent experience and energy efficiency, with powerful functionality and depth derived from the compounding effect of decades of sustained investment and high-quality user feedback.

Personal Growth and Future Prospects: Human-Agent Collaboration

Looking back at individual careers.Aparna Chennapragada deem Google be in charge of Google Now The project's experience was a major turning point. While search-based personalization as initially envisioned failed to succeed, the shift to actively pushing content to the Google Now It made her realize that she loves to build 0 to 1 products that can "keep up with the trends". This experience also taught her that "too early" is the same as "doing it wrong" - there was a lack of technical support such as LLM and deep learning, and the intelligence could not keep up with the interface design. However, this experience also set the stage for later Google Assistant Laying the groundwork, today Gemini The emergence of models such as this one made the vision possible. This represents a form of continuity: identifying the "unchanging elements" and carrying them into the next generation of products.

Interesting.Aparna Chennapragada She is also a stand-up comedy enthusiast and active performer, and has found that comedy writing and product development have a lot in common. She found that comedy writing and product development have something in common, both pursuing "PMF" (which she jokingly refers to as "Point of Merit Market Fit"), and the rapid iteration and instant feedback on Open Mic has honed the product manager's "resilience" to cope with the gap between the ideal and reality. "Toughness". She shared a joke about AI: "People always say these AI chat products are like 'women' because you have no idea what they're thinking, like a black box. But you could actually say they're more like 'men' because they're always hallucinating, and they're not very reliable, and they'll make up stuff even if they don't know the answer, and they're particularly sure of it."

Looking ahead.Aparna Chennapragada The issue of greatest interest is the relationship between people and Agent How to collaborate. She envisions a "people and Agent of co-creative space", where human beings and the Agent Working together, the output will far exceed the capabilities of any single individual or small team. This heralds an entirely new product experience and work model in which tasks are delegated, manually calibrated, and information is transferred between the individual and the Agent The coordination of flows between them all holds great potential for exploration.