The person still gets to say no

I was excited to show Lace a tool I was building for our Trio content team. But before I shared the screen, I wanted to explain why I was building it.

My goal was to help our team do more. I wanted Lace to have help with the work, and I wanted her to lead it.

I asked her what problem she was solving for Trio. She talked about helping people find us, understand what we do, and become customers. That was the point I wanted us to keep in mind. Writing an article was part of the job. Helping the right person find something useful was the reason for doing it.

The tool used AI to help with things like finding topics, preparing drafts, and suggesting changes to old articles. Lace would review the work, make changes, and decide what was ready.

That last part mattered to me. A draft can look tidy and still feel wrong. It can sound too stiff, or explain something in a way you would never say to another person. I wanted Lace to bring her own judgment to it. How would she explain this to someone?

As I showed her the tool, we looked at a way to see the changes AI had suggested. She could keep a change or bring back the old version. She could also read the article and change it herself.

Lace liked having those choices. She also said that help finding new topics could save her time. That part of the work could take a long time on its own.

I asked her to tell me when the tool got in her way. If something made her job harder, I needed to hear that. I was building it for her to use, so her feedback had to shape it.

I didn’t have every answer. I told her we would figure it out together. We still needed to use the tool and see what needed to change.

I want to make more things possible with AI. But I also want the person doing the work to be able to look at a suggestion and say: this needs to be better. And then have the room to make it better.