Toward Effective AI Support for Developers

Years of software engineering and product development have taught us that the best way to build products that delight customers is to talk to customers. Talking to actual customers provides important insights into their challenges and their loves. This leads to innovative and creative ways of solving problems (without creating new ones) and guards against ruining the workflows customers already enjoy. And yet, the emergence of artificial intelligence (AI) has many leaders forgetting these lessons in a rush to create new AI-driven development tools, often without consulting actual developers. Our research is meant to help close that gap and give companies, product teams, and fellow practitioners insights into the opportunities and concerns that developers have with using AI in their work. Armed with this information, product teams and leaders can make better product decisions and communicate more effectively about the changes happening around them.