Future Product Days: More Questions, Better Products

What happens when the technology capable of building almost anything becomes available to almost everyone?

That question hovered over this year’s Future Product Days in Copenhagen, bringing together product leaders, designers, engineers and technologists to discuss the opportunities and challenges emerging from the rapid evolution of artificial intelligence.

The expectation when attending a conference about AI is often to come home with predictions. Which tools will win? Which jobs will change? What will product development look like in five years?

Instead, our MB.ioneers returned with something far more valuable: a deeper understanding of the questions we should be asking.

Across keynotes, panels and countless conversations between sessions, one message surfaced again and again. AI is transforming how we work, design and build. Yet while the technology is advancing at extraordinary speed, the human challenges remain surprisingly familiar. How do we make good decisions? How do we create meaningful experiences? And how do we ensure that faster doesn’t simply mean more? Those questions connected many of the conference’s most memorable discussions and shaped the perspectives our attendees brought back to Mercedes-Benz.io.

João Oliveira

Frontend Developer|MB.ioneer since January 2022

Fun fact:He's actively collecting KMs walking on a Treadmill under his Standing Desk for a healthier life.

Julia Rouxinol

Product Designer|MB.ioneer since December 2022

Fun fact:She's weirdly good at untying knots.

When building becomes easy, what becomes valuable?

For Product Designer Julia Rouxinol, one of the most thought-provoking themes throughout the conference was the relationship between technology, effort and human agency.

Artificial intelligence is making it easier than ever to create. Prototypes can be generated in minutes. Interfaces can be designed faster. Ideas that once required substantial resources can now be explored almost instantly. On the surface, that feels like an obvious improvement.

Yet as the barriers to creating products continue to fall, Julia found herself focusing on a different challenge: if building becomes increasingly easy, how do we decide what is actually worth building?

That question gained even more relevance during Sarah Thompson’s talk, The Future Is Friction, which challenged one of the fundamental assumptions behind modern digital experiences. For years, product teams have been working to remove obstacles, reduce clicks and create increasingly seamless journeys. In many situations, that’s exactly the right thing to do. But Thompson introduced a different perspective: sometimes friction creates value.

Whether it’s making a decision, reflecting on a choice or actively participating in a process, effort can strengthen a person’s sense of ownership and engagement. In psychology, this is often referred to as the “IKEA effect” the tendency to place greater value on things we have helped create ourselves.

The idea resonated because it shifts the conversation away from technology and back towards people.

As AI becomes more capable of making decisions, recommendations and even completing tasks on our behalf, designers face a new challenge. The question is no longer simply how much friction can be removed. Instead, it becomes a question of which experiences should remain human, which decisions deserve reflection and where technology should support rather than replace individual agency.

For Julia, that was one of the conference’s most encouraging messages. Rather than reducing the importance of design, AI is highlighting the value of understanding human behaviour, motivation and decision-making. The future may include more automation, but it still requires people capable of deciding when automation is the right answer.

The engineer’s perspective: embracing uncertainty

While designers were being challenged to rethink user experiences, Frontend Developer João Oliveira found himself reflecting on a different aspect of the transformation: uncertainty.

Much of the public conversation around AI is filled with confidence. Predictions about the future appear daily, often presented as inevitable outcomes. Yet one of João’s strongest impressions from Copenhagen was that even many of the experts closest to the technology admit that nobody truly knows where this journey will lead.

That wasn’t a sign of weakness. In many ways, it was reassuring.

The conference brought together pioneers, researchers and practitioners working on some of the industry’s most advanced AI applications. Despite their expertise, many shared a common view: we’re still at the beginning. Patterns that seem obvious today may look completely different in a year’s time. Assumptions are constantly being challenged. New possibilities emerge almost as quickly as old certainties disappear.

For João, this reality created space for a more practical conversation about adaptation.

One of the strongest themes throughout the engineering-focused sessions was the growing importance of context. While AI models have become increasingly capable, their effectiveness depends heavily on the quality of information they receive. Business requirements, accessibility standards, security considerations, architectural decisions, testing strategies and organisational knowledge all influence the quality of the outcome.

In other words, generating code is becoming easier. Understanding the problem remains difficult. This idea also connected to another recurring discussion: the paradox of experience. Senior professionals are often the people achieving the most impressive results with AI because they understand both the domain and the limitations of the technology. At the same time, they are sometimes the people who need to unlearn the most, moving beyond workflows and habits that have served them well for years.

Rather than replacing expertise, AI appears to be changing how expertise is applied. Technical knowledge still matters. Product thinking still matters. The difference is that these capabilities are increasingly being combined with experimentation, adaptability and a willingness to work differently.

Curiosity as a competitive advantage

Although they experienced the conference from different perspectives, Julia and João arrived at remarkably similar conclusions.

Neither returned worried that AI would eliminate the need for designers, engineers or product professionals. If anything, both left Copenhagen convinced that the uniquely human aspects of those roles are becoming more important.

Critical thinking, curiosity, judgement, understanding people and navigating complexity: these topics appeared repeatedly throughout the event, regardless of whether the speaker was discussing design, software development or organisational transformation. While AI continues to accelerate execution, people remain responsible for direction. Technology can help us build faster, but it cannot tell us what deserves our attention, what creates value for users or what kind of future we want to create.

Perhaps that’s why the most memorable takeaway from Future Product Days wasn’t tied to a specific tool, model or framework.

It was the recognition that we’re living through a moment of profound change without having all the answers yet. And that’s okay.

The future of technology is still being written. What matters today is not predicting every chapter accurately, but developing the mindset needed to navigate whatever comes next. For the MB.ioneers who travelled to Copenhagen, that mindset can be summed up in three ideas: stay curious, keep learning and continue asking better questions.

Because in a world where almost anyone can build, the real advantage may lie in knowing why.