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Michal Peled, HoneyBook's AI use case

Product / design leader at HoneyBook

Uses AI across recruiting, product research, and personal logistics: finding strong candidates on LinkedIn, creating interactive customer personas, and building a hyperlocal helper for parking decisions.

The problem

What was broken before AI

Recruiting, product research, and personal logistics all share a similar problem: the useful information exists, but it is spread out and hard to reason through quickly. Candidate signals are scattered across LinkedIn profiles and work history. Customer insights are buried in notes, interviews, and internal knowledge. Local decisions like parking depend on context that a generic map or search result may not explain well enough.

What changed

What the use case made possible

Michal uses AI to create more useful decision surfaces. For recruiting, AI can help identify candidate patterns and prepare better outreach or evaluation. For product research, customer notes can become interactive personas that teams can question instead of static summaries. For local logistics, AI can combine location-specific rules, preferences, and practical context into a helper that makes a recurring decision easier.

Why this matters

Why this use case is worth studying

This use case is valuable because it shows AI as a thinking layer over messy human information. It is not only summarizing. It is helping compare, simulate, and ask better questions. Recruiting becomes more targeted, personas become more interactive, and local decisions become less annoying because the context is easier to use in the moment.

Use this when

When this pattern applies

Use this pattern when the decision depends on messy context rather than one clean answer. It works especially well for recruiting, customer research, persona work, local logistics, or any recurring decision where you need to compare signals and tradeoffs.

Exponential Builder analysis

01

Build around recurring judgment, not one-off answers.

Michal’s examples work because each case has repeatable criteria: candidate fit, customer needs, parking tradeoffs. AI becomes more useful when the decision has enough structure to reuse, but enough messiness to justify assistance.

02

Make scattered context interrogable.

LinkedIn profiles, customer notes, and local constraints all become more valuable when you can ask follow-up questions against them. The shift is from reading static information to testing assumptions in conversation.

03

Keep the human responsible for the call.

These workflows help surface patterns, tradeoffs, and better questions, but hiring, product interpretation, and local decisions still need human judgment. The safest version keeps criteria visible and treats AI output as a decision aid.

Who this is for

Best fit

Product leaders

UX researchers

Recruiting teams

Founders hiring early employees

Customer research teams

Operators making local or logistics-heavy decisions

Anyone who wants AI to make messy context easier to question

What to avoid

Mistakes and warnings

Where this pattern can go wrong if you copy it too literally.

Do not let AI make final hiring or people decisions on its own.

Avoid treating synthetic personas as a replacement for real customer research.

Be careful with private candidate, customer, or location data.

Keep the criteria visible so the assistant does not optimize for the wrong thing.

Use AI to clarify judgment, not to hide the tradeoffs.

Public workflow preview

The shape of the workflow

A high-level look at how the use case works, with the reusable pattern made clear.

01

Start with a messy decision

Michal looks for workflows where the right answer depends on scattered context, not a single fact.

02

Gather the signals

Profiles, customer notes, interview data, local rules, or personal preferences become the source material.

03

Turn static information into something queryable

AI makes the material easier to interrogate, compare, or role-play.

04

Use the output to improve judgment

The assistant surfaces candidates, customer needs, objections, or local tradeoffs, but the human still makes the decision.

05

Reuse the structure

Once the pattern works for one decision type, the same approach can be used for other messy research or logistics tasks.

Copy the pattern

The reusable idea

Pattern in one sentence

Turn scattered context into a queryable decision helper, then keep human judgment in charge of the final call.

Reusable idea

Michal’s workflow is a reminder to look for places where you already have enough information but not enough usable context. If the work involves comparing people, understanding customers, or navigating local rules, AI can help turn the raw material into a conversation partner. The goal is to make judgment easier, not to remove it.

Steal this workflow

Messy Decision Helper Template

Recruiting: a shortlist with reasons and reach-out questions.

Product research: an interactive persona grounded in customer notes.

Local logistics: a helper that explains options and tradeoffs.

1

Name the decision: “I need to decide ___.”

2

List the source material: profiles, notes, interviews, rules, preferences, maps, or prior examples.

3

Define the criteria: “A good decision depends on ___, ___, and ___.”

4

Ask AI to extract patterns and missing information.

5

Convert the material into one useful artifact:

6

Ask follow-up questions from the decision-maker’s point of view.

7

Compare the output against your own judgment or real-world experience.

8

Save the criteria and prompt structure for the next similar decision.

9

Keep sensitive candidate, customer, and location data inside approved tools.

Suggested prompt

“I’m making this decision: [describe the decision]. Here is the source material: [paste profiles, notes, constraints, preferences, or rules]. First, extract the criteria that matter most. Then turn the material into a usable decision aid: a shortlist, interactive persona, or local helper. For each recommendation, explain the evidence, the reasonable inference, the tradeoffs, and the follow-up question I should ask before deciding.”

Field notes

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