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Orbit & Espresso: by Robb Hecht · Jan 11, 2026

Orbit & AI Espresso: Episode #79

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robb.hecht@gmail.com · Orbit & Espresso: by Robb Hecht

robb.hecht@gmail.com | Jan 11, 2026

Marketing is now Experience Engineering—AI just turned the volume up. While everyone else is painting the rocket (ads/copy), you need to engineer how it flies (CX/Systems). The Problem: AI updates products instantly. Human trust builds slowly. That gap is where you lose them. The Mission: Use AI to build a “Trust Bridge” between your fast product and your confused customer. Goal: You, a latte, and a laptop—fixing a broken journey before your coffee cools.

Marketing used to be about telling people something changed. Now, AI allows pricing, features, and algorithms to change at Light Speed. But your customer’s perception moves at Walking Speed.

That gap? That’s where the “Dread” lives. That’s where customers churn.

You are no longer just a Marketer. You are an Experience Engineer.

  • Elon iterates the hardware. 🚀

  • Zuck iterates the algorithm. 🌍

  • You iterate the Trust.

Your job isn’t just to sell the update. It’s to use AI to smooth out the friction the update caused. The Winning Formula: Experience + Trust + Speed = The Moat.

Let’s be blunt about the state of things:

  • If your product updated yesterday but your FAQ is from 2024, you aren’t managing a brand; you’re managing a museum.

  • If you’re waiting for a “UX Researcher” to tell you why people are dropping off, you’re too slow.

  • Experience Engineering means using AI to see the friction and fix it before the ticket is even filed.

The Reality Check: Winning brands don’t have “better logos.” They have faster feedback loops. This week, we stop decorating. We start engineering.

  1. Spot the “Lag”: Find one screen/email where your product is faster than your content.

  2. The “Vision” Engineer: Use ChatGPT Vision to diagnose the friction.

  3. The Output: A “Micro-Moment” fix you can pitch instantly.

Sip your coffee. Open your company’s mobile site (or a competitor’s). Look for The Lag.

  • Is there a new AI feature button that has no explanation?

  • Did pricing change, but the “Why” is missing?

  • Is the support chatbot giving generic answers to complex new problems?

Pick ONE specific screen where the customer goes: “Wait, what?” Take a screenshot. That is your raw material.

We are using AI to see the friction and engineer the fix.

🧠 Stack:

  • ChatGPT Plus (Vision) or Gemini Advanced (Multimodal).

  • Notion (Your Lab).

The Prompt Strategy: Upload your screenshot of the “Friction Point.” Run this prompt:

“Act as a Senior Experience Engineer and Behavioral Psychologist. Look at this screenshot. This is a touchpoint in our customer journey. The Goal: The customer needs to trust this step immediately. The Problem: It feels robotic/confusing/outdated.

  1. Diagnose the ‘Trust Gap’ (What is the user afraid of here?).

  2. Re-engineer the copy to be ‘Human Speed’ (Short, empathetic, clear).

  3. Suggest one UI micro-tweak (e.g., ‘Add a tooltip here’ or ‘Change button text to X’).”

Why this works: You aren’t guessing. You are using an LLM to simulate the customer’s anxiety and solving it instantly.

Don’t just keep this in the chat bot. Make it real. Open your “Starbucks to SpaceX” Portfolio Doc.

Entry: Experience Engineering v0.1

  • The Friction: TBD

  • The Trust Gap: “Customers think X, but the product does Y.”

  • The Engineered Fix:

    • Old Copy: “Error 503 / Please Wait.”

    • New AI-Engineered Copy: “We’re updating our brain. Give us 30 seconds to think. Don’t worry, your cart is saved.”

  • The Impact: “Turns anxiety into a brand moment.”

Assignment: Email this “Before & After” to your team or save it for your portfolio. Subject line: “Found a friction point. Here is the fix.”

The Moat Test: If your competitor copies your product features tomorrow, do you lose?

  • If Yes -> You are a commodity.

  • If No -> It’s because your Experience Engineering is so tight, customers trust your delivery more than their features.

AI makes copying products easy. AI makes copying trust impossible—if you are the one engineering it daily.

Marketing isn’t dead. It just graduated from “Arts & Crafts” to “Engineering.” You are the astronaut at the controls. Every confusing email you fix, every scary error message you rewrite, every gap you close... that is you tightening the bolts on the rocket.

Keep experimenting. Keep engineering. Keep caffeinating. ☕🚀

See you in #80. — Robb

Read the original on robbhecht.substack.com

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