At Meituan, China's platform for local services, especially known for food delivery, I worked on two AI projects. One was a consumer-facing AI assistant that helps users complete various tasks, including ordering food. The other was a merchant-facing AI agent designed to help businesses manage their daily operations, including handling reservations, managing orders, and supporting routine operational tasks. The main difference between how products are built in China and in the US comes down to the market.
During my eight years working in agile product development, I have watched sprints move quickly while real understanding of user problems lagged. Backlogs fill with paraphrased feedback. Interview notes sit in shared folders collecting dust. Teams make decisions based on partial memories of what users actually said. Even when the code is clean, those habits slow delivery and make it harder to build software that genuinely helps people.