Complementary Format Integration
Bring a proven new format into a mature product so it expands, not contorts, the core
- Difficulty
- Advanced
- Time to result
- ~months to results
- Steps
- 4
- Confidence
- 86%
A method for adding a new format (that someone else may have invented) into an existing, cemented product so it feels coherent but distinct and expands usage instead of replacing the core. Use it when a new modality is clearly winning elsewhere and you must decide how to bring it into a product people already have strong spatial expectations about.
Origin
Stein has run this play twice — Instagram Stories/Reels and Google's AI Mode. He described the pattern when reflecting on the Stories launch and on coming into mature products (Instagram, Google) and driving hockey-stick growth.
Core principles
- 01Not every great thing will be invented by you; formats become primitives you can make your own without robbing users of a better product.
- 02Don't contort the cemented core product to do the new thing — that's usually a bad recipe.
- 03Add the new format as a distinct primitive that feels coherent but different, snapping to the user expectations that format carries.
How to run it
- 1
Find the true essence / job of the core product
Get first-principled about why people use the product and what job they hire it for (Instagram: sharing your life and connecting; Google: get information / ask a hard question). This frees you from trying to solve everything with the current tools.
Pro tip Look for the growing, mature, and declining parts of a big product separately — needs shift every year.
- 2
Judge whether the new format is existential
Decide if a different format that already works elsewhere is an existential question for you — a genuinely better way to do the core job (ephemeral, low-pressure, full-screen mobile sharing for Stories).
Watch out Don't dismiss it as a competitor's thing; you'd be denying your users a better product.
- 3
Make it your own
Add distinctive attributes that make the format belong to your product rather than a clone — Stories got neon drawing, sophisticated filters, photo upload from camera roll, and finger-hold to pause.
Pro tip Fix the frustrations the originator left in place (Snapchat blocked uploads and pausing) — that's the dissatisfaction lens applied to a borrowed format.
- 4
Snap to spatial expectations, coherent but different
People think spatially — feed 'holes' are expected to behave consistently. Give the new format a similar aesthetic and system integration but a clearly different primitive, so it reads as new-but-belonging, not confusing.
Watch out Never just paste in something that worked in another system — its users, consumer expectations, and use cases are totally different; learn from it, don't copy it wholesale.
In the wild
Instead of making the existing square-photo feed ephemeral (a contortion), the team built Stories as a new primitive with Instagram-native creative tools, camera-roll upload, and hold-to-pause, integrated into DMs and the same aesthetic.
→ A team member said it felt like the story holes at the top had always been missing — it completed the product, and Stories expanded rather than replaced the feed.
Common mistakes
Contorting the cemented core
Early attempts to make the core Instagram feed itself ephemeral failed — mixing a physically-cemented product with a new behavior confuses users.
Assuming another system's success transfers
Stein says this is one of the most common failures: teams assume what works in one product's system will work in theirs, ignoring different users and expectations.
Is it for you?
Best for
PMs and founders adding a fast-rising new modality into an established product with a large existing user base
Not ideal for
Brand-new products with no cemented user expectations, or formats that don't map to the product's core job
From the transcript
“not every great thing is going to be invented by you”
“it needs to feel coherent but different”
“People think spatially. So if you have a feed and you have holes with pictures, they expect those holes to do things.”
“they assume something working for one system will work in your world”
From the episode
Inside Google's AI turnaround: The rise of AI Mode, strategy behind AI Overviews, and their vision for AI-powered search
Robby Stein (VP of Product, Google Search)