The first thing I like to do in situations like these is to fully understand the technology and its capabilities. It would be important to explore what an initial implementation would look like and what options we would have for growth in the future. I would ask the technical lead to walk me through all of the benefits and any of the cons that are worth considering. I would research the claims to ensure they are supported through reliable data based on similar implementations.
From there, I would research on my own to assess customer impact. I would search for data on products with similar functionality and how users responded to those features. I would also reach out to current customers to walk them through the proposed changes and get a sense of how they would be affected.
Assuming that the benefits of implementing the technology are high and the impact on the customer is low, I would then consult with a designer to determine how we could implement the new features in a way that is intuitive and pleasing to our customers. I would also work to understand how much of a time savings the easier-to-develop features are. If the savings were significant, I would work to identify other valuable features that could potentially be added to offset the impact of the search changes on the customer.
If it turned out that the new search functions would affect the customers negatively, I would offer the data necessary to support this claim. For example, I would show the percent reduction in critical data they can access, the increase in search time, or the increase in click metrics. I would also identify the most critical search use cases and work with the engineering lead to research other options that would offer similar benefits without sacrificing quality.
