Process: Prototyping

A prototype is a primitive representation or version of a product that a design team or front-end-development team typically creates during the design process. The goal of a prototype is to test the flow of a design solution and gather feedback on it—from both internal and external parties—before constructing the final product. The state of a prototype is fluid as the team revises the design iteratively based on user feedback.

Why Are Prototypes Important?

Tom and David Kelley of the design company IDEO have perfectly summed up the importance of prototyping by saying:

“If a picture is worth 1,000 words, a prototype is worth 1,000 meetings.” Read More

Throughout my career as a user experience designer, I have continually asked myself three questions:

• What should my deliverables be?
• Will my deliverables provide clarity to me and their audience?
• Where do my deliverables and other efforts fit within the spectrum of UX design?

I have found that, if I do not answer these questions prior to creating a deliverable, my churn rate increases and deadlines slip.

When attempting to answer the third question, I use a framework I discovered early in my career: The Five Competencies of User Experience Design.PDF This framework comprises the competencies a UX professional or team requires. The following sections describe these five competencies, outline some questions each competency must answer, and show the groundwork and deliverables for which each competency is responsible. Read More

In modern product design, validating UX design hypotheses and ideas quickly is crucial. Traditionally, UX designers have created static screens in Figma, then built a clickable prototype—a process that can take days and often leaves gaps between mockups and the product’s actual logic.

By using artificial-intelligence (AI) driven tools like Lovable and Cursor, you can help bridge these gaps. These tools let you generate interactive prototypes and test UX design workflows before writing a single line of production code. In this article, I’ll show you how to set up an AI-powered pipeline, share example prompts, and discuss the key advantages and limitations of this approach. Read More