Reimagining Product Design with AI

Here's something odd: we get excited about AI tools, play with them for a few days, then mostly forget about them. Why do we do that?

I think I know part of the answer. We treat AI tools like toys because we're not ambitious enough in how we use them. I discovered this recently when I had to do some product design.

The Accident

As a CEO, I wear multiple hats. Product design is one I put on from time to time. Usually this means firing up Figma or Balsamiq (wireframing tool)  and spending a week pushing around UI elements. That's what everyone does. But recently I tried something different: I decided to see if AI could help.

Not just for generating text or summarizing documents - that's the obvious stuff. I wanted to see if AI could transform how I approach design itself.

The Surprise

The results surprised me. Working with Claude, I could go from concept to interactive prototype in half a day. The same work would normally take a week.

But raw speed wasn't the interesting part. What was interesting was how it changed the nature of the work.

The Conversation

Instead of carefully placing every button and dropdown, I could have a conversation. I'd explain what I wanted to achieve. The AI would suggest approaches. For each promising direction, it would generate an interactive React prototype.

This turned out to be powerful in a way I hadn't expected. Each prototype became a springboard for new ideas. I'd see something in the UI and think "ah, that pattern - I remember when we tried something similar at Company X. But what if we modified it this way?"

The AI would quickly implement the changes, and we'd iterate again. It was like having a design partner who could instantly materialize whatever we discussed.

The Evidence

Look at this. I captured our entire design exploration in a Mural Board:

Each box you see here is a UI screen that emerged from my conversation with Claude. The arrows between them? Those are thoughts in flight. "What if we tried this?" leads to a new screen. "That reminds me of..." spawns another branch.

It looks messy, doesn't it? But that's exactly what creative exploration should look like. You're not seeing a linear progression from A to B. You're seeing ideas breeding ideas.

That's what's different here. Traditional design tools force you to commit to each element you place. But in a real creative process, ideas shouldn't be expensive. They should be cheap enough to throw away.

The Question

This makes me wonder: what other tasks are we approaching with unnecessarily limited tools? We're probably all guilty of this. We get comfortable with our hammers and forget to look for power tools.

I've been experimenting with other AI tools too, like Cursor. Each has its strengths. But the key insight isn't about specific tools - it's about being willing to reimagine entire workflows.

The Resistance

When I shared this experience with my team, their first reaction was skepticism. That's natural. We're all skeptical of things that seem too good to be true. But skepticism can be expensive if it keeps you from discovering better ways of working.

The really interesting question is: what other processes in our organizations are we doing the hard way? What else could we reimagine if we were willing to experiment with approaches that initially seem strange?

The Shift

I suspect we're at the beginning of a major shift in how we work. The teams that thrive will be the ones willing to question their assumptions about what tasks require human effort and what tasks don't.

But you won't discover these opportunities if you treat AI tools as toys. You have to be willing to push them beyond their obvious uses. You have to be willing to seem a little crazy.

After all, most interesting discoveries start that way.