Rapid Prototyping And Its Impact On Design Thinking

Product leaders, stop hiding behind docs! If your team is still spending all their time in PRDs and product strategy docs, they're not operating in 2025. AI prototyping has literally changed the game. Here's how teams should do it: — THE OLD WAY (STILL HAUNTS MOST ORGS) 1. Ideation (~5% actually prototyped) “We should build X.” Cool idea. But no prototype. Just a Notion doc and crossed fingers. 2. Planning (~15% use real prototypes) Sketches in Figma. Maybe a flowchart. But nothing a user could actually click. 3. Discovery (~50% try protos) Sometimes skipped. Sometimes just a survey. Rarely ever tested with something interactive. 4. PM Handoff (~5%) PM: “Here’s the PRD.” Design: “Uhh… where’s the prototype?” PRDs get passed around like homework. 5. Design Design scrambles to build something semi-clickable, just so people stop asking “what’s the plan?” 6. Eng Start Engineering starts cold. No head start. They’re building from scratch because nothing usable exists. — WHAT HAPPENS - Loop after loop. Everyone frustrated. - Slow launches. Lots of guesswork. - And no one truly understands the user until it’s too late. — THE NEW WAY (THIS IS HOW WINNERS SHIP) 1. Ideation PMs don’t just write ideas. They prototype them. Want to solve a user problem? Click, drag, test. There. No waiting. No “someday.” You build it, even if it’s ugly. 2. Planning Prototypes are the roadmap. You walk into planning with a live flow, not a list of features. And everyone’s like: “Oh. THAT’S what you meant.” 3. Discovery Real users. Real prototypes. You send them a flow and you watch them break it. You’re not guessing anymore. You’re observing. 4. PM Handoff PMs don’t just hand off docs. They ship working demos alongside the PRD. No more “interpret this paragraph.” Just click and see it work. 5. Design Designers don’t start from scratch. They take what’s already tested, validated, and tweak it. Suddenly, “design time” is “refinement time.” 6. Eng Start Engineers don’t wait around. They start with something usable. If not, they prompt an AI tool to build it. And we’re off to the races. — If you want to see how AI prototyping actually works (and learn from expert Colin Matthews), check out the deep dive: https://lnkd.in/eJujDhBV

Faster than FedEx! (a rapid prototyping success story) Several years ago we were working on a medical project involving a plunger / punch mechanism that had a diaphragm seal in the center. I had sketched up a design, thinking about how we would manufacture it (from the start) we found some silicone diaphragm valves from a vendor and they had 6-day shipping. in this case we didn't want to wait around to see if the idea worked. so we fired up the #formlabs SLA printer and printed these little compression molds, with 3mm dowels that we had on hand (for alignment of the two mold halves). I squished some jewelry casting #silicone between the molds and waited 15 minutes. total time, start to part, was about 6 hours that includes sketching, CAD, printing the mold, molding the parts, and testing. we quickly validated that this design idea would work, the assembly strategy would work, and functionally it would work once we had the right silicone materials. so now we could wait the one week lead time with less risk to the schedule I've also successfully used FDM molds with this casting silicone also... you just get a few more layer lines on the surface. so if you're not looking for a watertight seal FDM printing works also. but why do we care about speed in product development? is it because we're impatient? no, will maybe partly... it's because the only asset we can't replace is time. if I wait a week or two to make a design decision that week or two is gone. forever. we can't buy it back. so now your project will be 1 to 2 weeks late hitting the market. and that has real revenue implications. does that matter? maybe not if it happens once, but in R&D we're making hundreds of decisions. if every decision takes a one or two week lead time to make, we can set ourself back months, or years. think about ways to short circuit your exploration cycle. figure out what works as early as possible using the crudest means possible. test rigorously so that in 2-3 months from now you can look back and say "yes we are on the right track, because I identified these high-risk areas and tested them early." don't wait until your entire product is designed and documented to start testing your ideas. test individual bits and pieces of your concept as you are designing it. prototype (in parallel) several different variations and when you pick one you will feel confident that you have explored other options. and if you're stuck trying to figure out how to rapid prototype your ideas, call me or shoot me a DM and I'll help 763-344-1308 #rapidprototyping #design #engineering

AI prototyping tools like Bolt and v0 aren't just changing the design game - they're starting a new game entirely. While many teams are debating whether and how to adopt AI prototyping in their design process, forward-thinking teams have completely transformed the way they work. We recently had William Newton from Amplitude back on the podcast for part two and I realized we're not witnessing incremental change. We're seeing a full-blown fundamental shift that makes everything we did before look like we were working in slow motion. What's happening at companies like Amplitude right now: ↳ Designers building working prototypes in minutes instead of days ↳ High-fidelity loading states that actually make it into production ↳ Deployed prototypes collecting real user analytics ↳ Quality details surviving in V1 that normally get cut The most striking part? A couple months ago only two designers at Amplitude were using Bolt. Today, the entire design team is on board. To those who are skeptical about the impact AI prototyping tools will have on designers, Will put it bluntly: "If you're a naysayer, I'm sorry, but you're wrong. You're about to get smacked by the wave." The best product teams aren't debating the value of AI design tools anymore. They're too busy using them to outpace everyone else! Are you riding this wave or still pretending it doesn't exist? Genuinely curious. Full episode coming soon.