This is the fifth part of a six-part series on how the innovation process is evolving in the age of AI.
We have all had that moment: You wake up from a vivid dream that felt completely real. It makes perfect sense. You try to explain it to a friend, and suddenly… it crumbles.
“Okay, so there was this turtle, but it was also my high school math teacher…”
As soon as you put it into words, the magic evaporates. You can see their eyes glaze over.
Describing a new product experience can feel the same. When you try to explain a future that doesn’t exist yet, it can sound like nonsense.
The Slide Deck Trap
The problem with words is that they activate the rational brain.
But great products don’t succeed because they are “logical.” They succeed because they create a visceral, tangible response. And you cannot get an emotional response from a bullet point.
In the old world, we used slide decks as a crutch because building was hard. We had to “sell” the idea before we could afford to make it.
In the AI era, that excuse is gone.
Fast To Feel
I’ve been experimenting heavily with vibe-coding, using tools like Claude. As a designer who never really coded anything before, the shift is seismic.
In the past, a prototype was a milestone. It took weeks. Some stuff we could just fake, but not always, and that cost made us cautious. We only built the ideas we were confident in.
Now, prototyping — at least for software ideas — takes minutes. You can go from a stray thought in the shower to a working software interaction in twenty minutes.
Is the code garbage? Yes. Is it scalable? Absolutely not. But that isn’t the point.
The point is that you can feel the idea immediately. You can click the button. You can see the friction. And likely, you can spot the fatal flaw that no amount of whiteboard strategy would have revealed.
It’s an immediate learning feedback loop, and that combination of low effort, speed, and learning is both addictive and incredibly freeing.
Because the cost of ‘making it real’ has dropped to near zero, you can stop prototyping just the ‘best’ idea. Instead, you can prototype a whole portfolio of potential solutions.
Don’t Prototype “The Winner.” Prototype the Field.
Here is where the strategy changes. Because the cost of “making it real” has dropped to near zero, you can stop prototyping just the “best” idea. Instead, you can prototype a whole portfolio of potential solutions.
If your product is more physical or experiential in nature, use AI video tools to generate an ad or a film of the customer experience, like a scene from a movie in the future. This puts you immediately in the role of the direct observer, which yields surprising insights every time.
Then, put your “artifacts from the future” in front of people and see what you learn. When you put a range of tangible realities in front of them, you aren’t asking them to imagine. You are watching them react. You can see which version makes their pupils dilate and which one makes them frown. You’re getting outside of your own head, catching your blindspots, and understanding your own ideas more deeply.
The Infinite Feedback Loop
When the cost of prototyping drops to zero, your willingness to take risks goes to infinity. (Or it should!)
You stop protecting your “precious” idea. You stop arguing in conference rooms. You just try the crazy ones, because if they fail, you only lost ten minutes.
So, here is the new rule: Stop explaining. Stop writing decks about the future. Just build the ugly, messy, fake version of it. Just build. Shift the conversation from “Does this make sense?” to “How does this make you feel?”
Because if you can’t feel it, it doesn’t exist.
(Continue reading this series… The Death of the Design Process (and the Rise of the Infinity Loop))
Todd Reily is a design and innovation leader who helps teams manage uncertainty to architect breakthrough product experiences. He spent the last decade shaping the future of sound at Bose, and developing one of the world’s first social robots at Jibo. His work has been recognized by two Time Magazine “Best Inventions” citations, and over 25 design patents.
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