When an AI prototype is a great starting place
- 4 min read
More and more, clients come to us with something they've already made, like a layout from an AI design tool or a working page built in an afternoon. Some agencies treat that as a threat. We treat it as a head start, with a few things worth knowing.
Describing what you want is hard!
You know what your site needs to say and who it needs to reach, but articulating what you want and why can be hard. "Make it simpler" or "more modern" doesn't say much. Interviews and workshops help, but not everyone thinks best out loud. We've found that many non-designers work best with a visual, and luckily AI tools are making it that much easier for our clients to communicate with us.
What a prototype does well
A prototype gets the idea out of your head and in front of us, and can really jump start a fruitful conversation. We can see what you want to say, what matters most, and in what order, and we see what you care about but didn't think to mention.
We've seen a lot of success using AI prototypes when there are busy stakeholders who aren't directly involved in day-to-day decisions. They can now get ideas out of their head and into our hands faster than ever before, and there's less ambiguity about what they mean.
What it can't do on its own
A prototype can be a strong input, but it doesn't replace discovery. Before anything moves forward, we look at:
What's real underneath it. AI tools are good at producing the shape of something useful and less good at checking that the shape is based in reality. We want to know what content and data each part draws on.
The end user. A prototype shows what you want. It can't tell us what the people using your site need.
Fit with your site. It's usually built without your design system, navigation, or CMS components, and bringing it in means real decisions.
The copy. AI-written copy is a useful first draft. We review it for accuracy, voice, and search before it goes live.
Why people still matter
A good website comes from someone thinking carefully about another person's needs. AI can speed up parts of that work, and we often use it ourselves. We embrace input our clients provide, regardless of the format. But the buck stops with human decision-makers, and one of the biggest benefits of working with an agency like Lightburn is our discernment. Our designers, strategists, and developers take that responsibility seriously, and that judgment is what we add.
Tips for getting more out of the tool
A few changes to how you prompt will make a prototype more useful to everyone who works with it.
Ask for a rough draft. Say what it's for, such as "a rough prototype I can hand to my designer." Otherwise these tools often aim for something that looks finished, as if you'd asked them to solve everything. Make sure you're setting parameters to avoid wasting tokens and time.
Share what already exists and what your limitations are. Give it clear inputs, like any existing copy you love. Make sure to tell it not to invent facts, statistics, or links.
Ask what it assumed. That list is a good place to start our conversation.
If you're about to share a prototype with us
Let us know it's coming. A quick note before it lands helps, especially when we're partway through a project. A new direction can change our plan, and we'd rather adjust together than find out midstream.
Tell us whether it's a starting point or a decided direction, and what you were trying to solve. Either is fine. We just need to know which.
Tell us who else has seen it, and which parts are solid and which are placeholders.
So if you or someone on your leadership team is cooking up prototypes, don't be afraid to share your work. We'd rather start with your ideas than a blank page.