How AI Helped Me Think Like a Designer Before I Had One

At Sparq, we believe that building the right solution starts with the right team, one that always includes a full-stack engineering team, product strategy, and a UX partner. That’s our default because design thinking isn’t a luxury, it’s essential to clarity, alignment, and delivering real outcomes.

But real-world constraints don’t always play by the playbook. Sometimes you’re mid-sprint, the UX seat is unfilled, and you’ve got a critical user flow to align across product, engineering, and client teams.

That’s exactly where my team found themselves recently: We were making key changes to how users interacted with our product, and while there’s no substitute for a talented designer, we needed a way to help stakeholders see the difference. Fast.

The Problem: Visual Clarity Without a Designer

The stakes were high: if we didn’t clearly communicate the updated flow, we risked misalignment across engineering, product, and the client. With no designer on the team and a tight timeline, our go-to options weren’t going to cut it. My colleague tried their best to sketch things out on a whiteboard, but unfortunately the wireframes just weren’t inspiring any confidence. We needed something clearer, something that felt real enough for stakeholders to react to, but quick enough to not block progress.

The Tactic: Using AI to Prototype Without Pixels

Instead of stalling or pulling in favors, we leaned into something we’d been testing on the side: V0, an AI-powered prototyping tool. We’d originally discovered it through ChatPRD, a tool we’d already been using to refine my requirements docs.

Here’s how it played out:

•     We fed V0 the current design components we had.
  
•     We added in rough notes and flow logic from planning sessions.
  
•     V0 returned a working prototype interactive enough to simulate the user journey we were updating.
  

No extra tickets. No time drain. Just something real the team could click through and critique.

The Outcome: Better Alignment, Faster Decisions

The prototype wasn’t polished, but that wasn’t the point. It was good enough—and that made all the difference.

•     Clients got clarity on what was changing and why.
  
•     Engineers stayed unblocked, since they weren’t waiting for formal designs.
  
•     Stakeholders aligned faster because they were reacting to something concrete.
  

Instead of spending a week debating hypotheticals, we spent a day reviewing a prototype and making decisions. The AI didn’t just speed up design, it sped up trust, confidence, and momentum.

The Bonus: AI Didn’t Replace the Work, It Accelerated It

The real magic was how these tools worked together:
ChatPRD helped clarify and structure our thoughts.
V0 turned that clarity into a clickable artifact.

AI amplified what we already knew and helped us move faster with less friction. It gave us, as a product strategy team, just enough design power to break through the bottleneck.

Why This Matters

At Sparq, we talk a lot about making AI real, not just hype, but as a practical tool that moves projects forward. This experience was exactly that. No drama. No silver bullet. Just smart tools solving a real-world constraint.

It also reminded me of something we say often: “Understand the real problem, build the right solution.” In this case, the real problem wasn’t “we need a design.” It was, “We need clarity.” AI helped bridge that gap faster than a formal sprint ever could.

About the Author

Brittany Langosch is the Director of Product at Sparq, bringing nearly 15 years of product management experience and a deep background in digital product consulting. She’s known for turning complex business challenges into outcome-driven solutions that fuel growth and impact. At Sparq, Brittany leads with strategy, empowers cross-functional teams, and helps organizations level up their product practices – all while keeping users at the center of the process. A proud Wisconsin native, she’s also a wife, mom, and group fitness instructor who’s led over 700 classes (and still has energy to spare).