^{We all know how much time gets lost on context setting.}

Here’s the problem. Here’s the user. Here’s why we’re solving it this way. Here are the screens — ignore the colors, focus on the flow. No that button isn’t final. Yes the copy is placeholder.

By the time we get to actual feedback, half the meeting is gone.

I kept thinking it was a communication problem. That I needed better presentation skills. A cleaner deck. A stronger narrative.

It wasn’t any of that. It was the format.|

What happens when you show static screens

When you show Figma screens, people comment on what they can see. The color. The spacing. The font choice. Not because they’re being difficult — because that’s all they have to react to.

You spend the whole meeting managing their attention instead of getting their input. Redirecting. Explaining. Defending decisions that aren’t even the point.

The feedback you need — does this solve the problem, does this flow make sense, where does this break — rarely comes. Because nobody can feel a static screen.

What changed

I built a fully functional prototype using AI — vibe coding my own design, connected to our internal design system. Real components. Real interactions. Not just the happy path. Unhappy paths, error states, edge cases. All of it.

I walked into the next stakeholder meeting and just showed it.

15 minutes. Full alignment. Meeting over.

Nobody asked about button colours. Nobody got stuck on placeholder copy. They used it. They felt it. They understood the problem immediately because they were living inside the solution.

The context setting disappeared. Because the prototype did it for me.

The thing I didn’t expect

I designed the main flow. Then I let AI handle the rest — the error messages, the empty states, the alternative paths I hadn’t fully thought through.

And that’s where something interesting happened.

AI surfaced decisions I’d been quietly avoiding. Edge cases I’d noted in a comment somewhere and moved on from. States that didn’t exist yet but needed to.

I wasn’t just building faster. I was finding out where my thinking had gaps — before anyone else did.

The real lesson

This isn’t about AI. It’s about what people can actually react to.

Stakeholders aren’t bad at giving feedback. They’re bad at giving feedback on things they can’t experience. Give them something real and the whole conversation changes.

AI just made it possible to get there faster. To test thinking in hours instead of weeks. To walk into rooms with something that doesn’t require imagination to evaluate.

Being wrong late leads to churn — rework, realignment, lost trust. Finding out early is everything.

I still use Figma. It’s still where I think and explore and build. But it’s no longer what I bring to the room.

Have you made a similar switch in how you present work? I’d love to hear how your stakeholders responded — drop it in the comments.

Ketak Gupta is a Senior UX Designer designing at scale. He writes about design, AI workflows, and the craft behind the work.

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