Instead of creating multiple static mockups, prompt the AI to build a widget directly into a prototype that allows clicking through different design styles. This provides a live, interactive way to evaluate options within the actual user interface.

To maximize creative exploration ("diverging"), don't rely on one tool. Run the same open-ended "explore" prompt in several different AI prototyping tools. Each tool's unique system prompts will yield surprisingly different design directions, giving you a wider range of ideas to evaluate.

For design exploration, Google's Stitch tool offers a "YOLO mode" that pushes the AI to generate wild, unconventional design options based on an initial concept or screenshot. This is a powerful technique for breaking out of incremental improvements and exploring truly novel solutions.

Instead of writing detailed specs, product teams at Google use AI Studio to build functional prototypes. They provide a screenshot of an existing UI and prompt the AI to clone it while adding new features, dramatically accelerating the product exploration and innovation cycle.

To break out of a linear design path, use AI tools that can generate multiple, distinct design options from a single prompt or command. For example, Magic Patterns’ '/inspiration' command produces four variants, allowing for rapid brainstorming and side-by-side comparison of different approaches.

For quickly building functional AI prototypes, Google's developer-focused AI Studio is superior to consumer apps like Gemini. It provides a better developer experience, allows easy testing of the newest models, and enables users to create a functional app in minutes that can then be exported for development.

Instead of describing UI changes with text alone, Google's AI Studio allows users to annotate a screenshot—drawing boxes and adding comments—to create a powerful multimodal prompt. The AI understands the combined visual and textual context to execute precise changes.

A practical AI workflow for product teams is to screenshot their current application and prompt an AI to clone it with modifications. This allows for rapid visualization of new features and UI changes, creating an efficient feedback loop for product development.

The team dogfoods its product by taking screenshots of their live UI and using AI Studio to generate a functional clone. This allows them to rapidly prototype and iterate on new features for the very product they are building, achieving a working version in just over a minute.