HOW I VALIDATED DESIGN DECISIONS BEFORE WRITING PRODUCTION CODE

Summary from the TLDR Design newsletter

A senior director at Slack used AI-assisted coding to create interactive prototypes that test design decisions before production, rather than just demonstrating already-made choices. He built tools to explore gallery layout algorithms and max-width strategies using real data distributions, replacing weeks of production iteration with just a few days of prototyping. This approach shifted the focus from "which option looks right" to "which option holds up everywhere" by testing designs against actual usage patterns and edge cases.