We’ve all been in some version of this meeting. A 60-minute UX review is running late. The team is poring over different approaches to the same problem. Each approach is plausible. None are provable. The meeting ends in frustration, without a decision.
User research is trying to predict the future: what will customers do when we put our shiny new product in front of them? The temptation is to just ask them: what would you do? But imagination questions are the least reliable. Good product sense is one solution, drawing on pattern recognition from years of watching real users. But when the question is hard—no clear right answer, no obvious precedent, no behavior to recall—product sense devolves into guessing.
What this essay explores
- Recognize when plausible product approaches cannot be resolved through discussion alone.
- Distinguish unreliable imagination questions from evidence grounded in real user behavior.
- Identify when product sense is useful—and when it has become guessing.
Key takeaway
AI-powered prototyping turns the product development process into a thinking tool, not just a delivery pipeline.
