Outputs are the easy part
It’s tempting to design a product around the output it produces.
The summary. The image. The draft. The report. The recommendation. The result.
Outputs are tangible. They’re easy to demo. They make the value of the product obvious in a single glance.
But users don’t live inside the output. They live inside the workflow that produced it — and the next workflow that uses it. Focusing only on the output is one of the most common mistakes in product design, especially with AI-powered tools where the output can be impressive on its own.
If you want to build something users actually rely on, you have to design for what happens before, around, and after the moment the output appears.
What a workflow actually is
A workflow is the sequence of decisions, actions, and tools ...
