Most designers design the "Happy Path." This is the path where the user remembers their password, has a perfect internet connection, and clicks exactly where you want them to.
In the real world, the Happy Path accounts for maybe 60% of cases. The other 40%? That's where users get frustrated, quit, and uninstall.
The amateur designs for the best-case scenario. The Director anticipates the worst-case scenario.
We will not wait until the high-fidelity prototype is done to find the holes in our logic. We will use AI to simulate a frustrated, confused, and chaotic user to "break" our user flow while it is still just text.
The User-Simulator Play
1. The Text Flow: Don't open Figma yet. Write out your user flow in a simple numbered list (e.g., 1. User opens app, 2. User enters phone number, 3. User gets OTP).
2. The Red Team: Command your AI to act as a ruthless QA (Quality Assurance) Tester. Feed it your list and ask it to find every logic gap, dead end, and edge case.
3. The Patch: Use the AI's report to add the missing steps (e.g., "Error state for wrong OTP") before you start designing the UI.
The 'Logic Stress-Test' Prompt
(Copy the text below, replace the parts in [brackets], and paste it into your AI tool of choice.)
Act as a Senior UX Researcher and QA Tester. I am designing a user flow for [Describe feature, e.g., a Split Bill feature].
Here is the "Happy Path" I have designed: [Paste your numbered list of steps here]
Your Task: Identify 5 critical "Edge Cases" or "Unhappy Paths" where this flow might break or frustrate the user.
Focus on: Missing error states, internet connectivity issues, user mistakes, and system timeouts.
For each issue: Explain why it is a problem and suggest a necessary UI state to handle it (e.g., "You need a 'Retry' button here").
Director's Note
Fixing a logic error in a text document takes 30 seconds. Fixing it in a high-fidelity prototype takes 3 hours. Fixing it in code takes 3 days. A Director solves problems when they are cheapest to fix: at the very beginning.
Before & After
The Context: A "Forgot Password" flow.
The 'Before' (The Happy Path):
User clicks "Forgot Password."
User enters email.
User gets link.
User resets password. (Looks perfect, right?)
The 'After' (The AI Simulation):
The AI Simulator catches these holes:
Issue: What if the user enters an email that isn't registered?
Fix: Design an "Account not found" or generic "If this email exists..." message.
Issue: What if the reset link expires?
Fix: Design a "Link Expired" screen with a "Resend" button.
Issue: What if the user didn't receive the email?
Fix: Add a "Resend Email" countdown timer to the success screen.
P.S. Your logic is now bulletproof. The flow works. But a working app with bad writing is still confusing. Words are the interface.
Next week, we run The AI Copy-Director Play: How to stop using "Lorem Ipsum" and use AI to write concise, human-sounding microcopy that guides your users.