A few weeks ago a colleague and I saw something that stopped us mid-conversation.
Someone had built a digital journey map tool using Gemini. Nothing fancy. But it was exactly adjacent to a problem we'd been sitting on for weeks, mapping features and capabilities across our program teams in a way that actually made sense visually.
My colleague didn't wait. They grabbed the journey map, loaded it into Gemini, and started tinkering. Reacting to what came back. Adjusting. Within a session they had a working web app in exactly the layout we needed.
They didn't describe the solution. They found it by moving toward something and reacting to what they saw.
I've been watching designers struggle with AI for a while now. And what I've come to realize is that the ones who are stuck aren't stuck because they lack curiosity or skill. They're stuck because every AI tool opens the same way: a blinking cursor in a text box.
That's not neutral. That's a design decision. And it implicitly tells you how you're supposed to engage.
If you're a verbal thinker, someone who can reach into their head and describe what they want before they see it, that cursor is an invitation. You're already home.
If you're a visual thinker, someone who knows it when they see it, who works by reacting and riffing off something tangible, that cursor is a wall. You stand there waiting for words that don't come, write something that doesn't land, and quietly conclude that you're just not good at this.
You're not bad at it. You just walked in the wrong door.
What my colleague did wasn't accidental. They didn't open a blank prompt and try to describe a solution. They found something adjacent, fed it in, and reacted to what came back. The tool became a collaborator instead of a blank page.
That's a completely different relationship with AI. And it's one that comes naturally to visual thinkers once they know it exists.
You don't have to have a journey map handy to do this. Say you're trying to design a dashboard. Instead of prompting "design a dashboard for X," find a screenshot of something with the right energy. Paste it in. Tell the tool what's close and what's different. Now you're reacting. Now you're iterating off something real instead of conjuring from nothing.
That's one door.
Here's the thing I realized while writing this: I've been doing the same thing.
Every article I've written in this series started the same way. I saw something, read something, or heard something that made me think twice. A comic about senior designers. A line from a TV show that stopped me mid-conversation. Someone else's solution to an adjacent problem. I didn't open a blank document and generate from nothing. I brought a reaction to a conversation and started riffing until the idea showed up.
The input doesn't have to be visual. It just has to be something that already exists that you can respond to.
That's the second door. And it's available to anyone.
Most AI advice assumes you're a generator. That you can stare at a blank prompt and conjure what you need from the inside out. Some people work that way. A lot of designers don't. Their best thinking happens in response to something, not in advance of it.
The entire discourse around AI and designers defaults to "just start prompting." Which is good advice if generation is your native mode. For everyone else it's like telling someone to just start swimming without mentioning there's a ladder into the pool.
Yes, enterprise constraints are real. Most of us aren't working with the full range of multimodal tools. You get what you get. But the method works within the constraints. You're not waiting for better tools. You're finding your path through the ones you have.
I've written before about AI separating designers with range from those without it. I still believe that. But range isn't just about willingness. It's about finding your on-ramp.
Start with a reaction. Feed it something adjacent. Let the tool be a collaborator instead of a blank page.
You're not generating from nothing. You're moving toward something until you recognize it.
The text box is not the only door. Go find yours.