How to prototype with AI in hours - Prerna Singh (CPTO, Avaaz, Meetup, IBM)

Dec 10, 2025

Prerna Singh, Chief Product and Technology Officer at Avaaz, shares her journey in AI-driven prototyping. She reveals how AI can act as a 'thought partner,' accelerating the transition from concept to clickable prototypes. By utilizing tools like ChatGPT and Lovable, Prerna emphasizes the importance of human insight alongside technology. She also discusses balancing solo and team efforts, the limitations of AI, and the concept of 'sandbox mode' for experimentation before moving to structured application. Her insights redefine how we think about product development.

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INSIGHT

AI Speeds Prototyping But Not Judgment

AI accelerates prototyping but cannot replace human judgment about users and outcomes.
Prerna Singh stresses protecting human decision-making as the core value AI cannot replicate.

ANECDOTE

Community Organising Became A Logistics Mess

Prerna built a product-leader breakfast community and found logistics buried her in spreadsheets and emails.
Frustrated, she decided to prototype a tailored community tool herself using AI on nights and weekends.

ADVICE

Use Socratic Prompts To Define The MVP

Use ChatGPT as a Socratic thought partner by asking one question at a time and probing assumptions.
Turn that conversation into clear decisions and an MVP prompt before moving to building tools.

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In this episode, Prerna Singh, CPTO at Avaaz, walks us through how AI is reshaping the way we prototype, learn and build digital products. Rather than replacing teams or skipping straight to production, she argues that AI shines when used as a “thought partner” to accelerate early‑stage experimentation.

Through her own journey building a community platform on weekends, she demonstrates how tools like ChatGPT, Lovable (and later Claude / Replet) and Figma AI enabled her to move from blank page to clickable prototype in hours — while retaining the human insight, iteration and context that underpin good product work.

The conversation reframes common assumptions about “fast‑AI = bypass human work,” and instead proposes a balanced adoption path: start in “sandbox mode,” learn and play — before graduating to “architect mode” where the real value to business begins.

Chapters
00:00 – Introduction & AI’s impact on product cycles
01:43 – Meet Prerna Singh: her background in product and community building
03:50 – The community problem: logistics over connection
05:11 – Turning to AI to solve her own problem
06:50 – What AI can’t do: user insight and human judgment
08:08 – From waterfall to short-cycle prototyping
10:54 – Using ChatGPT as a Socratic thought partner
13:07 – Working solo vs team: where AI fits
17:17 – From prompt to prototype: using Lovable
19:06 – Iterating with Figma AI and other tools
23:00 – Real feedback from real users
25:02 – Creating a feedback knowledge base with AI
26:16 – AI vs design sprints: same principles, new tools

Our Hosts
Lily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She’s currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She’s worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath.

Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury’s. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group’s Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether) and Product Coaches. He’s the author of What Do We Do Now? A Product Manager’s Guide to Strategy in the Time of COVID-19. A recovering music journalist and editor, Randy also launched Amazon’s music stores in the US & UK.