Velocity - Prompt Figma prototypes then test with humans

@kevin_mcdonagh1 AI simulations before human feedback, all inside Figma is an amazing + unique idea. Big props to Kevin & Rachel, excited to see how designers and product managers use it. :)

@heypaus Thx Paul, there are a number of outcomes. For a Designer who is iterating all the time in Figma you can actually turn on/off the heat-maps on your designs as a separate layer. But also you get top level statues right there in Figma as well. The web reports show you all the paths and are intended to help you reach your product goals.

@heypaus Thanks! As Kevin said, we sure do have heat maps! And as a designer myself, I find them super helpful, such a quick way to spot patterns and pain points. Would love for you to try it out and see for yourself! 🙌

@heypaus Hey, also on top of the reports which Kevin and Rachel presented, you can get a simpler notification via email (this is optional - no need to allow us to send it) when running sims. We are planning some more features in the future that will affect how we present results.

@nicoleastor Thanks so much for this! 🙌 You’ve totally nailed what we’re trying to solve, making it easier for designers and PMs to validate ideas early and communicate their thinking with the team. We’ve been there too, struggling to get clear direction before involving real users so building Velocity to fill this gap has been a real labour of love. So glad it’s resonating 💛

@nicoleastor Thank you for the kind words Nicole, I'm so glad you see the potential. We'd love to hear about your experiences, see any of your prototypes or reports. I'd even be willing to take part in any of your user testing!

@nicoleastor Thank you for your interest. Please, don't hesitate to contact us directly if you would like to see some changes in the plugin after you test it - we are very open to applying what our users want to see and use.

@taibabosnic Hi Taiba, in 100+ Product team interviews we've conducted since the start of this year we've learned teams want to conduct best practice discovery but real world limitations constantly hold them back. There's a stigma in design that AI only replaces jobs, that's absolutely not what we are about. Instead we believe AI supports designers with new super powers. So we've had to battle against initial first impressions of AI user testing trying to replace humans... also just encouraging a new habit! Changing habits is the hardest thing to do, we want everyone to run a Velocity sense check before any human...

@taibabosnic Thanks so much! From a designer’s perspective, making sure the outcome actually felt valuable. We spent a lot of time figuring out how to present the data in a way that’s clear, actionable, and genuinely helps you make design decisions faster.

@taibabosnic Hey, maybe some insights from engineering site - there was a pretty big challenge making it run smoothly and in the background. We utilised some of the freshest engineering strategies and cloud technologies to make our application analyse and produce results in minutes - it is about 2 times faster than initial propositions.

@gamifykaran Thanks Karan, and thanks for your help last month with Boring Launch was a great initial kicker and I'd recommend your service again to enroll in loads of potentially interested communities asap.

@gamifykaran Thanks so much, Karan! We really appreciate the support.

@maksym_skrypka Thank you Maksym, I'd love to hear about how it benefitted you or how it fell short of your expectations whenever you have a chance to try it out.

@maksym_skrypka Thanks, we really appreciate the kind words and we’d love to hear what you think when you give it a go.

@notifyshivam Thanks for your support and help Shivam

@notifyshivam Thank you!! So grateful for your support it means a lot on launch day 🥳

@joey_zhu_seopage_ai Thanks Joey, we hope users will get really creative with their Prompts. Just trying it out with any prompt and watching where it wanders is often surprising and revealing in novel ways. It's a great thinking tool. I've written a short article about how to write the best prompts for velocity here: https://velocity.posthaven.com/guide-writing-prompts-for-ai-user-testing

@joey_zhu_seopage_ai Love this, thank you! We really wanted to meet designers in their workflow Figma!) so it’s easy to get fast feedback without breaking your flow. Also love that you picked up on the human testing side. Its super important to us as we believe that nothing beats real user insights, but Velocity helps you get to a better stage before testing with humans.

@joey_zhu_seopage_ai Thank you for all the kind words. It is not only saving 'back and forth', but also based on calculations that we did, can save a lot of $$$ that you would normally spend on real testers. If you would like to see comparison or have any questions, suggestions - feel free to contact directly.

@kate_ramakaieva This is the most requested feature and is the point from which we started the project. At the moment users are limited to using our canned persona we are calling 'Boomer' who is intended to act like an older North american male. However we are planning extremely detailed updates in future so you can refine your users and they will respond emulate the target audience. However, in order for this to be valuable, it needs to benefit from real market data and not be a poor imitation. To begin with, it's important that every realises that simulations are never currently a replacement for the target audience, they are something different. They are indicative and thinking partners for design. At the moment we are focussed on this thinking partner part. So even though your own audience might be wildly different, if you throw 100 simulations in the direction of a task and 99 of them can't achieve it, that's likely a problem regardless of how accurate they are. We are really excited by this prospect, and of course if any paying customers are enthusiastic enough, we'll help them with custom personas but watch this space!

@kate_ramakaieva So glad you love the idea! Personalised personas will be coming soon!

@kate_ramakaieva Hello and thank you for your interest. We are planning to have different personas in the future, but also working on improving current simulations and building confidence in the results. Different user goals are already here - it is really all in the prompt that you use while starting the simulation. Don't worry, we still work around those prompts so its never a pointless simulation, but we try to make our agent understand what user wants as much as possible while requiring user to keep its natural conversation style.

@miked05 Thx Mike, I bet Prompter is encountering many of the challenges we are also facing! Tbh, our most popular prompt on the platform is "asdfasdfasdf"! There's a lot of education to be done on writing great clear prompts to get good answers. Tools like Prompter suggest at ways to tackle this. We're very early days in helping people with simple suggested prompts but I hope we can innovate in that direction soon. Glad you are checking it out and would love to hear your further feedback.

@miked05 Thanks so much, Mike! Really appreciate the kind words 🙌 And I love what you’re building with Prompter as it’s super relevant for us actually. One of the biggest blockers we see is users not knowing what to prompt when they’re setting up a test. So what you’ve built feels like a game-changer for that moment. I'm interested to now if you've seen any common prompt patterns emerge from your users?

@miked05 Hey, thank you for a comment. As part of development team I would feel bad if this is not clarified - its not only slowing down the process, its completely redefining it and saving huge amounts of time. During the time human gets familiar with the design, our plugin can already run a 100 independent sims for a big confidence of results. After that, there is only a small chance a final reviewer will have any issues to look at. Not to mention report and insights generated on the run.

Hope it will work wonders for you!