Zero-Code Tools Are Optimized For Speed, Not Your Learning
Real talk from a product manager that wants you to succeed as a builder
The old way of building up product sense has disappeared.
We, the previous generation of builders, learned WHY patterns work BEFORE we learned how to implement them. We had no other choice. Questions tattooed behind our eyelids include:
“Why should we build it?”
“Why can’t the user solve this problem with existing solutions?”
“Why does it matter that we build this platform now?”
The newer generation of builders, for whom vibe-coding is their entry point to this world of software, are learning HOW to generate user flows. For example, there's a focus on how to “hack” and optimize prompts to improve the quality of the features over the focus on why something needed to be built in the first place.
There’s a skill which is being highly talked about in product circles that I want to let you in on: it’s product sense.
I am seeing fast and frequent reworks of an entire user experience. I’m experiencing sub par user experiences, or differently put, very simplistic and incomplete product thinking. I’m seeing so many half-formed ideas that are promoted as full-on products and that people are charging money for. It’s not right and not what people expect or deserve in exchange for a solution to whichever problem it might be that day.
Product sense forces you to think very critically about WHY you’re building something, WHY people resonate with it, WHY you’re building features A, B and C instead of what everyone else is building and so on.
I want you to be equipped with this skill because I believe that it’s what gives software purpose. And it’s what will give you the biggest reason to keep on pouring your creativity into what you’re building.
What is product sense?
I’m going to speak with radical candor:
If you can’t tell me why you made certain decisions regarding your product’s user experience, you have low product sense and that’s a requisite, not a nice-to-have- for building good software.
Product sense is not considered a hard skill. And yet, in one of
’s essential PM skills polls, it was one of the top 3 most essential skills that a product manager needs in this new AI-forward bubble we’re building in.According to Jules Walter, the first PM on Slack’s growth team:
Product sense is the skill of consistently being able to craft products (or make changes to existing products) that have the intended impact on their users. Product sense relies on (1) empathy to discover meaningful user needs and (2) creativity to come up with solutions that effectively address those needs.
It’s not the same as saying, “I have taste”, which is highly subjective and contextual. It’s a muscle that indirectly informs the whole experience of creating a digital product.
Thinking about it in reverse, if you have product sense, you’ll be able to:
You bring observations to your team that no one else caught because you’re plugged into what people are thinking and feeling around a given topic
You can look at a design and predict where users will get stuck, before you ship it or present it in reviews
You develop better instincts about what to build next, even when you don’t have perfect data
You start noticing the tiny things that make a product feel good or frustrating—things you would’ve scrolled past before
There are a few more indicators but these are the big ones imo. When you read this list, this should feel like things you’re aspiring towards as a builder because it will save you time, it will make the process feel fun and make you feel like you’re learning as you play.
Product sense is hard earned and isn’t optional.
This might feel familiar: as great as the concept is, the app you’re using feels very similar to the last thing you saw someone post about. It’s ok to use but feels, unpolished, somehow. Very basic features and nothing that, in a fully satisfying way, scratches the itch of the problem you had.
It’s not like how it was 8 years ago when a scrappy MVP would be able to win the trust of the early adopters and keep them engaged. Your first few iterations can be simple but they can’t be painful to use.
Good design is based on a certain set of standards and these standards aren’t objective.
At the point of execution i.e. when you’re building with Lovable, Replit or bolt, you’ve been presented with MINIMAL tools to support the workflow of building. It’s weird to say that, given ✨AI✨, but this is what you’re given to work with; the (1) humble chatbox, (2) an integration with a database platform and (3) apreview pane is what we’re working with as builders.
All the PDFs, courses and LinkedIn hacks are for nothing if they’re not integrated at the point of execution. It’s so easy to bookmark something and not truly study it. On the other end of the spectrum, embedding best practices into the context prompting so that the “magical” AI can spit out decent-ish screens is also doing your learning curve a disservice.
I applaud effort and I applaud innovative thinking but at the end of the day, execution is everything.
Good execution will always miss the mark without good product sense. Good product sense has to be nurtured - you need feedback if something you’re building is incomplete in it’s execution, you need references to what’s worked and why. You don’t need an AI magically doing that work for you.
Here’s what I would do if I was a new builder
Speed will not help you with good execution from Day 1 - it will amplify the baseline product sense you have.
Until zero code tools make product sense supporting features available to you in the moment you’re building, I would bring your attention to resources and habits that have accumulated over the years.
Get the Built for Mars membership and learn about what goes into good UX - better yet, hook up the plugin with your design work on Figma (if it’s in your stack). Your UX Assistant audits your design against all a wide rande of UX case studies and best practices.
I would keep a website like Mobbin pinned and look up how others have tackled certain features or user flows.
Get to know user psychology and cognitive biases as it pertains to loyalty, delight retention and yes, even black-hat UX.
Follow Vitaly Friedman and the people he recommends because he curates fantastic design resources
You need to talk about WHY your product works the way it does
In the early days, I taught myself as much as I could from Medium articles, Twitter, blog posts and events. The rest I learned from actual jobs.
Shipping something, talking to users, sitting in failure, going back to wireframes and step by step, building up that intuition of what works and why it works.
Messages like “Make your ideas real!” and “If you’re not shipping, you should be worried!!” are not created to serve you, the builder. They are created to promote prototyping as THE way to learn over:
Design feedback as a way of learning
User research as a way of learning
Wireframing and sketching as a way of learning
What seems to have replaced the diverse ways of learning, is platform after platform, promoting speed as a moat: not only amongst themselves, but also amongst new builders.
It can be easy to forget the tablestakes of what goes into good design when you’re so focused on being innovative and making novel things.
It’s easy to forget the importance of good and safe user experience design when you’re in execution mode and working alone.
And most of all, it’s easy to forget that it’s ok to have a learning curve and to take your time when you’re operating from a place of fomo and fear of appearing like you can’t keep up.
But here’s the good news:
If you’re building out your ideas and dreams and want others to use what you’re building, the most important and cheapest way to build product sense is to ask “Why”? more. With apps you’re a customer of, with the designs your zero-code tool spits out - ask why it works and why it might not.
You can sharpen your product sense. Like most things that matter, it will take time and can’t be shortcutted. It can’t be learnt through speed - it’s learned by understanding people better. Jasmine Bina said,
“The future isn’t new technology. The future is changed people.”
If you, as someone that is bravely building in public, can embody this mindset, I think you’ll find a deeper meaning and purpose in your work and that’s where the magic really happens.
An ask:
The best solutions, on first use, make you wonder why hasn’t it always been that easy or obvious before. Case in point, after using Your UX Assistant on Figma, I found myself asking out loud:
Why aren’t zero code platforms in particular making partnerships with platforms like Built for Mars?
How are new builders actively learning what goes into good user experiences? Are they actually learning from the guides, playbooks etc.?
Shipping usable software is so much more than vibe-coding prototypes (I say this as something that both ships software professionally and likes to vibe code too).
The vibe coding platform that embeds product and design sense into their platform’s UX, will win builder trust like none other. It will win trust because people will produce interfaces that are less likely to be scrapped and built up again from scratch
Product managers and designers that have 5+ years of experience - I’m putting together a deeper piece on this topic and I’d love your input.
Do you think education should become the responsibility of these platforms?
What are 3 (craft-focused) product or design things, that you think new builders should learn as a must?
What am I not seeing? Which one of these platforms gets it but is still working on how to communicate this value to users?