Vision & Roadmap 🌅 Prompts

SUMMARY

Purpose: Define a clear product vision and align the team’s UX strategy with business goals through tangible design milestones and roadmap planning.

Design Thinking Phase: Define

Time: 60–90 min workshop + 2–4 hours documentation

Difficulty: ⭐⭐

When to use:When a product is entering a new strategic phase or launch windowWhen stakeholder alignment around UX strategy is fragmentedWhen design teams need clarity on quarterly or annual focus areas

What it is

A Vision & Roadmap session is a strategic design activity that aligns the team around a shared product vision and breaks it down into a prioritised UX roadmap. It defines what success looks like for users and how design can progressively deliver on that experience across time.

📺 Video by NNgroup. Embedded for educational reference.

Why it matters

A shared UX roadmap keeps everyone aligned—from C-suite to sprint teams. Without it, design efforts drift or become reactive. Vision & Roadmap sessions help product and design work toward meaningful outcomes with clarity, structure, and focus. They bridge strategic thinking and tangible product goals.

When to use

• At the start of a new product cycle or pivot
• During annual planning or quarterly roadmap definition
• After usability or research reveals a major user pain point needing strategic redesign

Benefits

• Rich Insights: Helps uncover user needs that aren’t visible in metrics.
• Flexibility: Works across various project types and timelines.
• User Empathy: Deepens understanding of behaviours and motivations.

How to use it

Run a Vision & Roadmap workshop with key designers, product managers, engineers, and stakeholders. Lead the team through the following activities:

1. Review Current State: Discuss what’s working, what’s not, and what users are asking for. Pull insights from research and data.
2. Define the UX Vision: Articulate a future state narrative. Describe what a delightful and impactful user experience looks like.
3. Identify Success Criteria: What does success mean for users and the business? Define outcomes, signals, and metrics.
4. Align Cross-Functionally: Integrate product and engineering milestones already in motion or planned.
5. Map the Road Ahead: Break the UX vision into phases or feature groups over time (e.g., Q1–Q4, V1/V2, Alpha→MVP). Include design goals and dependencies.
6. Visualise It: Document as a shareable roadmap using clear labels (e.g., “Reduce support calls by redesigning Help flow — Q2”). Prioritise human impact just as much as technical delivery.

Example Output

UX Vision: “Help new users feel confident and supported within their first 2 sessions.”

Strategic Design Goals Q2–Q4:

• Q2: Redesign onboarding flow to clarify setup steps and eliminate friction
• Q3: Launch contextual in-app guidance based on behavioural triggers (e.g., empty states)
• Q4: Introduce a help centre carousel above footer on key task pages for just-in-time support

Common Pitfalls

• Too vague or visionary: Over-indexing on “dream state” UX concepts without a plan for feasibility and iteration
• No stakeholder input: Creating a design roadmap in a silo leads to misalignment and rework
• No ownership: Not assigning roles or next steps post-session results in the roadmap collecting dust

10 Design-Ready AI Prompts for Vision & Roadmap – UX/UI Edition

How These Prompts Work (C.S.I.R. Framework)

Each of the templates below follows the C.S.I.R. method — a proven structure for writing clear, effective prompts that get better results from ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot, or any other LLM.

C.S.I.R. stands for:

• Context: Who you are and the UX situation you're working in
• Specific Info: Key design inputs, tasks, or constraints the AI should consider
• Intent: What you want the AI to help you achieve
• Response Format: The structure or format you want the AI to return (e.g. checklist, table, journey map)

Level up your career with smarter AI prompts.Get templates used by UX leaders — no guesswork, just results.Design faster, research smarter, and ship with confidence.First one’s free. Unlock all 10 by becoming a member.

Prompt Template 1: “Define a cross-functional UX Vision Statement:”

Define a cross-functional UX Vision Statement:

Context: You are a Senior Product Designer leading innovation on a [complex SaaS workflow tool].  
Specific Info: Recent research highlights [onboarding friction] and [first-time user confusion]. The team has goals involving [user retention] and [support ticket reduction].  
Intent: Craft an inspiring yet actionable UX vision statement that aligns with cross-functional goals and guides roadmap planning.  
Response Format: Output a single paragraph UX vision, followed by 3 core design principles and examples per principle.

If the value prop or key personas are unclear, ask clarifying questions.  
Offer a follow-up idea to align this vision with engineering or product planning.