AI-Era Product Development Method — Design Concept Strategy Starting From a Vision Sketch

In new business development, the design concept is a strategic element that shapes users' first impressions and determines a service's success or failure. This article introduces a lecture that systematically explains how to think about design concepts and the steps for building them.

A common observation is that many people tend to overlook the design aspect when building applications or services. Yet design is one of the most important factors determining a user's first impression — and therefore one of the biggest drivers of a service's success. The goal is to help people who aren't familiar with design think through a design concept systematically, step by step.

Lecturer

Name: Ryuta Hamamoto

Affiliation: TIMEWELL, Co-Founder and Representative Director CEO; Visiting Associate Professor, Shinshu University; Co-Executive Director, ONE X; CHANGE Lead, ONE JAPAN; Special CIO, Shiojiri City

Contents

Lecturer Introduction
Painting the ideal future with a Vision Sketch
Five questions to articulate your values and non-negotiables
Determining the three elements of a design concept
Leveraging the latest trends and tools
Why dialogue with users must never be forgotten
Summary

Painting the Ideal Future With a Vision Sketch

The first step involves an exercise called a "Vision Sketch." In this exercise, participants draw a picture of what a happy customer looks like after using the service they want to build.

No artistic skill is required. I can only draw people as circles and triangles, and that's more than enough. What matters is concretely imagining: what kind of space it is, who is there, what objects are present, what the customer is saying, and what they're thinking.

For an inbound tourism service, for example, you'd draw the ideal scene — a traveler having a wonderful conversation over a delicious meal with a restaurant owner. For an agricultural matching service, you'd draw the joy of a successful connection. The key is to depict the world after using the app, not the act of using it.

When you complete a Vision Sketch, the resolution of your service idea rises dramatically. You develop the ability to judge for yourself, while building the app: "this part doesn't quite fit the concept."

Five Questions to Articulate Your Values and Non-Negotiables

The next step involves questions designed to surface values and non-negotiables. What is happening in that world? What conversations are taking place, and what emotions are arising? What absolutely must not exist in that world? Work through these questions one by one.

The question I consider most important is: "What must absolutely not exist in this world?" Clarifying the things you'd never compromise on — the things that would make you say "that's not what this is" — keeps the service from drifting off-course.

Then comes the fundamental question: "Why should users choose your service over others?" Identifying the differentiating factor — the thing that competing services fall short on but yours delivers — is essential. This is especially relevant today, because the widespread adoption of generative AI has made things possible that simply weren't feasible before.

I spent years at Panasonic, and at one point we tried to build a service that calculated meal calories from a photo. Recently, an American startup built the same thing using generative AI and sold for roughly $45 million USD. That's the kind of shift we're in — new approaches are becoming possible that would have been out of reach just a few years ago.

Next, think about "what should users feel when they use the product?" Should it feel warm? Refined? Swipe-worthy, irresistible to interact with? Articulating the emotion users should feel when they touch the product makes the design direction more concrete.

Differentiation from competitors is also an important consideration. Large companies often hold back their generative AI offerings, which means simply launching can be a differentiator. The moment you're now thinking about building a service is a particularly good one — new technology is coming in, and that makes differentiation easier.

Where the brand should catch people's attention is also worth thinking through. A bridal service might be introduced by a wedding planner; a business service might appear in an executive-focused publication like Harvard Business Review. The right touchpoints vary with the nature of the service.

Determining the Three Elements of a Design Concept

Dig deep into the qualities and characteristics you want users to perceive. Do you want to be seen as cool? Cute-in-a-quirky-way? Locally flavored? Sustainably minded? The right direction shifts significantly depending on your target users.

For a gaming service, neon-lit and flashy visuals will resonate with gamers. For a service targeting women, a softer color palette tends to be better received. For children, playful, bold fonts are the way to go.

Through these questions, you ultimately select your design concept words. From a range of options — approachable, premium, refined, warm, innovative, delicate, energetic, dynamic, elegant, rich, harmonious, original, authentic, unique, human, calm, stable, high-quality — choose the ones that fit your service.

For a medical service, for example, "energetic," "dynamic," and "innovative" might actually feel unsettling to patients. Something more along the lines of "stable quality," "warm," and "enveloping" would be more fitting.

Font selection also matters enormously — a font alone can completely transform the atmosphere. Using a formal, elegant font like Hiragino Mincho for a kindergarten app creates a jarring mismatch. Equally, an overly playful font in a premium service undercuts the brand.

Whether to use fonts that support both Japanese and English, or to specify separate fonts for each language, is another decision worth making deliberately. Tools like Canva and Figma now offer a wide range of fonts, so choose carefully to match your service's concept.

Color selection is equally important. Colors dramatically shape the impression of a service. Olive green, deep forest, lilac, smoky rose — understanding the character of each color before choosing is essential. Gradient-style color schemes are increasingly common, so be clear about which hues you want to include.

Even within white or black, there's a meaningful difference: pure white versus a slightly creamy off-white, jet black versus a blue-tinted charcoal. I personally like a blue-gray that reads as sophisticated without being heavy — a choice that alone can establish a premium feel.

Leveraging the Latest Trends and Tools

Take a look at the latest design trends. Glassmorphism — a glass-like visual effect — and grid-and-border layouts are among the current trends worth noting. One reason grid-and-border layouts have become so widespread is that they're relatively straightforward to execute. They adapt well to both mobile and desktop, and are now used across nearly every category of service.

Incorporating current trends like these helps a product read as polished and contemporary.

When it comes to actually building the application, the tool called V0 lets you generate a fully realized product quickly just by entering instructions in a chat. The Enhance feature automatically expands a vague prompt into something more detailed, so even beginners can build sophisticated applications.

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Why Dialogue With Users Must Never Be Forgotten

That said, be careful not to become so absorbed in building that you end up ignoring what customers actually want. Proactively interview customers, run surveys, or simply have conversations — even casual ones. When dialogue with customers is lacking, you risk missing what's genuinely needed and building something nobody uses.

Design is not an element to be taken lightly. Once the font, color, and concept words are defined, the service's image is essentially set. Through this workshop, I hope everyone finds the design concept that fits their service best — and carries it through into real product development.

Summary

The design concept-building process covered here forms the foundation of successful product development. The approach isn't about chasing surface-level beauty — it's a strategic framework for resonating with users and achieving business goals.

Start with a Vision Sketch that pictures the ideal future of your service, then work backward to determine design direction. Following that sequence produces a consistent product. The process of articulating your values, selecting concept words, fonts, and colors systematically — that's what will make your service genuinely distinct.

In the current moment, generative AI has made ideas possible that weren't before. But more important than technological capability is understanding users' real needs. Don't get so absorbed in building that you lose the user. Keep returning to dialogue with them, regularly.

Tools like V0 and Canva make it possible to build real products without specialized design knowledge. But tools are only means. What matters is the strategic thinking behind the choices: why this design, and what experience you want to create for users.

Most products that fail on design chase surface aesthetics while ignoring user emotions and behavior. By putting these methods into practice, you can avoid those pitfalls and build something users genuinely love.

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Ryuta Hamamoto (Yokohama Business Grand Prix 2024 Excellence Award) on the Practical Law of AI-Driven Development — Using Generative AI as a Sounding Board, the Art of Requirements Definition for Turning Business Ideas Into Reality

Have you ever hit a wall while trying to develop a business with AI? Ambiguous requirements that cause costs to balloon, or AI-assisted conversations that just don't go anywhere — many entrepreneurs are running into the same barriers. So how do you adapt to building a business the AI-era way? Ryuta Hamamoto's answer is a concrete approach to business design using a Lean Canvas, combined with a new way of using generative AI as a "sounding board" — an interactive thinking partner. The practical methodology proven through the WARP program — with 130+ participants — delivers an integrated system from requirements definition through prototype development and regional deployment, designed to reliably turn your business idea into reality.

Lecturer

Name: Ryuta Hamamoto

Affiliation: TIMEWELL, Co-Founder and Representative Director CEO; Visiting Associate Professor, Shinshu University; Co-Executive Director, ONE X; CHANGE Lead, ONE JAPAN; Special CIO, Shiojiri City

Contents

Lecturer Introduction
Business design using a Lean Canvas
Using generative AI as a sounding board
The importance of requirements definition
Pitfalls to watch for during implementation
A rich menu of support
The power of community
Summary

Business Design Using a Lean Canvas

The WARP program, run by TIMEWELL, supports business creation through AI-driven development. Spanning cohorts one through three, the community has now grown to 130+ participants.

The program's defining feature is a practical curriculum that combines business lectures and engineer lectures. The structure is three one-hour business sessions and five two-hour engineer sessions — providing end-to-end support from refining a business idea through to building an actual working application.

The first session begins with building a Lean Canvas. I ask participants to start by defining their target user concretely. Not "government and local authorities" in the abstract — but which department, which role, what mission? For B2B, is it the DX promotion team, the sales division, the R&D group? Identifying who you want to reach first is what matters.

From there, we go deeper on the specific problems that target user faces. It's not enough to surface the visible symptom — you need to dig down to the root cause. I often use Toyota's "Five Whys" as a reference point: drilling from effect to cause reveals the critical problem your service needs to hit.

The severity of the problem is another important consideration. It's possible to build a business around a mild pain point — Facebook doesn't solve a severe problem, but by addressing a small, widespread frustration, it became massive. On the other hand, addressing a deeper, more acute problem tends to make early monetization more straightforward and the path to revenue clearer.

Using Generative AI as a Sounding Board

What I want to emphasize is the active use of generative AI — ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini — throughout this workshop. When you're thinking alone, you can hit dead ends quickly. But talking things through with a generative AI gives you a surprisingly sharp thinking partner.

For competitive analysis, for example: "I'm thinking of building a service like this — are there similar ones globally?" If it exists in Israel or the United States but not yet in Japan, there's potential to win with a time-machine approach, bringing a proven concept to a new market.

Generative AI is also highly capable in channel strategy. Tell it: "List 10 to 20 possible sales channels for this business" — then choose the most efficient ones from the list. This approach helps you find effective ways to reach customers while keeping marketing costs in check.

The Importance of Requirements Definition

What I most want to emphasize is the importance of requirements definition. Anyone who has done AI-driven development knows: if the requirements are off, things go badly. AI has a tendency to lose accuracy the longer the back-and-forth continues. Getting that initial foundation locked in through careful requirements definition is the key to success.

That's exactly why the program is structured the way it is: establish the shape of the business in the business lectures before moving into the engineer lectures. Then progress through requirements definition, development environment setup, prototype implementation, and on to a working application.

Pitfalls to Watch for During Implementation

The engineer lectures begin with setting up a development environment using tools like GitHub. We place a strong emphasis on what we call "accident-free development." If a connection issue arises and isn't resolved quickly, it's easy to get stuck in a loop you can't get out of.

Building in safeguards against security vulnerabilities is also important. In AI-powered development specifically, token cost management becomes a real consideration. Even with a single customer, one extremely heavy user can generate unexpected costs. Clearly separating and understanding fixed versus variable costs is what keeps a business sustainable.

A distinctive feature of our program is how much support is available at no cost. WARP program graduates, through Tokyo Metropolitan Government support, have access to a full range of benefits: business registration assistance, partial coverage of application environment costs, regional deployment support, and collaboration support. The regional deployment and collaboration slots fill up on a first-come, first-served basis. If you want to test your service with real customers but don't have the travel budget, this support can make it happen.

The Power of Community

The program places real value on interaction among participants. Because it's primarily aimed at people seriously considering entrepreneurship, participants come from a wide range of backgrounds — large corporations, startups, students. People set aside their titles, sharpen each other's services, and sometimes introduce potential customers to one another. That kind of community power accelerates individual business growth.

Our goal is for anyone — even those with zero AI-driven development experience — to reach at least a pre-production state. "I just want to build an app and develop the skill" is one mindset — but since you're building anyway, build something good.

The idea I hold onto is "text is king." Articulate your ideas and thinking in writing, and write them down concretely. All of it becomes an asset and raw material for requirements definition. Don't let your thinking stall — use generative AI as a powerful sounding board, and reliably turn your business idea into reality. That is WARP's mission.

Summary

What I've proven with 130+ WARP participants is a formula for success in AI-driven development. It comes down to three elements: precise requirements definition, interactive thinking with generative AI, and mutual support within a community.

The most important of these is treating generative AI not as just another tool, but as a sounding board for deepening your thinking. Using generative AI in dialogue across competitive analysis, channel strategy, pricing, and more lets you push a business idea to depths you simply can't reach alone.

Requirements definition is the single most critical factor determining whether AI-driven development succeeds or fails. Starting development with ambiguous requirements leads to situations that are hard to recover from. That's why it's essential to use a Lean Canvas to identify the core of the problem, clarify the value being offered, and lock in the business model before writing a single line of code.

And then there's the power of a community where participants from different backgrounds set aside their titles, sharpen each other's services, and grow together. This is what accelerates individual business growth.

In the AI era, technology alone is not enough — and business sense alone isn't either. Integrating both, with generative AI as an ally and peers as fellow travelers, is the approach. This is the key to reliably turning your business idea into reality and warping it to the next level.

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"I want to solve a problem I see around me — but when I try to actually make something, I don't know where to start." If that's where you are, WARP might be exactly what you need.

Hidetaka Matsuhara, who works in quality assurance at an aviation company, used the skills he learned through WARP to build an app tackling marine debris. WARP isn't just a place to learn app development — it holds the potential to take your first step toward solving a social challenge. Here's the story of what Matsuhara experienced, and the essence of what he found.

Hidetaka Matsuhara (松原英孝)

Maintenance quality assurance at a major aviation company.

Originally from Ishigaki Island, Okinawa. Since 2025, has been working on the marine debris problem alongside his main job, driven by personal experience. Runs a wide range of activities including beach clean-up events and public lectures. Through participating in WARP, experienced app creation and deployment for the first time.

Contents

The Ishigaki Island sea that set the course for Matsuhara's participation in WARP
Learning and growth in WARP — the joy and struggle of turning ideas into reality
Matsuhara's original card game app for fighting marine debris
The possibilities WARP opens up — your idea could change the world
Summary

The Ishigaki Island Sea That Set the Course for Matsuhara's Participation in WARP

— Please start by introducing yourself.

Matsuhara: I work in quality assurance in the maintenance division of an aviation company. I'm originally from Ishigaki Island in Okinawa, and when I went back home for the first time in a few years, I came face to face with garbage washing up on a beach I used to walk along as a child.

I used to think of it as someone else's problem, but when I brought my own children there and saw it, I realized: this isn't what it's supposed to look like. That was the turning point that led me to think seriously about what I could do about marine debris.

— I see. And that's what brought you to WARP?

Matsuhara: Yes. I learned about the WARP program and signed up with a sense of excitement — maybe I could actually build something myself. Through WARP, I felt I'd be able to turn what I was thinking into reality, make adjustments as I went, and eventually be able to hold my own in a conversation if I ever outsourced development.

Learning and Growth in WARP — The Joy and Struggle of Turning Ideas Into Reality

— What did you work on in WARP?

Matsuhara: I was primarily a student — taking what I was taught and applying it to what I wanted to build. For example, I explored whether I could visualize beach cleanup activities, looking at existing services as references while thinking through the requirements. I worked through the lectures while feeling the difficulty of building something, gradually turning what I had in mind into something real.

— What specifically did you build?

Matsuhara: I designed a service for visualizing beach cleanup activities — one where taking a photo and uploading it would earn some kind of incentive. The idea is that accumulating that data could help identify where garbage tends to collect.

— Was there anything you found difficult along the way?

Matsuhara: When I started thinking about the details — how to store data, how to assign points — it felt endless. So I decided to start simple: just the entry points, like user registration and the points system.

Building an application from zero was also hard. I had almost no app development experience, so there was a gap between what was being explained and what I was actually doing. That said, I had once built a workflow improvement app for work, so I had some mental model to hold onto.

— Did you make any discoveries through WARP?

Matsuhara: Things I used to think "that seems too hard" started feeling like "maybe I can actually do that." Even if I couldn't do it at my current level on my own, knowing that WARP offers ways to learn and people I can consult — that itself is a huge asset.

Matsuhara's Original Card Game App for Fighting Marine Debris

— After learning app creation and deployment in WARP, what kind of activities have you been doing?

Matsuhara: I had the opportunity to teach a two-hour lesson at an elementary school. I thought the kids would find it boring if they just listened to me talk, so I built a card game app about marine debris — something they could learn through play — and had them try it.

— Can you tell us a bit about the game?

Matsuhara: Players draw event cards and action cards related to the garbage problem, and depending on the choices they make, the ocean's pollution level changes. You can physically experience, through play, how your own actions can change the world.

The kids got way more into it than I expected — they played through it over and over. I got the sense they picked up more than I'd even tried to teach. I came to really understand the importance of not just telling children things, but putting them in a state where they can absorb it and think for themselves.

— That's wonderful. What do you hope to build on from here?

Matsuhara: First, I want to create more educational materials like this game — ones that create moments of awareness. The goal is to be able to provide content tailored to different audiences and regions, whatever the issue. Eventually, I'd like to connect it to a service that lets people record and share beach cleanup activities.

▼ Card game app by Matsuhara — teaching children about marine debris through play

The Possibilities WARP Opens Up — Your Idea Could Change the World

— Finally, who would you say WARP is for?

Matsuhara: I'd highly recommend it to anyone interested in app development — especially people who have thought "I wish an app like this existed." Even if you don't know how to build it, WARP lets you learn and move forward together. If you get stuck along the way, the instructors are there to talk it through with you, so there's nothing to worry about.

— Do you have a message for readers?

Matsuhara: I think many of you have things you wish you could do, things you've felt in everyday life. WARP is a place to build the skills to make those things happen. The skills you develop can be applied to solving other problems too. I experience WARP as a place to learn not just app development, but approaches to solving problems. If any of this resonates with you, I'd encourage you to join WARP. A whole new world will open up.

Summary

Hearing Matsuhara's story, I was genuinely moved by the passion he brings to the marine debris problem and by how he's applying what he learned through WARP toward solving a social challenge.

App development is not the goal — it's a means for making the world better. That's what he helped me see.

The idea that Matsuhara's work could give many people a moment of awareness, and nudge them toward action — I found myself genuinely excited hearing about the world he's working to create.

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AI-Era Product Development Method — Design Concept Strategy Starting From a Vision Sketch

AI-Era Product Development Method — Design Concept Strategy Starting From a Vision Sketch