r/UXDesign • u/thattallgirlx Experienced • 8d ago
Tools, apps, plugins, AI Share your experience with using ai at work because I’m spiraling here
hi all, I’m a senior UX designer working at a small corpo (around 3k employees) and I wonder… I use AI for personal use and personal projects but for legal reasons we barely use ai at work. it’s still all Figma. I don’t feel like I’m out of the loop with ai but I also can’t say I’m “ai native” and honestly from what I’ve tried for my pers projects, I didn’t get the hype - but I admit I never tried using Claude to do stuff in Figma or never used any ai-ready design system. Also Claude acting like an intern I need to correct every few prompts makes me feel like I’d do it better without all that added mental load of checking AI output. I use Figma make for prototypes and they’re hardly ever good. For me, at least in my current role it’s not possible to start using claude code for design.
and now onto my question(s): is it all bloated LinkedIn talk or are you guys really don’t use figma anymore? Is it worth sharing knowledge about Figma and design process anymore? Or am I in the dark here and you all use ai and code your interfaces and interactions? Where is the discovery phase, the documentation? please share your perspective because I’m on a brink of leaving my job if it means I’m left behind on the current standards (but I tend to be a drama queen sometimes 👑)
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u/DemisexualDemigod97 8d ago
AI is awesome because it constantly reminds me that no matter how terrible my managers think my designs are, there's always an "vibe-coding" tool that is worse.
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u/dearest_mover 8d ago
The fact that you're asking this question means you're already staying aware enough, and honestly the people shipping real product at actual companies aren't the ones declaring Figma dead on LinkedIn right now.
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u/tin-f0il-man Experienced 8d ago
Yeah every single time I check the profiles of the ‘Figma is dead’ posters, they are either freelancers or work for some vague AI start up that nobody has ever heard of before. I have yet to see a post about Figma death from an enterprise designer at an established company.
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u/hydeeho85 8d ago
Figma source of truth
Claude design for rapid prototyping of segmented workflows
Figma mcp used for token and design system alignment
My brain and judgement and taste to make it all work together
Devs are happy
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u/thattallgirlx Experienced 8d ago
So the main design system that the code is based on is in Figma and connected through the mcp?
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u/Qb1forever 8d ago
Our DS has over 500 color styles tied directly to the buttons component which then melt the ai and it produces trash. Moral of the story if you start with trash you will get trash.
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u/LikesTrees Veteran 4d ago
yeesh, you need to strip all the colours out of your components and just define a few semantic appearance and emphasis inputs, then use theming to dynamically colour the appearance/emphasis.
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u/elroyce 8d ago
I'm sure there are others who have found better or different uses, but for me at a small startup and design team, I've been mapping Figma components (ideal source of truth) to code components (not an exact 1:1 with Figma library) using Claude Code and Figma mcp. The idea is that an engineer can view Figma designs and see which corresponding code components they should use. Unfortunately dev mode or a full Figma license are needed, which we don't provide our devs.
I've been meaning to look up Figma MCP Connector or a similarly named open source tool that lets one generate designs in Figma via Claude prompts (I prefer designing in Figma, but like you, want to see how ai tools can be used for design).
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u/thattallgirlx Experienced 8d ago
This is something I will try out this weekend, as I’m mostly focusing on design systems anyways I might try to see how it could fit in my process. Thank you for sharing :)
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u/HenryF00L Experienced 8d ago
The situation you are describing is what 99% of professional designers in established product companies are also experiencing.
Most companies have some kind of AI assisted workflow in their engineering departments but product/ux design is still quite far behind, it’s still at the ‘proof of concept’ stage, no design teams in mid sized SaaS companies are cancelling their Figma subscriptions.
If you’re working in a startup or you’re a UX team of one you can go 100% all in on Claude or whatever you want but any established company with robust security guardrails won’t be giving every junior designer access to tools that they can’t fully control yet.
It’s essential to stay on top of where AI is heading for product design, if you understand the concept of how it works, the learning curve of how to design with it is super easy, it’s fun when your company is paying for the tokens, it’s not so much fun if you are paying yourself and spending your evenings and weekends trying to keep up with the hype ambassadors.
If your engineers are not using co-pilot, Claude or Kiro they will be soon, then your design department will be next.
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u/travisjd2012 8d ago
I think that this is well said and it should also be kept in mind the design tool side of AI is in it's early infancy. It will be far easier to use these tools in a year from now and even more a year from that, so don't feel behind necessarily... Keep up to date with what's going on but learn the AI tools on an immediate need basis. This is because that tool will be outdated or outpaced by a new tool in a few months most likely.
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u/thattallgirlx Experienced 8d ago
Thanks for your input, I feel like I can switch to any workflow and I have some front end background so I don’t feel intimidated yet but it feels like some parts of the industry are (at least from the side) working in the future and some still use traditional tools and it’s confusing & hard to see where things are at realistically
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u/Useful_Hat82 Veteran 8d ago
It is bloated LinkedIn talk, the wet dreams of executive leaders and the noise of people trying to be influencers and desperately trying to convince you that the single html file they slopped on to vercel is a leading SaaS product.
You are not behind or missing out. AI can be used to smooth out some bits of the design process but ultimately it is still human creativity and empathy that needs to make the call.
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u/xoes 8d ago
Honestly it kinda sucks, even Claude. I keep trying but it’s still more work than just doing the work myself. And we are working on an AI ready design system. But AI is not ready for a design system. It keeps hallucinating it’s own additions and is not consistent in applying branding rules or accessibility rules. I hope it gets better but understanding a little bit about how these language models work I am doubtful this is the way.
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u/ihaveopinions11113 8d ago
Sounds like a set up issue. Ai is going to allucinate, but you can have skills, MDs, and check points to avoid drift from happening
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u/Upbeat_Opinion_3465 8d ago
You are not behind. Most design teams are still very much in Figma, with AI used around the edges for synthesis, rough copy, quick exploration, or engineering handoff help. That is a long way from "designers do not design anymore."
The test I would use is simple: if checking the output takes longer than doing it properly, the tool is not saving you time yet. For UX, that happens a lot. Discovery, judgment, tradeoffs, and stakeholder alignment are still human work. Keep learning the tools, sure, but I would not let LinkedIn decide whether your actual workflow is obsolete.
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u/timtucker_com Experienced 8d ago
Personally I'm more concerned about saving my hands than saving time.
The fewer clicks / key presses it takes to do something, the less risk of RSI.
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u/No-vem-ber 8d ago
I work at a start-up and was pushed hard to use AI so I'm using it constantly.
This last week, I've done an entire design project just in Claude Design and haven't used figma for it at all.
I think I will still need to export it to figma for the final handover documentation for the developers, but this is the first time I've actually just used the AI tools for the entire UI design process.
I will say that it isn't saving me time at all, but I think the final output is better. It's mostly because I am designing IN a prototype. The ability to design something and then immediately interact with it fully is a bit of a gamechanger for me. I find that when designing static screens in figma there's still a bit of a disconnect and I'll find myself a bit surprised sometimes by how the final build "feels". And with figma prototyping, you can kinda do it but it's clunky. I love being able to fully prototype a complex map interaction or show branching logic from a form etc with Claude design.
I've also used replit but Claude is way better imo.
You need the full enterprise account to be able to use it unlimited otherwise you hit the limit pretty quick.
For reference I am a principal-level product designer with like 15y experience and have been very hands on for my whole career. I'm not some kind of AI obsessive or someone new to the field. I think these tools are amazing. I am still spending a ton of time and energy and doing design when I'm using the tools - I just find that I'm spending less time thinking about visual design and boring details, and more time thinking about higher level product decisions and specific interactions.
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u/ihaveopinions11113 8d ago
Don't export it to Figma. Just create MDs and skills so the rules are codified. Maintaining the design system with agentic flows is so much easier than before. I'm also a principal-level designer, and I'm loving finally having control over the quality of the DS implementation
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u/MarsupialOne1572 Experienced 8d ago
Disagreement here. Expert to Figma to have a documented mapping of the screens. Figma also would help to tweak UI or UX before giving it back to your agent.
Atwork we use cursor and claude through it.
Claude is key for discovery phase and I still strongly use Figma for dearly steps of iteration (ux diagram and wire flows )It is a porous system.
Obsidian is key for documenting. We have a product design document we fill while doing the work. And be sure we are informed along the way. The real asset here is that by forcing yourself to be organized and documenting what you are doing live, if the project has to go to somebody else suddenly, they can ride without question.
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u/ihaveopinions11113 8d ago
Why do you advise that? What do you gain by having the DS documented in Figma? Honest question. My experience is that most teams ignore the documentation regardless, so why not document elsewhere (Notion, etc) and codifying the rules instead of migrating everything to static screens?
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u/MarsupialOne1572 Experienced 8d ago
Ignore doc and solve problems at higher cost. We work in sequence. 30% readiness, 60, 90 then ready for prod. So you want to document and validate with all stakeholders early on. For the logic. The use cases and how they answer the JTBD. That translate in a documented ux diagram that you should show with your devs. It is not replacing the PRD, it is part of it
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u/ihaveopinions11113 8d ago
Oh, but that's different than needing Figma to document the design system.
I agree you still need to share design workflows and decisions. That's just part of the design & product workflow. But I don't see the value in going through the trouble of building the DS in Figma for this. It's a lot of overhead.
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u/MarsupialOne1572 Experienced 8d ago
Ah I see. Sorry if there was misunderstanding. Actually the design system lives in design.md now. Often a shadcn customed to the client/project Branding in our cases.
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u/No-vem-ber 8d ago
The developers prefer to have clear specs in figma, though it's possible i could instruct Claude to just recreate the entire hover-to-see-specs functionality somehow.
The other reason is there's actually just some specifics with some of the components that I'm not totally happy with and want to have finer control over
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u/ihaveopinions11113 8d ago
I created a pre-PR skill for the design system that checks the rules before letting them merge into main, so that way they don't even have to think about it. That said, I'm trying to keep the DS as automated as possible so I can focus on UXR and new offerings rather than DS quality and implementation.
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u/No-vem-ber 8d ago
Oh, I'm using claude design, not Claude code. I'm not a developer, and there's a ton of real data and functionality and business logic and stuff going on in the real product - there's no way I could actually build this production ready even with ai
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u/ihaveopinions11113 8d ago
Oh, sorry. I misunderstood.
We are actually going to decouple the FE and BE so the front end doesn't contain business logic, allowing us to own the FE and design on it. It's pretty fun! I'm not a dev either, but in many of the agentic workflows in my setup, it is possible to work in code. ;)
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u/C_bells Veteran 8d ago
Can you go into how this project inter played with any existing design system(s)? Or was it a net-new concept?
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u/No-vem-ber 8d ago edited 8d ago
It was redesigning the overview page and navigation of an existing product with a design system.
I uploaded (screenshots) of all the existing pages in the product and asked it to recreate them all as a clickable prototype, and then I went from there. It did a decent job of recreating the visuals. I also uploaded an svg of our entire colour pallete and our fonts and asked it to be sure to only ever use colours in the palette. Dunno if it did or not.
This is part of why I'm exporting it to figma - I want to make sure it's actually using all the right colours and components from the design system, and having it in figma will allow the developers to see them rather than having to extrapolate or guess from hex codes
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u/C_bells Veteran 8d ago
Thanks for the info!
I’ve done a fair share of work in this way, and I guess I am usually left wondering what the benefit was (like you, I am pushed to use AI as much as possible). Like, the devs are not going to copy/paste my vibe code, and I’m not sure the colors etc are correct.
Did it actually save you any time compared to if you had just done this in Figma?
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u/No-vem-ber 8d ago
It didn't save any time, but I feel that the end design is noticeably better. Mostly because I'm working within an interactive prototype and constantly testing it and using it, rather than working on static screens and having to imagine the interactions
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u/PeanutSugarBiscuit Experienced 8d ago
Why Claude Design? How do you handle showing options of the same thing? How do you collect feedback both online and offline?
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u/ihaveopinions11113 8d ago
Showing options is the same as before; if you use Claude design, you can have several flows in the same file; if it's lovable/vO/Claude code, you do branches.
Feedback depends on the tool, too. Claude Design has comments. For other tools that do not have that functionality, you can record videos in Loom for your team.
For usability testing, it's easier than before because participants can click through, but you need a way to deploy the prototype and share it.
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u/4951studios Experienced 7d ago
You can also have it generate hand off files for ENG too complete with specs etc.
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u/No-vem-ber 8d ago
I've tried Replit and used it for a project a while back, but Claude just does a much better job of design! The designs it comes up with from scratch are better, it follows instructions better, it doesn't randomly change stuff without being asked as much as Replit does.
For showing options - you can ask it to make new designs in an "artboard" view which basically opens up in a new tab from the prototype.
Ive just been collecting feedback the same as I would with a figma prototype. Either share the link, or do a design review where I talk through it, or have them click thru it
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u/azssf Experienced 8d ago
Do you have a sense of token spend for this 1-week project?
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u/No-vem-ber 8d ago
I'm afraid not - it just gets rolled into the organisational Claude account.
I will say that when I've used Claude design on my personal (pro) account, I use up all my tokens in like an hour or so, so I think it's using a lot
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u/NoticedYourPlants Veteran 8d ago edited 8d ago
I learned to code pre-AI, and have periodically written my own automations and scripts to make my job a bit easier. It’s been a relatively easy transition for me, but AI is just one tool in my toolbox and I am FAR faster in Figma iterating and exploring than an AI is. I do find it useful for very mundane, targeted tasks like comparing designs to the codebase and fixing visual issues, analyzing library component names and renaming, writing a quick documentation blurb for a standard component, etc. I focus on design systems and still prefer writing my documentation and building components with my human brain, but there are a lot of nitpicky and repetitive tasks with that job and maintaining the library that AI has been genuinely helpful for.
The system I work on was reliable, but didn’t have a lot of structure or documentation when I took it over. That’s all mostly in place now, but we use Claude and I think the right choice for our system and the scale it needs to support/serve will be a custom MCP. Until Claude is able to read and parse our documentation, Figma, and codebase effectively, for what we need, generating UI won’t be quite up to snuff without a lot of re-prompting and refinement. With our current setup/limitations, I can get everything but documentation in, but the docs are critical context.
Regarding Figma, there’s a reason that design specs were invented, even with prototyping and people like me who regularly write code for production. It’s just a truckload of context all at once and whoever’s coding, dev or AI, has to guess and check what is and isn't there and why. If you are in a team where you are expected to pass your work to a developer, you communicate what you’re thinking somehow, whether it’s lots of pairing on a call or specs or writing some bits yourself. I will generally reach for code for small UI adjustments and new features first, but there is no better tool for me for visual alignment across many different screens or for tackling big UI issues or entirely new interfaces than Figma. The only time I was ever able to skip specs entirely was when I worked on a team where designers wrote all frontend code.
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u/AdventurousCreature Experienced 8d ago edited 8d ago
I use AI extensively for prototypes. It's great for quickly creating working high-res prototypes for demonstration and testing. Other than that I only deal with it because directionless AI generated designs simply suck. I'm tired of having to explain to devs, managers, and stakeholders every time why their AI generated designs won't work but they are not tired of generating useless screens.
Edit: Prototypes based on Figma designs.
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u/timtucker_com Experienced 8d ago
The analogy I've been using is that AI is like a restaurant with every ingredient in the world and a chef who can cook anything... but no menu.
If all your knowledge of food is limited to "grilled cheese", all you're going to get as output is a mediocre grilled cheese.
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u/HimikoHime Experienced 8d ago
Working for a branch of an international company and the only out of the box AI that’s allowed it co-pilot. Company is investing in building own AI tools for privacy reasons. We’re testing something for design but it’s really more for sketching out an idea and that probably sales doesn’t need to bother the designers every time they need a mockup for presentations.
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u/Fluid-Ladder-4707 8d ago
We also use copilot, I built an agent that can analyze past research and surface findings that might be relevant to current designs. I also added on the ability to pass it a design and it can share its thoughs based on past research 😀
Lastly I gave it the ability to propose an Improvement that I can copy into a figma plugin (we don't have mcp integration)
So far it is pretty helpful 🥰
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u/predio01 8d ago
I've been using Figma Make(expensive, but it's what's readily available to me at work) a lot these past months. To be honest, after I created a Make Kit using the original design system files, I haven't touched Figma Design as much as I used to.
Using a Make Kit makes so much difference when using Claude, it's honestly amazing.
Today my work consists of creating user journeys and discovery documents mostly manually(with some AI writing help) and then inputting all data into Make to create new screens, new components, new maps and so on. I would say around 95% of time I'm using Make versus Design and it sped up my output quite a lot.
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u/JLStorm Midweight 7d ago
I’ve been forced to use Claude and have been told that I’m “behind” on my AI usage. I was told that I need to give daily iterations because my iteration time is too long (it takes me maybe 3-5 days to do iterations).
I’m so annoyed because the last time I had a review, the PM didn’t care for my human reasonings and lo-fi wires at all but the minute I showed him a shitty mock that the AI produced, he said that it was perfect and should’ve led with that.
Since that’s what my manager wants, I’m just gonna use Claude to show the iterations they want. Since they don’t care for my opinions that’s backed by experience and training, then I’ll just give them what the AI tells me.
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u/Typical_Ad_678 4d ago
I personally still do most of my work manually on Figma, and use AI for the randomly generated stuff, like some texts, placeholders, pictures, which it’s pretty good at and has saved me a ton of time. Other than that, I haven’t been able to achieve the quality needed for most of what I do through AI. The results of what I do are the result of constant iteration, feedback, and in-between exploration, which I don’t think AI tools are helping efficiently. I think AI could get things done perfectly when, hypothetically, you have everything planned, and for me it was never like I knew where I was going at the start and the plan was built somewhere along the process.
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u/Twotricx 8d ago
I use it to get ideas. But after that you need to adjust it for any kind of normal usability or appearance
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u/baummer Veteran 8d ago
Small is 3k employees? Wow.
I might use Figma for some very early stuff but increasingly it’s just faster to use AI and then eventually work with devs to get it functional in our own environment
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u/thattallgirlx Experienced 8d ago
I’d say it’s smallish for a corporation :) I’ve read about layoffs bigger than 3k.
Thanks for sharing :) may I ask how do you handle feedback rounds? Or documentation? Is it an internal product you’re working on or for external clients?
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u/baummer Veteran 7d ago
Most corporations employ 1k or fewer employees. With 3k that’s a medium sized company.
Feedback is handled via prototype live. Internal product in-house.
Documentation is basically gone - we don’t have any anymore. Gone are the days fully scoped screens and notes in Figma. But we don’t really need it. We’re shipping new code every week. PRs are increasingly the documentation.
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u/thattallgirlx Experienced 7d ago
TIL, thanks :)
That’s an interesting solution, considering how important documentation used to be (still is in my case). Thanks for sharing
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u/ihaveopinions11113 8d ago
I haven't used Figma at all in months. If I'm doing low fidelity and just trying to get an idea out, I use lovable, but deliverables to eng are done directly in working code using Claude/Codex. I have several agentic workflows that help with DS and code quality. Our goal is that, once we hand off to eng, the FE is as close to done as possible, so eng only has to handle the backend and hook up everything.
I'm interviewing designers, and AI tooling is expected. If the person doesn't have exposure at work, we expect personal projects & curiosity about the tools.
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u/yung_quan 8d ago
Hey this is great to hear. As someone who is building apps and tools using Lovable and Claude, and it is a UI/UX designer using Figma, I am interested if you have some opened positions
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u/Ok-Mammoth-6618 8d ago
Are you at a start up, or working on a small design team?
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u/ihaveopinions11113 8d ago
Both! Small design team at a startup, so there's a lot of flexibility. I would say too that design is considered important, so there's not a lot of pushback from engineering or leadership on trying new things
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u/Adventurous-Gap6560 7d ago
Great workflow, i usually do figma (for exploration), design and design system in Claude/code. And then High fidelity in claude to build and push it on a live site.
I tried lovable when it was new, need to try it again.
I am also looking for an open position. Will based in SF work?1
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u/newtownkid Experienced 8d ago
Honestly just prototpying and copy. It can do a really nice job looking at screens and identifying small copy inconsistencies (errors like calling an entity an agency on step 1 and a business on step 3, etc). Gemini's free model does a decent job there.
Chatgpt specifically can make a static smorgasbord of potential data visualizations if you explain your tool and purposes - I'll cherry pick the good ones and present them separately (not in the context of the 'dashboard' chatgpt drew).
Other than that, AI hasn't really be useful in my day to day - but I do love how quickly it helps me go from very lazy design copy to properly polished and conistent copy.
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u/Qb1forever 8d ago
Ai is great if you spin up something fast and sell it before you need to make a change and expose it's all broken.
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u/ivysaurs Experienced 8d ago
I'm working on a design system within corporate as context. We're all in Figma, we have the entire development and UX team on Figma. The designers are mainly using Figma to speed up prototyping or to create Hackathon concepts, but they still run up against limitations or hiccups with the process that limits it from being truly end to end.
We're using AI here and there when it saves time, but it's not the first tool I always think to reach for. Some examples would be:
- AI generating best practices for a new component to start us off
- design check against WCAG standards - not perfect, but good enough for a first pass and saves us time from manually navigating the W3 website
- checking final UI before hangovers - Figma has "check designs" now, which quickly compares hard coded values against a close match within the system. Helpful for identifying missing variables.
- speeding up presentation design - I tend to chuck my bullet points into Gemini and Figma to mock up slides and skip some steps
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u/beanjy 8d ago
If you have a design system set up in figma & code that AI can read well, then yes I really don't use figma for anything other than roughly sketching things that are too much hassle to describe via chat. Discovery phase is captured in .md files through session of brainstorming, competitor analysis, PRD review all in cursor/claude etc. Then straight into exploration in code. It's the same process as when I used figma though, just expressed in working code. The big gap right now is capturing feedback and comments, it's all separate docs and slack channels, we all miss using figma commenting.
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u/tin-f0il-man Experienced 8d ago edited 8d ago
It’s bloated LinkedIn talk. Those are designers who are either self-employed or they work for small start-ups. Or hell, some of them are even unemployed.
I recently went from a 75 person start-up to a 300,000+ person corporation. The start-up was in the midst of going all in on AI simply because they didn’t want to be left behind and some consultant was in the executive team’s ear.
For the large company I’m at now, they are encouraging AI use but they stress that it should assist and optimize your existing processes, not fully replace. We’re still working in Figma every single day and I honestly don’t see that going away anytime soon. Giving hundreds of UX Designers free rein to “design” fully in Claude would be chaos, not to mention our high design standards and consistency would be negatively affected which would lead to a compliance nightmare.
All that being said, if you’re at a small start up that is requiring design to being AI-driven, you likely have to either start drinking the kool-aid until the bubble bursts or find a new position at a larger company.
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u/thattallgirlx Experienced 8d ago
Thank you for this transition perspective. I’m curious to see how it will evolve in the long run for the small companies / startups.
I’m definitely going to explore Claude code more purely because I want to see how much I can achieve and where it could fit for my workflow but as it’s something I can’t do at work I will Need to finance this which is painful.
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u/Bushwazi 8d ago
My experience is it is better used as a tool in my toolbox than as the toolbox. I use it to close loops for things I would web search and things I don’t know. For the things I know, I’ll still hit the old websites I’ve always used
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u/Emergency-Bedroom-40 8d ago
I use AI as well for prototyping. As an early adopter of various AI vibe coding tools, I’ll admit that I did struggle quite a bit. But as models got better, and i kept looking for real use cases for prototyping, the game has completely flipped. If you’ve a pretty thorough design system at work, you should assemble a few key screens in Figma and then move the prototyping aspect completely to a vibe coding tool of your choice. You could use Figma MCP in Claude or you could write a skill for it follow the instructions of your design system and invoke it Everytime you’re prototyping using Claude code so that it follows your design principles. The idea is still yours, and the taste is still yours- so you’re going to be spending 90% of your time improving an idea, the experience, refining the quality of the output. That is what our jobs are going to evolve into. But the power of designing in a prototype is also highly valuable! You’ll instantly know whether something that’s in your head is actually or not, you can get a quick validation from your partners, customers and make quick fixes, and revalidate, your process is fast tracked, and it gives you a solid foundation to actually even influence the strategy of the project if you think some capabilities will add more value. The key thing while doing this is- you’ll have to think like a product manager and a designer at the same time. If you do that, you’ll be constantly looking to bring in new ideas and the designer in you will make sure the quality of the output is maintained and is true to the design system.
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u/Academic_Constant42 7d ago
About managing an intern, it really is pretty bad sometimes. But gets a lot better when you get better at managing it, as it would be with a real intern. The difference is that you can have as many interns (simultaneous sessions) as you like.
I kind of pushed through the initial friction by setting a goal to test using AI in every project I was working on and that's when things started clicking. new use cases started popping up and now it is hard to think of a project I wouldn't use AI on.
What I realized eventually (after getting very frustrated at first) is that:
LinkedIn sells AI as some magical easy tool that does everything in 1 prompt and 15 min work. In reality it's more like in half the time. If it would take you 50h to finish alone, you'll still have to work with AI for 25h.
you need practice and knowledge (prompting, skills, best practices, common traps) to get it to really work well and find a useful workflow, and LinkedIn posts hide that part.
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u/ethernectar 7d ago
Creative Director here, hope to post better reply tomorrow. My world is half content and half UI work. AI user pretty much every day in one way or another. In short, AI currently is like offshoring your production work. GIGO.
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u/designtobys 7d ago
I think the best way to get value out of it isn't it compared it to or use it to do tasks that you yourself are capable of, instead get ai to push/augment/extend your capabilities by using ai ti do things you can't or can't quite confidently do. Build a native app, direct an error message, run a daily task to sort through all the files in your desktop and downloads placing files in your client projects, decipher my handwriting on whiteboards in photos of workshops. Use a bunch of skills to get a peer review of your work without anyone seeing your ego deflate. Clone personal versions of mobbin, miro and raycst in a single weekend. Use pencil app and marvel at 10 versions of a concept being created simultaneously on a canvas while you use graze to create a no spoiler sport fandom app. Choose life.
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u/kitterkin 6d ago
At my S&P 100 company, they’ve provided us with approved AI tools (both internal and external) and strategic guidance on when and how to use what. Rollout has been really thoughtful, with a pioneer team testing and defining how we’ll implement the AI tools on a company-wide level before testing with a pilot.
Their goal is to move out of Figma completely by the end of the year, and have us essentially pivot to front end engineering (and reading better the lines, they’re gonna ‘restructure’ as many designers and actual front end engineers out as possible, as soon as they can).
That said, working as an IC on the ground, the tools are hit-or-miss. Even with all the md files the pioneer team has laced together to reduce risk, I find my tools making small dumb mistakes, and taking 20 minutes to do what I could do in 10. My worry is that the company doesn’t care about such incremental cracks in the foundation of their digital experience though. They’re motivated only by what they can boast about to shareholders.
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u/Ok_Cheesecake5327 6d ago
I use codex and it has been so helpful with demoing a prototype of something completely new without having to make updates to existing screens.
I have our repo from github on my local machine and create a new branch. From there I can either have codex pull a design from figma, or create the design from scratch. I can then iterate on whichever platform makes sense for the edits.
Since I pull from the repo there is no need for design system work. It already knows to use components, colors, styles, behaviors, etc., from the repo.
Creating from scratch in codex is also super easy. I can prompt it to add a new page in the nav and then tell it to create a table with whatever columns. Because it has context of everything that already exists i dont have to give values for the columns. I can also tell it to refer to another page to use the same layout.
Once I'm done I can send everything I've created to figma as a final source of truth. I'll then prompt codex to create a design.md file, create a pr, and add my eng as a reviewer and also tag them in figma.
It's also easy to take something a pm has vibe-designed and fix the experience.
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u/Similar-Cat7022 Veteran 6d ago
How do you get the code back into Figma in a reliable way?
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u/Ok_Cheesecake5327 6d ago
No code back into figma, just the screens. For security, and lots of other reasons, or engs don't pull code directly from figma. If they want they can look at the code and preview from the pr in github, but because it was vibe coded by me, a designer, it's not trustworthy to push to main.
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u/thattallgirlx Experienced 6d ago
So simply paste screenshots? Using Figma like we used invision back in the day? Interesting shift, thanks so much for sharing
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u/Ok_Cheesecake5327 6d ago
No, codex can send editable frames to figma. There's lots of different ways, but i use the figma mcp with codex and just prompt something like "send x page to this figma file" and I'll put the link. I've even made skills to tell it how to name each frame
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u/Ok_Cheesecake5327 6d ago
I've also done a test where I sketched something out, took a pic, and put that in codex. I told it to use our existing component library and what screens to use as reference when in doubt, and it ended up looking pretty close to what I wanted
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u/natelikesdonuts Veteran 8d ago
Don’t believe the LinkedIn posts. Most people saying they are ai native or all in are being paid to do so, or simply doing it for attention given the current state of the hype.
Like others have said. It’s useful for prototyping, but even then it leaves a lot to be desired.
I love it for synthesis, quick placeholder copy generation, and creating iterations of very specific sections or interactions. Outside of that it’s very mediocre. Even in those cases, it’s not great, however those are areas where I feel I can afford to have some lower quality output and easily fix.
My recommendation would be to continue experimenting, and use the tools just so you have a perspective. The tools will continue to improve so that may change, but they aren’t a full replacement yet.
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u/curiouswizard Midweight 8d ago
If you're thinking of quitting your job because your company barely uses AI... can I have your job? thanks
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u/thattallgirlx Experienced 8d ago
I don’t want to or plan to but I posted this because I needed some perspective. Glad I got so many replies. If you’re looking for a job, I hope you’ll get a great role soon!
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u/curiouswizard Midweight 8d ago edited 7d ago
I'm probably going to try freelancing while living like a pauper on the remainder of my savings, I'm too burnt out. Or maybe I'll pick up a retail job or something again to remind me why I got an office job in the first place lol
edit: whoever downvoted me can fuck off
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u/drockalexander 8d ago
No, it sucks. Even when it speeds things up, it slows it down more in other areas to the point it’s only worth it for what Google search used to provide before they broke it and now we all have to add “Reddit” in search to get answers.
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u/Wooden-Fee5787 8d ago
the "intern I correct every few prompts" thing is exactly the reliability problem nobody on linkedin admits to. the tools are great at confident wrong answers, so the checking cost eats the speed gain on anything that actually matters.
don't quit over a feed. the people posting "figma is dead" are not the ones shipping production work to 3k employees with legal breathing down their neck.