AI for UX Designers

• I started really digging into these tools only a few months ago (January 2025). So I am probably only half a step in front of you. And you're probably steps ahead of me in some of this stuff.
• I work for Plotly. We are building AI-powered products for Data Scientists/Analysts. And we are all required to use AI in our jobs (but I was well ahead of this recent mandate). So I don't need to convince people to let me use the tools.
• We designers at Plotly recently got access to the real codebase and we're using AI agents to design and code and do pull requests that actually get merged and make it into the product.

• Don't code yet, just gimme your plan 💡
  • I like parts of this plan but not this part
  • Why did you include this point? Change it. Now show me your revised plan.
• I want you to help me think through some options to enable users to do this … give me some options with pros and cons and your recommendation 💡
• I want to do X. I think it happens like Y. Ask me questions until you have enough to start implementing. 💡

• Agents love writing code
  • So sometimes I have asked it to look at what it's building and ask if it can solve the problem by simplifying instead of writing more.
• Agents want to please you soooo badly
• Agents don't always 'see' UI/UX very well
  • This means you can paste screenshots but my results have varied
  • Some tools use Figma connectors, but those didn't impress me when I tried. I needed to have really clean figma files, with great layer names.
• Agents know surprisingly little about themselves and the products in which they live
• Patience is important
• Grammar is not important 💡
• Sometimes I feel like I'm a copy/paste monkey
• Don't fear the undo, even deep into a conversation 💡
  • Asking the agents to undo isn't as clean as clicking 'Revert'
• GitHub version control helps with the fear or losing work
  • Do small commits (this is good dev practice) vs doing a ton of changes in one commit. It's easier to find and easier to roll back to a specific branch/feature 💡
• Use multiple monitors. Use all the pixels. Use multiple windows.
• I prefer tools that work in my local files and folders
  • Because I can point to other folders with relative paths and it can 'read' those other projects and bring those designs into the current project 💡
  • Because it feels faster
  • Because there are other tools I can use locally to manipulate those files and folders
• Don't forget to think about how to share your UX prototypes. e.g. included deployments in the tools, or Vercel, or Netlify, etc. 💡

• Lovable 💡
  • A bit too simplified
• Bolt 💡
  • A bit too simplified. Cloud-biased vs working locally.
  • But they just included Claude 4, so that's promising
• Replit 💡
  • Used to be my favourite tool
  • Good quasi-visual tools. You can point to objects on the screen and interrogate them. 💡
  • Really easy to pick up and start building
  • Supposedly a strong community element that I never really used
  • Built-in deployment server 💡
  • Bias to working in the cloud vs locally
• Cursor 💡
  • My favourite tool right now
  • Claude 4 Sonnet is currently my favourite model to use in Cursor
• Windsurf 💡
  • My second favourite tool right now
  • I swap between Gemini 2.5 Pro and their own SWE-1 model. If one is stuck and gets something wrong repeatedly I switch to the other one, even mid-task/convo. For example, one of them is better as screenshots than the other.
• Claude Code 💡
  • In the command line

• Chat GPT - Excellent for general use 💡
• Perplexity 💡
• Manus
• Deepseek
• Gemini - the 2.5 Pro model is good at code, but I don't find Gemini that helpful in the GSuite

• Cursorrules 💡
• Settings/Preferences for projects and globally for the tool work for the most part but not 100%.
  • I am a UX Designer, so explain technical concepts to me in a simplified way to help me learn
  • Don't use any components outside of this folder "folderABC"
  • Ask my permission before you try doing anything that breaks these rules
• We run a check against those rules before we do a Pull Request or before we deploy our UX prototypes to a server. 💡
  • Go check this rules markdown document to see if your recent changes violated any of these rules. And if so, propose how you'll fix this.
• Use voice instead of typing. I use the free version of Mac Whisper. 💡

• Different models are better at some things
• Sometimes using the same model in a different UI/context actually works
• Sometimes I have ChatGPT open to help me with using Cursor, which uses Claude 4 Sonnet or Gemini 2.5 Pro
• I have used ChatGPT to help me think through an idea and build a rather large prompt or a requirements document as a markdown file. I then put that .md file into my project folder and ask the agent to build according to that file. 💡

• Free tiers are pretty generous
• Paying for a month or the first set of credits is very enlightening and doesn't have to be permanent. I have tried and quit several subscriptions.
• Maybe consider keeping track of all the tools and which logins you used and which ones you are still paying for or have cancelled 💡
  • Sometimes I login with Google
  • I login with Github when the product allows it because I am more likely to try out version control with the product if I stay on it for a while
• Nobody really knows this stuff. So just dive in. Learn. Maybe even teach. And have fun.

Since I posted this event (10 days ago!)…

• Bolt Hackathon started
• Lovable announced their "Shipped" promo. I don't know what this is yet. Looks neat.
• Perplexity Labs announcement of Pro AI suite
• Claude 4 was released
• V0 released a web Dev model
• Replit added Claude 4 Sonnet
• Google I/O announcements
• OpenAI bought Jonny Ive's company

It's exhilarating and exhausting. So don't stay still. Open yourself up to learning while this space is frantic. What's the alternative? If this sounds a little like fear, it kind of is.

• Every
• Lenny's Podcast
• How I AI
• Startup Ideas Podcast
• Fireship
• The model and tool companies: OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Cursor, etc
  • Any interviews with their execs and senior staff
• Y Combinator
• A16Z

• How to use MCPs explicitly
• Linter errors. I only barely understand these. They cause errors when I deploy to e.g. Vercel or Netlify
• Not sure if I want to learn Figma's AI tools. Probably. But I haven't devoted time to them yet. My reaction to their announcements was lukewarm.
• I want to go back and retry the tools that I haven't tried in a while.

• Design for AX (Agent Experience) vs UX. Is this the near future? Is this now?
• Will this take all our jobs? Will this create crazy new jobs? Both?
• Is this an environmental disaster? Will this solve major environmental problems? Both?