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5 days ago
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A letter from your future self on dropping “UI design” tools…
👋 Hey there,
This is your future self. I know it’s weird, but I wanted to send a note back in time to you. Don’t ask me how I did it…let’s just say “It’s complicated.”
Now I know you’re scared. I remember the feeling. But everything is okay here in the future. In fact, it’s actually pretty amazing. Let me explain.
This morning, I designed an entire enterprise dashboard without opening Figma (and no, I didn’t use Sketch, Photoshop, Illustrator, Corel Draw, Freehand, or any other tool like that). I sketched the core flow on paper, laid out some screens drawing on my iPad, and annotated it with handwritten notes. It was so much fun to quickly get my thoughts out into a shareable form, without wrestling with pen tools, cursors, or “insert” tools. Sometimes I take it for granted, but let me tell you how great it is.
Once I had the core ideas sketched out, I dropped them into my generative AI tool. Within a few seconds, my hand-drawn flows and page layouts were turned into clean, accessible (yes, quality accessibility), production-ready code using our design system. By lunch, it was in a test environment, and I was working with the developers to hook up the data to the back end.
I know it sounds like marketing hype…but it’s not. It’s just normal now. And once you see how much easier and more impactful your work becomes, you’ll wonder why we ever spent so much time sweating pixels in those Figma files.
And the best part is that my time and attention are more focused on problem-solving between the business and user, not spending hours with a mouse to create the perfect, high-fidelity prototype.
Honestly, I love my work so much more now. I know it’s hard to believe. I know you’re skeptical (remember I was there just a few years ago).
Why am I telling you this? Because if you lean into AI, you can get there so much faster than I did. I want to save you the trouble. It won’t replace you…it’ll be like a 100-shot of nitrous to your engine.
Let me explain…
We loved Figma. It gave us freedom, speed, and collaboration at a time when our tools felt isolating. But somewhere along the way, it quietly hijacked our focus.
Figma made layout way easier than what came before it (Sketch, Photoshop, etc.). But somewhere along the way, UI layout became the show. Every design task became a UI task. Our value started being measured by how many polished screens we could ship to a dev, not by how well we shaped the underlying solution.
So we crafted high-fidelity mockups. We redlined every spacing nuance. We fussed over button states and menu animations. And then…after all that care and precision…developers had to rebuild it from scratch…reverse engineering what we created into code, components, and logic that made sense in their world.
We weren’t producing products. We were producing simulations of products. Extremely detailed simulations which were incredibly time-consuming.
The problem wasn’t necessarily the fidelity itself. The problem was that the fidelity was created twice. Once for understanding and testing, once more for the shippable product. What a waste!
The future didn’t start with “AI”. It started with getting organized with our materials. Most notably, a mature design system.
Our design system stopped being a rigid set of components and instead became system infrastructure. Tokens, foundational elements, assembly components, patterns, and templates became the full suite of options to build with. The system wasn’t just what things looked like, it was a robust set of system materials to build with.
A napkin sketch became more than a wild idea. It became a blueprint to build with. With a few well-placed annotations, a decent sketch or wireframe could define the page structure, interactions, and content needed to quickly translate it into a detailed UI that we could test and evaluate. The move from idea to concrete experience definition was much faster.
We didn’t know it yet, but this is what changed everything.
Instead of starting from scratch with the color picker and shape tool every time we had a new idea, we were building with a common pattern language, leveraging the semantic tokens, elements, components, and patterns. The design system became the materials we thought about and worked with, not just the thing we had to translate into at the end of our process.
A strong design system became an accelerator. So we kept investing in maturity: deep documentation, open foundations, purpose-built components, and accessibility as standard support. We kept curating a strong ecosystem for building product experiences.
Without this foundation, the next leap wouldn’t be possible. We had no idea, but this became the key to unlock the power of AI when it was introduced.
When tools like UIzard and UX Pilot hit the market, most people didn’t find them very impressive. But when they finally hit their stride, it felt like cheating. We’d sketch a few screens on paper, a tablet, or whiteboard, add a few annotations, and the generative AI would churn out a few working UI options. Soon, these systems merged with products like Builder.io and Cursor. And then mind-blowing magic started to happen. We could choose one of the UI layout options that were generated, and with a click, the system would generate clean, accessible code directly from our mature design system.
Not a prototype. Not a UI mockup. Real, functional front-end. It became a dream come true for usability tests. While they weren’t hooked up to the back-end data yet, they were functional front-ends that users could deeply engage with.
At first, it felt strange. It felt like we were letting go of pixel dictation we were used to with developers. But it quickly became obvious: the work we handed off was clearer. More direct. Less ambiguous. We weren’t delivering mere renderings anymore. We were delivering the first development deliverable for the front end.
Instead of hours laboring inserting components and tokens into the design system, we were spending more time defining flows, interactions, and interface requirements to meet the challenges users faced. Instead of tweaking margins, we were building value.
The ideas were the start. The sketch gave an initial structural expression. The design system served as the interpreting materials. The AI fills ran it across the finish line.
In this future, my job isn’t gone. It just looks different. You might be worried about spending your time doing things you don’t like. But if you want to be a designer trying to figure out how to solve those wicked problems…there’s plenty to do beyond the pixel pushing. (And remember, I/you/we? You used to complain about that.)
My time is spent more deeply understanding problems through solution exploration, mapping, and evaluating edge cases, collaborating with other partners, and aligning teams to harmonize user and business outcomes. Our future value as designers isn’t measured in mockups anymore.
I get to…
- More time to explore multiple directions
- Guide through storytelling
- Consider interactions and flows
- Plan and propose the future of experiences
I’m no longer the person who “makes the screens.” I’m the one who shapes the system that shapes the product through awesome experiences.
Design feels less like production and more like…design.
OK, but now to the crux of the issue. I hope I’m not breaking the laws of the universe here, but I want to give you a roadmap to get there faster. Don’t wait for this future to emerge and come to you. Go grab it. Here’s how:
1. Build a mature design system
This is a critical step. It was the key that unlocked the potential of AI. Make sure your system tightly integrates the design libraries and coded libraries. They have to be a tightly knit unit. And it has to be well-documented so the GPT models know what to make of the elements of the system. Get to work defining semantic token structures. Define and automate common patterns and templates. Yeah, it sounds like a lot of work….but the payoff is worth it.
2. Invest in design exploration
Stop jumping to polished UI too quickly. Start rough. Use whiteboards. Sketch alternatives. And live there longer than you normally would. That’s where many of the real breakthroughs happen. Screen layout should be an extension of solid exploration and critique. Why is this important? Because AI is good at what’s defined. It tends to struggle with those breakthrough ideas.
3. Develop strong partnerships
Generative tools can build the bridge, but product leaders, engineers, and designers still have to agree on what we’re building toward. Create shared language. Collaborate on scope and requirements. Align on direction together. Use your designerly ways to tell stories and persuade. Refine your communication skills. Make friends. These are the people you’ll spend more time with…so it makes sense to build trust with them.
4. Start small, but steady
Don’t try and boil the ocean, or you’ll burn out. Start small. Take a low-risk feature and sketch it with notation. Use an AI tool to generate layout or even some front-end code. It takes a while to get the hang of what to provide an AI tool to get a good outcome. You’ll struggle a bit, but remember to provide clarity. If you give it a mess, it’ll output a mess. If you give it too little, it’ll take a shot in the dark. Even if it’s not perfect, you will learn how to work differently. The goal isn’t automation…it’s acceleration. Keep working at it and be patient. Your investment will pay off.
Now, none of this happened overnight. It took time. There were rough starts, weird and broken outputs, and awkward transitions. But we kept at it, and it changed everything.
I know it’s weird…reading a letter from your future self. But I want you to know…our role hasn’t become less important. It became more important. Now your mind, your creativity, and your systems thinking aren’t being consumed by mockup production.
Our world doesn’t revolve around screen mockups or renderings anymore. We don’t spend hours in wiring up endless prototypes.
We spent years building our skills to shape digital experiences. We want to help real people in the real world succeed. Now, we get to use those skills to lead and do that again…now with more creativity and thinking.
So keep sketching. Stay humble. Keep learning. Most of all, stay positive. It will serve you well. I can’t wait until you get here.
See you soon,
Future You
P.S. — Can you put some of our favorite flavor of moon pies in a freezer? They stopped making them a few years ago…and I miss them like crazy. Thanks!
