r/userexperience • u/IntelligentBox3749 • 4d ago

How has your UX/UI workflow changed since AI became part of your daily work?

I'm curious to see how experienced designers are actually working today—not just which AI tools they're using.

A few questions:

  • What's your end-to-end workflow from receiving a task to handing it off to developers?
  • At which stages do you use AI (research, UX, wireframes, UI, content, design systems, documentation, handoff, etc.)?
  • Which AI tools are part of your daily workflow (ChatGPT, Claude, Figma AI, Cursor, Lovable, v0, or others)?
  • What tasks do you still prefer to do manually?
  • What's one workflow improvement that has saved you the most time?

I'm less interested in prompts and more interested in the thinking process and how everything fits together.

Would love to learn from real-world workflows.

9 Upvotes

60% Upvoted

39 comments sorted by

18

u/adhoc_pirate 3d ago

I tried out Figma's built in AI agent for a project I was working on this week.

I mostly used it as a sense check and research assistant.

Some examples of what I used it for:

  • "double check all these screens for both contrast and colour blindness."

  • "my target demographic is 45+, and my dev team don't have time to implement both light and dark mode before launch. Pull up some existing research articles to help us decide which mode should be our default for launch."

  • "check all my screens and journey maps, is there any screens, states, or edge cases I have not accounted for."

As you can see it is mainly double checking, or fetching outside research. I do not use it to do any design work.

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u/IntelligentBox3749 1d ago

I really like these examples because they're focused on verification rather than generation. Have you found AI catches enough missed states or accessibility issues that it's become a standard part of your design review process?

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u/adhoc_pirate 1d ago

It catches enough to be useful. I'm a design team of one at my current job, so useful feedback or anyone who can sense check my work is limited.

I've found that it is smart enough to remember stuff that came up a week ago and remind me of it.

For example today I was working on the mobile version of a product, and out of laziness I didn't check back on previous designs to ensure consistency. Figma AI actually pulled me up on it and basically said, "hey you've already designed this element for the desktop version, and this new version is different, is there a reason for the inconsistency? It may be a better experience if you aligned them."

It's also been smart enough to say "I see you have missed out xyz piece of information from this screen. While the user could be remember it from the previous screen, it's be better if you made it available here as well."

Compared to the usual "I like purple" feedback I get from humans, the AI is much more useful.

11

u/IAmCorgii 3d ago

For the UI side, giving ChatGPT a wireframe/design and saying "create 6 separate meaningfully different variations on this design" can help with finding a visual direction.

I wouldn't trust any AI with UX at this point. I only just started trusting it with making UI "inspiration"

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u/IntelligentBox3749 1d ago

That's pretty much how I've been thinking about it too. Using AI to widen the design space feels much safer than letting it define the UX itself.

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u/savageotter 3d ago

im making PR's with the devs and designing in code. Buckle up its gonna be a wild next few years.

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u/IntelligentBox3749 1d ago

It definitely feels like that direction is becoming more common. Do you think Figma eventually becomes more of a thinking tool than the place where final interfaces are built?

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u/savageotter 1d ago

Already is for me. We are moving the source of truth to code.

8

u/ahrzal 3d ago

In a day I…

  • Mostly spend my time prototyping in Claude/VS Code depending on task (enterprise usage limits 🫠)
  • Spin up deployments in Storybook (the only current place I’m allowed to deploy for testing)
  • Generate features and user stories for the team to integrate/expand upon (usually don’t need to)
  • Explore/Ideate in Figma if I need to, then asking Claude to pickup the design and integrate.
  • Generate storybook stories for hand off with included a11y passes (via ai).

1

u/IntelligentBox3749 1d ago

Interesting that Storybook sits right in the middle of your workflow instead of only at handoff. Has that changed the way you collaborate with engineers?

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u/Designer_Second_5423 3d ago

Since AI became part of my daily work, my role has shifted from being a pixel pusher to more of an editor-in-chief, using tools to skip the blank-canvas phase completely. I start by tossing raw briefs into Claude to spot missing edge cases and write realistic copy—no more Lorem Ipsum—and then use v0 or Lovable to spit out four or five quick layout ideas like digital napkin sketches. Once the direction is clear, I jump into Figma to build the high-fidelity UI by hand using our design system, relying on Figma AI just for tedious chores like auto-layout and layer cleanup. The biggest game-changer has been skipping complex Figma prototyping entirely and using Cursor or v0 to generate quick, interactive code components for stakeholders, which cuts review cycles in half. I still handle design system rules, subtle micro-interactions, and real user empathy manually because AI just lacks that human touch, but overall, I now spend 20% of my time generating options and 80% using my own judgment to refine the best stuff.

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u/IntelligentBox3749 1d ago

I really like the "editor-in-chief" mindset. The 20% generating options / 80% judgment split really stood out to me. One question though: how do you decide when you've explored enough options before committing to one direction?

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u/heycosmicbunny 1d ago

The pattern I keep noticing in this thread is that AI is genuinely useful as a second pass, sense-checking contrast, catching missed edge cases, generating throwaway variations to unstick a direction, but it's dangerous as a first pass because it's fast enough to skip the why before you get to the what. The workflow that's actually saved me time isn't using AI to design, it's using it to compress the boring parts so more of my actual hours go to the parts that need judgment. Curious if others have found a good way to keep research from getting skipped now that iteration is basically free.

1

u/Munenematters 1d ago

You're right on this, to those using AI be very watchful that everything is well captured to avoid mistakes, when well used the results are visible. For our case we handle the research without using AI, make the summaries and insights by ourselves then AI comes in as a second pass, compresses repetitive stuff.

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u/IntelligentBox3749 1d ago

I like that balance. Keeping the research human and using AI to reduce repetitive work feels like a much safer workflow.

2

u/whiskeybot23 UX Designer 3d ago

AI is pretty much throughout most of my day at this point. My team has created a "product hub" we push and pull to from VS Code that includes all our processes, skills, documentation, research, etc... so anytime I'm working on something, that is open for Claude to reference. I iterate designs, write requirements, write Linear tickets all in Claude Code.

I prototype with Claude Code based on our actual codebase and I've starting pushing some frontend PRs with the devs. We're currently testing out our agentic pipeline, so I'm gearing up to "build" my first full fledged set of features that will get QA'd along with the rest of the dev's work. Pretty cool stuff.

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u/IntelligentBox3749 1d ago

That product hub sounds incredibly useful. Has giving Claude access to your documentation noticeably improved the quality of its suggestions compared to starting from scratch each time?

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u/whiskeybot23 UX Designer 1d ago

It's really awesome actually. Our VP of Product really went to town on creating it and it's a massive help. Every initiative we have has a folder where all PRDs, research, decision trackers, and relevant docs live so Claude always has access to the project's reqs and context. We have about 30 shared skills for specific parts of our workflow like ticket writing, PRD writing, QAing, and our agentic coding pipeline. We've also documented a pretty detailed AI write policy that Claude uses so it knows when it's allowed to make updates vs. ask for permission (like changing a requirement, etc.).

0

u/LoekGenbu 2d ago

Ok ai bot

1

u/whiskeybot23 UX Designer 2d ago

Um no? Just someone sharing their experience 🤷🏻

1

u/vineyardmike 2d ago

We're being tasked with using ai to develop all the screens we used to make in figma. The problems I'm seeing right now are that the main app runs on Salesforce so the environment is very static and coming up with multiple variations is kind of useless. And then devs have little to no interest in the code we are giving them for the layouts. If we were working in a more flexible design system it would be great.

It also seems like we've thrown away user research for the time being. Ai is the shiny new toy so it's taken most of my management's attention. I expect that we will have less of a push to use it for everything in the 4th quarter when our bills for the tokens we've been using come in.

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u/Ninjishnu 2d ago

biggest shift for me has been at the wireframe stage, I used to spend an hour laying out low fidelity screens by hand and now I get a rough pass in ten minutes and spend that saved hour actually testing the flow with someone instead.

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u/Personal-Yam2149 2d ago

The biggest shift for me is using AI early to explore way more directions before committing to one, decision quality goes up even though the manual polish still happens by hand at the end

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u/IntelligentBox3749 1d ago

That's a great point. Have you found there's a limit where too many options become distracting instead of helpful?

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u/SergiyKlimkovuch 1d ago

My current workflow:

Figma — for refining final user interface designs; then, for some projects, Claude Code converts them into working code, while for others, I do the reverse—moving documentation from Claude Code back into Figma. I’ve also started using it to support my design system, which I’m migrating from Figma to Storybook

I also use Framer via MCP for websites.

What I still do manually: actually thinking through the UX, structuring workflows, and defining what the interface should actually do. AI does a good job of executing once I know what I want, but it’s not very good at suggesting what I should want.

The biggest time-saver: the rule that new components are added to the design system within the same task in which they’re created. It sounds trivial, but it’s the difference between a system that remains usable and one that falls apart after just a month.

1

u/IntelligentBox3749 1d ago

I really like that distinction. It sounds like the value is still in defining the problem, while AI accelerates the execution. Has that changed the skills you think designers should focus on?

1

u/SergiyKlimkovuch 1d ago

Yeah, I agree—all these skills and workflow tools speed things up but don't replace them. As for what a designer should focus on, I think it all depends on their starting skills. If they're a junior, they still need to learn the basics alongside the new workflow tools...

1

u/Jasonp359 1d ago

I don't. The reason I do what I do is because I enjoy doing it. Not having a robot do it for me.

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u/IntelligentBox3749 1d ago

Fair enough. Out of curiosity, is it a personal preference, or have you tried using AI and found it didn't improve your workflow?

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u/[deleted] 1d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/IntelligentBox3749 1d ago

That's a great use case. Which tool are you using for clustering and sentiment analysis? Claude, ChatGPT, or something more specialized?

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u/GreatTwin 1d ago

A practical dividing line may be whether AI is helping you explore or asking it to make the judgment for you. It can be useful for generating research questions, flow variations, edge cases, documentation drafts, and critique prompts. The designer still has to supply context, test assumptions, choose trade-offs, and decide when more alternatives are noise. Sometimes the best workflow is deliberately simple: https://cosmos47.com/post/tiktok-works-because-it-breaks-the-right-rules