Not the kind with oil paintings and marble statues, but one where product designers are suddenly moving faster, getting bolder and breaking through old bottlenecks that used to slow us down.
And it’s not because we’ve all become hybrid designer-developers overnight. It’s because AI tools are starting to work the way we work. They are now natural extensions of our creative process.
From Blocked to Building
If you’ve ever had a product idea you were excited to build (but couldn’t move forward without a developer), you’re not alone. That gap between vision and execution has been a long-standing frustration for designers.
At STRV, we’ve experimented with Webflow for internal projects and even a product landing page. But recently, Framer has become our go-to — not just internally, but also on select client work. It fits naturally into our Figma-first process, and lets us bring static mockups to life in hours, not weeks.
Well, let’s be honest: it still takes tens of hours to really polish — but even a rough version becomes an interactive prototype that’s far more useful (and impressive) than a flat Figma mockup.
It’s not magic. It’s just smart design, powered by good defaults and a little AI.
That said, Framer does have limits. It’s best suited for polished presentation layers like landing pages or lightweight product sites. When we get into more complex builds, like dashboards or data-heavy apps, we still rely on our dev team.
But even that’s changing. With Framer Workshop, we’ve been able to go beyond native features and implement custom logic and interactions on our own, pushing the envelope without a full handoff.
Speak and It Shall Prototype
Tools like Figma Make are taking things even further. Describe what you want — “a tab bar with icons and a page transition” — and get a functional component or prototype in seconds.
It’s not perfect, but it’s a powerful starting point. Especially for less technical designers or fast-moving teams.
Some of us have also been experimenting with Cursor in our free time, testing ideas that push beyond traditional handoff. Tools like these blur the line between design and development. And that’s a space worth exploring.
Experimentation isn’t just nice to have. It’s necessary. The tools are moving fast, and so should we.
Stock Is Out. Custom Is In.
In agency work, it’s not always possible to get custom photos or illustrations for every project. In the past, we relied on stock libraries to fill the gap. They were fine, but often generic, inconsistent or just not quite right.
Now, with tools like Midjourney, Sora and Visual Electric, we can generate visuals that match the tone and concept of a product more precisely. We’ve already used them in production — especially when timelines are tight or budgets don’t allow for fully custom assets.
But here’s the catch: AI still struggles with consistency across large sets. If you’re building a 100-question quiz and need an illustration for each, in the same style and direction? That’s where human illustrators still win.
Often, we use AI to draft an initial concept and direction, then collaborate with a professional illustrator or photographer to refine and finalize it with quality and consistency.
The New Creative Baseline
This isn’t a “designers vs. AI” story. It’s about designers who know how to use AI.
It’s becoming part of the toolkit like prototyping once was or dev handoff tools. Not mandatory, but incredibly valuable.
Whether you’re a seasoned designer, a product manager or just starting out, here’s the takeaway:
AI won’t replace you. But learning to use it well? That might unlock the best work of your career.
