#79 UX Tools for an Era of AI
19:05 Share

Hello friends and welcome back to the Future of UX podcast. My name is Patricia Reines. I'm your host for this podcast. I'm working as a UX and Innovation Designer in Zurich, Switzerland. And in this podcast episode, we are going to dive into the essential tools that UX designers need in an era of AI.

Tools are generally a super important topic for UX designers. We are working with a lot of different tools that improve our efficiency, help us to deliver high quality designs, right? Like all of the tools are digitally. So let's get started. Before we get into the topic,

I have little announcements because this will be a longer episode. I divided it into two parts. The first is a little bit about the tools, the changes, also some examples from Figma, some changes. And in part number two, we will dive into how to future-proof your UX skillset. So this will be another deep dive, but I divided it into two podcast episodes because otherwise...

it'll be a little bit too much and a little bit too long. I know that you prefer shorter episodes.

And talking about tools for everyone who hasn't checked that out. I prepared a 30-minute AI mini training for zero euros. So you don't need to pay any money for it. You can find it in the description box. You can just sign up for it, watch it and you will get an amazing introduction to AI for design. If you don't have a lot of experiences with the tools or if you just want to do a mini deep dive, I can highly recommend to check it out.

As I mentioned, you don't need to pay for it just with your email address so I can send it to you. So what are we going to cover in this podcast episode? We're going to talk about the typical tools for your ex-designers. Then we will talk about what's changing with AI. And then we will dive into an interesting example with Figma. So what are the typical tools for your ex-designers? And I think it's already an interesting question, right? Because this is changing so much over time.

I remember the times where UX designers used Photoshop to create web interfaces, which is unbelievable, right? Like unbelievable to use Photoshop for it. And when I started with UX around eight, nine years ago, we used Sketch. So Sketch was the fanciest, the coolest tool back then. It was...

Not a tool that was where you could save documents in the cloud. So the flow looked very, very different than now. Just pretty interesting. I already talked about it, I think, in another podcast episode. So when we created or designed interfaces for our clients, back then I was still working at an agency. We as the agency preferred the file and the file was ours. You know, we were the only one who had access to the file.

When we wanted to present design decisions, we exported the different frames, created mock-ups, put everything in the PowerPoint presentation, and then guided the client through the PowerPoint presentation and then the afterwards so they can still have a look at it. And I think this is super fascinating if you compare that to the approach now, which is so different, not working a lot better.

In Figma anymore, to be honest, I'm doing more strategic work, a little bit more high level task, I would say. But here and there, I'm still doing things on Figma and designing. And I think now it's fascinating because I am, you know, I'm a freelancer, so I'm working for clients and my clients are usually big companies or big corporations. They have huge design teams. So when I'm working in a design team, when I'm supporting them, I'm doing things for them.

I'm seeing the product managers, the product owners who are basically following every mini step of our project. They are owning the design file. So in case they decide to let one of the agencies go or the freelancers go,

they still own the file right they have all the rights they own everything everything is safe in the cloud so it's undestroyable basically and they can see exactly what you do and when you do it so they have a lot of what exactly you did at every minute and i think this is fascinating how things are changing the whole topic of collaboration is such a big thing just in the last five years

This has been one of the biggest things, right? And we're seeing this in Figma especially. We will deep dive into Figma a little bit later into the episode because they released some interesting updates and we will talk about this as well.

Besides Figma, there are also other tools like Adobe XD and Sketch. Unfortunately, Adobe XD has not been supported any longer. I still use Adobe XD for my social media content. I really enjoy it having this overview of different screens and different visuals. I still use it for my branding elements. But that Figma really...

I was the winner of all these tools shows how important collaboration is. And I think when it comes to interface design, Figma is the one and only tool that designers are using. It's super powerful. It has a lot of community assets that you can use. It's very, very easy to learn. So two, three days and you know basically how to use it. You're not a good designer, right? But you still know how to use the tool. So it's not that complicated. It's very easy.

So this is the one for design and prototyping, the biggest one. Of course, there are also others. And I think in the past, it was interesting, right? Back then, I did a lot of work with After Effects, for example. I did a lot of prototypes in After Effects or...

What was the one that I love to use? Was it Marvel? Another one. We could do like crazy animations. And I love that I use this tool all the time. Can still find the screens that I designed with it on my Dribbble account, actually. So I really love that tool. I forgot the name. It's not there anymore because you can do all the things in Figma now.

I think the second important thing besides the design and prototyping is, of course, collaboration and communication. Not so interesting, but this, of course, Miro with workshops. We can do remote workshops, remote meetings, Slack, right? Like maybe Trello, maybe Jira, all these things for collaboration and bringing people together.

I must say that I think Miro especially is a fantastic tool for brainstorming and creating mind maps. It's this digital whiteboard that got so famous and so popular, especially during COVID, where all the meetings were done online. And Slack the same, I think an amazing tool for communication and coming together. The AI for Designers platform.

course is also or the mini private community that I am building around the AFO designer course, the course that's launching

I think in October again, this is a six-week intensive AI bootcamp for designers where you learn the essentials around AI, AI tools and designing for and with AI. So super important and amazing step to future-proof your career, basically. To really learn the basics of AI and be an AI designer afterwards, basically. And yeah.

All the communication that we are doing is happening in Slack, which makes it super easy for people to connect because they are on Slack all the time anyway. And then we have our own little space where people can upload their work. They get feedback on their work. We have a little news channel where we share all the cool updates that are happening with people, you know, can support each other where they are all the announcements. So we have this one area which is only for the participants of this cohort. So I must say I really love Slack.

And then when it comes to user testing and research, it might not be an area where you focus on a UX designer, but also it still might be. There are tools like Usability Hub, user testing, Hotjar, also Zoom and Teams just for the recordings. Usability Hub offers quick design surveys and preferences, tests to gather user feedback.

and also provides user testing sessions with real users, giving us super interesting insights into how our designs perform in real world scenarios. And Hotjar allows us to see heatmaps, recordings of user interactions on our websites, helping us understand where users are maybe clicking and scrolling and spending the most time. Generally, I'm

I'm going to add a little sticker here under this podcast. I would love to hear about your favorite tools. Maybe I haven't really mentioned the tools and I think it's always super interesting. What are the tools that you're using all the time? What's really helpful for you? What are the basic tools? I'm not talking about AI tools. We will dive into that into the next episode. What are the basic main tools that you're using? Feel free to share them.

And then maybe some other tools like Notion for your personal organization, or maybe you're also using After Effects or Premiere for any video content. Maybe you use Keynote and PowerPoint.

But I assume your main tools will probably be Miro or Fictum. So they're the basic tools. And we all know that things are always changing. If you're working in tech, if you're working in design as a UX designer, things are always changing. And design-driven tools are becoming increasingly integrated into our daily workflows. For example, AI can assist in generating design elements faster.

automating repetitive tasks, and even predicting user behavior. Tools like ChatGPT or Midjourney are helping designers to create content and visuals quickly and efficiently. I think having a lower Ipsum text at wireframe is 100% outdated. You can't do that anymore. You have ChatGPT, you can come up with a text.

It makes sense also for testing. It makes a huge difference having that real text. And it takes some time. It's not that easy to come up with it yourself if you're not a professional UX writer. But using touchy-feely or perplexity or clout or whatever you prefer is, I think, a game changer. It's just really helpful. And these advancements mean that we can focus more on the creative and strategic aspects of our work rather than getting bogged down by the mundane. Same with visuals.

Don't look for any illustrations or images on a stock platform, but just create them yourself in seconds. It's so easy. I think another area of enhancement or of change in the age of AI is the impact of AI in the area of rapid prototyping. So AI-powered tools can generate multiple design variations in a fraction of the time it would take manually. For instance,

When you take a tool like Figma AI's feature, we'll dive a little bit more into that in a second, and we can input different parameters and the AI will generate various design options for you to choose from. And this speeds up the ideation process and allows for more experimentation. So there is not just a Figma AI prompt generation, but also tools like VZLEE or UISAR, tools where you enter a prompt and then it creates an interface.

Yes, not something that professional UX designers would do, but still a lot of startups who don't have money for a professional designer use these tools. Yes, the outcome is not as good as the designer would do it, but it's still better than nothing, basically, or it's better than if they would do it themselves. So it's a good starting point. I think there is some room for improvement, but I understand where they're coming from. And I think the second area is

where it makes so much sense to use, for example, is in a workshop. So I'm doing a lot of workshops with clients where we come up with ideas, with prototypes of concepts, and then we want to create something super quickly.

And of course, we can use Figma, but it takes a little bit longer. So I started to use UI Start for these experiments where I just want to visualize something super simple, super quick, because that really helps the team and everyone to understand the flow, how things are working, the ideas. I think this is a huge help. Not something that you would hand over to a developer and say like, oh, this is done now, but just to present an idea.

And the interesting thing is, not sure if you knew, but UI SART was acquired by Miro. So we are probably going to see UI SART features in Miro at some point in the workshop tool, which I think was pretty interesting. So when it comes to AI tools, I think one thing is generally very important, and this is to consider the ethical implications.

AI tools rely heavily on data, and it's important to ensure that this data is collected and used responsibly. Privacy concerns are at the forefront, especially when dealing with sensitive user information. We as designers must advocate for transparency and author ethical practices in the use of AI. The tools that we're using are just tools. Imagine a construction worker who uses a hammer, right? Like this is just a tool.

The same as a calculator, right? Like a calculator is a tool. There have been a time where people in mathematics went on the street basically and said we should forbid calculators. But of course, it's unbelievable. I mean, it's not possible, right, to forbid calculators. And to use a calculator, you need to know the basics of math. If you don't, you can't really use it. The same with paper and a pen. This is also a tool.

If you don't know how to write, it's not that helpful. Of course, you can draw on it, but what's much more effective is knowing how to write. And this is a skill that you need. And the rest is just a tool. And the same with AI and with AI tools. If you're using traditional tools or if you're using AI enhanced tools, those are just tools. You need to know how to use them, how to prompt them and what you actually want to get out of it.

And now I want to dive into an interesting example with Figma. Many of you have probably heard about it. One month ago, Figma introduced a new AI companion and new AI functionality basically in the Figma framework, in the Figma software or program.

And they showed different features in their keynote. And I think pretty interesting. One was the, of course, the AI designer. So you enter a prompt, design me an interface for a library, for example. And then it created the whole interface for you with all the different elements. It named the layers. It named the content. So if you had a list of different recipes, for example, it came up with the images and also the content, which I think is pretty interesting. All the tedious tasks were taken over by this AI assistant.

People were, I mean, I think we had different opinions on that. Our design community had different opinions on that. One team was super excited, got a lot of room for innovation, for change. And there was also an area who saw this a little bit critical of not really usable. And maybe the group also was a little bit scared of becoming redundant. Yeah.

And I think both points are very valid. We saw just a couple of days after they released it, although they said they trained it on openly available design systems and community things and basically a few of the design systems that they create themselves, someone on Twitter

shared an example of entering a prompt for a weather app and then created basically the same weather app as you can see on iOS, which shows that probably they have trained the AI model on real life applications, like Apple iOS, for example, which I can guarantee you they were not allowed to do that.

So a little bit shady, a little bit difficult. And now they turned the feature off so you can't use it anymore. But it shows that not everything is as transparent as people promise and say. And the second thing that I find a little bit difficult is that if you have a Figma account and you don't have a business account, right? But like personal account or what was that? One of the accounts that's not a business account.

Per default, your data is used to train the AI model. So if you want to opt out of it, you need to opt out and you need to do that actively. I can also add a little description of how to do that. Please don't forget about it. I would recommend you to opt out. You don't know what happens with the data. I would be a little bit cautious with it.

Of course they need the data, but I wouldn't want them to use mine. And I also don't want them to use yours, especially if those are like client work or things that are under an NDA or whatever.

saw a lot of problems. We're seeing many traditional tools that have been also enhanced with AI. We have Slack AI, we have Miro AI, we have Figma AI. So there is a layer of AI integrated. We have certain AI tools that are added, ChatGPT, for example, MidJourney, all these tools. So we're seeing a lot of changes currently. We're seeing also that the skills and experiences from designers required are changing and I think super interesting.

In the next episode, we are going to dive into how the toolkit and the specific steps will look like for UX designers and do a little deep dive into how to prepare yourself for what's ahead of us. How do you get your toolkit ready?

By the way, if you are enjoying this podcast episode, please rate this podcast. Give us a five-star review. It would be so, so helpful for me. I'm putting so much effort and love into this podcast. I'm just doing this on the side as a side project. I don't have any sponsors, so I really love to do it. And giving a rating would really help me to keep the podcast growing, to continue to do research, to invite amazing guests.

And yeah, I would really appreciate that. If you write a comment, of course, I'm going to read it. Makes me so happy to see how many people are listening to the podcast each week. Can't believe that so many people. Thank you so much for your support. I really, really appreciate that. Feel free to say hi on Instagram. Let me know how you like the episode. What do you think about the different tools? What are your favorite tools? And then hear you in...

The future, I would say. Hear you next week. Thank you so much.