How I'm using AI to be a better designer, not a lazier one
AI isn't a shortcut around craft, it's a way to test ideas faster, have better client conversations, and stay hands-on from first spark to launch.
Design Leadership · 4 August 2026
Let's get the elephant in the room out the way first, because you're probably thinking it too. AI's here for the foreseeable, good or bad. And yeah, there's a fair bit of bad. The environmental cost, students handing in AI written coursework instead of thinking and writing it themselves, design quality taking a real hit. Honestly, that's probably its own article another day.
What I actually want to talk to you about is the good side. How I try to use AI to make the product better, make me a better design leader, and get more hands on than I've probably ever been. Specifically Cursor, Claude and Figma, and how they show up across a project, from the first spark of an idea right through to launch.
This isn't a follow me guide, by the way, and it won't suit everyone. It's just how almost thirty years in design and leadership has meant changing my tools, my process, my whole workflow. Hopefully for the better.
Where it starts
Instead of a click through prototype, I build the real flow in Cursor and see straight away whether an idea actually survives contact with reality, not just how nice it looks on a screen. Wire in an actual integration, a card payment, a Google Docs connection, and you find out almost instantly if it holds up, or falls apart.
That's the part that's genuinely changed things for me. The speed of it. Test, iterate, fix, build, test again, and get real feedback in a flash instead of waiting days to find out if an idea was even worth having.
Having that at your fingertips changes the dynamic of what you can actually produce. I liken it to a solo print designer years ago who bought their own screen printing kit. Suddenly they could try, test, design and roll out their own product, entirely by themselves. Complete control, start to finish.
It's the same here, just with a fair amount of AI helping along the road.
Better conversations, not just faster ones
This is where it gets interesting for how I work with clients and my own team, not just how I work alone.
Client conversations no longer have to end in ambiguity. We can theorise a concept or an experience and actually ask an LLM about its feasibility there and then, in the room, instead of promising to "go away and check." We can sense check a partner integration before we've committed a single hour of build time to it.
It changes things for colleagues too. If I've already thought through an integration, I can hand over the context, the design, and even the code or logic behind it. That's less guesswork for them and a much cleaner starting point.
It's a genuinely exciting time to want to learn new skills, adapt your workflow, get back on the tools yourself, and build things you'd have needed a much bigger team for before.
What's actually being built
In the last month alone, I've got a sports recording platform ready for testing, a mini CRM integrated with Google that I don't even know the full destination for yet, and an MVP financial model creation platform, all in the making and in production right now.
Every one of them made possible by the AI tools I've mentioned. But every one of them still shaped through a design lens that AI absolutely can't replace, no matter how good you think your prompt is.