Up to this point, the design/dev world is a wash in the changing power of AI and vibe coding. Whether it be the power of MCP servers that enable Figma Make, AI-powered design systems, or the AI coding assistants of Claude, Lovable, v0.app, Cursor, and others, the speed at which a design/dev team can produce a prototype is rapidly improving, which is both thrilling and dispiriting all at once. Interestingly enough, this article was sparked by a tweet from the VP of UX at Shopify.
The truth is that the lines between design/dev have never been so blurry, and if we were honest, they were not all that well defined in the first place. As the line moves to nothing, prototyping with AI places importance on Designers who can take principled action and adhere to a design process that a team can follow, which is where prototyping and user testing have a significant role to play. Prototyping first comes with a lot of failure, so let’s talk about it.