A designer’s guide to AI: Why this designer switched to Cursor | Joel Unger

Episode Overview

• Joel Unger, Design Director at Atlassian, discusses how AI is transforming his design workflow for products like Trello.
• He demonstrates a practical shift from static design tools like Figma to creating interactive, coded prototypes using AI-powered tools like Cursor.
• The episode explores how AI accelerates the ideation and execution process, allowing designers to focus on high-level problem-solving rather than tedious tasks.
• Joel shares his experience using generative AI tools like Midjourney for creating brand assets and exploring visual concepts quickly.

Key Concepts

• AI as a Design Accelerator: AI tools are not replacing designers but are accelerating the process of turning ideas into tangible outputs, bridging the gap between concept and execution.
• From Static Mocks to Interactive Specs: The workflow is shifting from creating pixel-perfect mockups in Figma to building functional, coded prototypes. This allows designers to test complex interactions and provide engineers with interactive specs instead of static images.
• The Designer-Engineer Hybrid: AI empowers designers to step into coding without deep expertise. By using tools like Cursor, designers can translate visual designs into code, enabling them to explore nuanced interactions and responsive designs that are difficult to convey in static tools.
• Generative AI for Creative Exploration: Tools like Midjourney are used for rapid mood boarding and ideation. They help in quickly generating a wide range of visual styles and concepts for brand assets (like illustrations of Trello's mascot, Taco) that can then be refined by a human designer.
• Shifting Design Focus: With AI handling more of the tedious execution (like creating specs or generating code), the value of a designer shifts more towards strategic thinking, problem definition, and understanding complex user experience challenges.

Quotes

• At 00:05 - "Initially, I was a little anxious, like, is this thing gonna take my job? But you quickly find out what the limitations are and that your thoughts and prompts are the only thing driving it." - Joel Unger explains his initial apprehension about AI and his subsequent realization that human creativity and direction remain central to the process.
• At 03:00 - "I'm going to demo exactly what I've been using Trello for in preparation for this podcast." - Joel introduces his demo by showing how he uses the new, more personal-productivity-focused version of Trello, with features like an inbox and planner, to organize his work.
• At 07:41 - "I see how useful this is just from a user experience testing perspective. Did you hand this code to your engineers? Like, how did you actually take it from this to what we saw earlier, which is this beautiful production experience?" - The host, Claire Vo, reacts to the interactive prototype Joel created with Cursor, highlighting its value in testing and communicating complex UI behaviors.

Takeaways

• Embrace coding as a design tool by using AI assistants like Cursor to translate Figma designs into interactive prototypes, allowing for better exploration of complex UI/UX and clearer communication with engineering teams.
• Use generative AI tools like Midjourney for rapid creative exploration and mood boarding to define a visual direction, rather than for generating final, production-ready assets.
• Focus your time and energy on high-level strategic thinking and problem-solving, leveraging AI to automate and accelerate the more tedious and time-consuming parts of the design execution process.