Design tools

It's always great to see new tools for design and AI implementation. I'm already using Cursor, Perplexity and ChatGPT to work and, remarkably, I don't use visualization tools at all, I'm more interested in analytics and development.

Nevertheless I see how it reduces the amount of time to work, especially all sorts of integrations and frameworks. The same Relume for webflow is a cannon, it's impressive how much faster you can build projects. And I'm tempted to forget about figma altogether and do projects right in code — because that's it, it's fast and efficient!

And I believe that design is about problem solving and value. It's about the user, which means it's about usefulness. If you look at the processes from this position, you can really realize the project itself right away. But I am not close to this idea (I do not want to give up layout or designers, shock))).

I have tried many times to make the design of the site immediately in the code. The first time was somewhere in 2014, when I decided that I didn't need to render the whole site (and at that time it was common to layout all pages and all breakpoints for adaptive). I figured that the site was using the same techniques, which was enough to design once and then tell the developer where else to apply them. So I gave the design of the key pages to photoshop, and the rest of the pages were just schematics and comments. And it was super cool because the developer was savvy, everything worked out, and I saved time on pointless "design".

Then I started using Webflow and decided I didn't need to do any more layout at all, because I could save even more time. Well, that's it, no-code has arrived and designers are no longer needed!

I tried to build sites in Webflow at once. And every time, despite all efforts, it turned out some nonsense. Either template, or crooked. It happened that at the same time)

And now I always have a complete set: notebook and pencil → sketches in figma/world → layout in figma or cursor → production. I can stop at any stage or jump from any stage to prod.

The point is project uncertainty — if it's high and nothing is clear, I don't need tool resistance. The more precise the tool, the more it "resists" in work, requires attention, precision, calculation — it requires understanding of the project. Sketches on paper allow you to solve the same problem as sketches in painting for an artist — to understand what to do next, to decide on the concept.

As uncertainty decreases, you can move to more precise tools and invest time in designing parts, or maybe even go straight to production.

That's why AI tools and automation will not replace coarser tools, and it's shortsighted to abandon them. Notepad and pencil forevah)