From sticky notes to synthetic teammates: How AI is reshaping design and digital product development
Remember when product development looked like this: a product owner sketching a half-baked idea in PowerPoint, a developer implementing a slightly worse version of it - and users left wondering what they did to deserve it?
I’ve spent the past years working at the messy, exciting intersection of customer experience and design. If there's one constant, it's change.
We’ve already seen a major shift: from waterfall methods and feature factories to agile sprints and Figma screens tested with users before a single line of code gets written. Design has become faster, more iterative, and yes: a lot more human-centered.
But now, we’re not just changing how we design. We’re changing who (or what) designs.
Enter the AI era: Figma Make and friends
To peek into this new world, I gave Figma Make a try, Figma’s AI-powered assistant that promises to turn ideas into interface with just a prompt. You type “marketing dashboard with charts and filters,” and poof: you’ve got a prototype.
It’s not just Figma. Tools like dev.0 and Lovable are also racing to redefine product development. dev.0 leans heavily into AI-first workflows for developers and designers, while Lovable focuses on entire product strategy creation. Each has its own flavor, its own promise: fewer bottlenecks, smaller teams, and faster outputs.
But here’s the big differentiator: Figma is already where most designers live. It’s popular, widely adopted, and deeply integrated into corporate design systems. That means AI-generated designs can instantly plug into existing brand libraries and tokens. Giving you production-ready results at the click of a button. No translation layer, no exporting chaos. Just: prompt, polish, go.
First impressions: Exciting, but not quite magic (yet)
Figma Make is impressive. When it works. It's fast, intuitive, and surprisingly good at scaffolding ideas. But don’t fire your designer just yet. The layouts can feel generic, interactions are flat, and visual polish is… let’s say "aesthetic TBD."
Still, it's a glimpse into what’s coming. If Figma Make is the iPhone 1 of design AI, just imagine where we’ll be by version 10.
Fun fact: At OpenAI, there’s a bet going on - when will one person, armed with AI tools, build a billion-dollar company? (Source: Forbes 2025)
My money’s on sooner than your next team offsite.
So what does this mean for CX, design & product development?
We’re entering the age of smaller teams, bigger output. AI won’t replace designers, but designers who use AI will replace those who don’t.
Tools like Figma Make will become the new design interns. Drafting, generating, iterating. Leaving us to focus on what really matters: insights, strategy, empathy, and creativity. In other words, the human parts of the job.
Yes, the tools are raw. Yes, they still need you. But don’t blink - the future is arriving fast.
Curious how my first Figma Make creation turned out?
Here’s a snapshot of what I built in under 5 minutes, by the following prompt:
"Design a homepage for an e-banking app for a Swiss private bank. Use Google Material Design components with a clean, trustworthy aesthetic. Include sections for account overview, recent transactions, and quick actions like transfers or payments.".
Would have taken me at least 30-45min designing it manually.
Figma Make, revamping the look and feel of the design based on the new prompt (video sped up to 2x).
🚀 Change is coming. Benefit from it.
At bontiq, we believe the future looks bright for your digital product development team.
Don’t miss the opportunity to be part of it. Let’s talk if you want to secure your seat on the journey.
