r/product_design

A new tool drops. "Generate your entire UI from a single prompt." Twitter goes wild. Figma stock dips. And designers and engineers everywhere collectively sigh.

Figma was never just a design tool. It's a collaboration infrastructure: The single source of truth where designers, developers, and product teams are always looking at the same thing. Specs live there. Handoff happens there. Design tokens, component libraries, annotations, all of it, in one place everyone can access.

>An AI can give you a starting point. It cannot be a source of truth.

A prompt-generated UI has no versioning, no component system, no shared context between a designer and a developer. It's a screenshot with good lighting. When the PM asks "what changed in v3?" or the dev needs the spacing token, that AI output has no answer.

These AI tools are genuinely useful, great for quick exploration, early ideation, client mood boards. But they solve for speed of first draft, not truth of final output. Those are completely different problems.

The market keeps punishing Figma for a competition that doesn't really exist yet. Until an AI tool can be the living, versioned, team-wide reference that a whole product org works from: Figma's actual job is untouched.

After years of paying the Adobe tax, I'm done. I'm a designer (product + brand) + I take a lot of photos (as hobby)

Here's where I'm at:

Lightroom - I shoot both digital and film, and I'm deep into Negative Lab Pro for film scanning. Capture One keeps coming up but I'm not sure it's actually better for my use case or just different.

After Effects - I think I'm replacing this with Jitter for most things. It chokes on more advanced compositions tho, and it doesn't support everything yet. I hate AE tho, I am not an animator and it always takes me forever to get used to that stupid UX. 

Premiere Pro - I edit YouTube videos and I've built a bunch of my own AE templates that I use inside Premiere. I already have DaVinci Resolve and I actually tried moving my whole edit there, but I kept missing the motion graphics template workflow. Is there a clean equivalent in Resolve or am I rebuilding everything from scratch?

Photoshop - mostly masking, background removal, and some light graphic editing. Feels like the easiest one to replace? Looking at Affinity or just leaning harder into Figma for the simple stuff.

Illustrator - I use it for logo and icon work, so it's mostly vector. Affinity Designer seems like the obvious move here but curious what is your experience.

Already using Figma as my main tool and DaVinci for color grading, so those are sorted. Jitter is growing and I really enjoy using it, but it chokes on more advanced compositions.

What am I missing? What's actually painful about leaving that I'm not accounting for?

https://preview.redd.it/ybl8oremgevg1.png?width=1920&format=png&auto=webp&s=dbc73e8f7c385907239cff50071b5891e6f9d6a0

I’m designing a small macro pad / keypad and I’m not happy with how the bottom case is turning out.

The top “PCB” is purely aesthetic (not structural or functional), so the bottom case is doing most of the visual heavy lifting.

Right now it feels too bulky and a bit like a prototype rather than a finished product.

I’m aiming for something more:

• modern
• minimal
• visually lighter

but I’m not sure what specific changes would get me there.

I’d really appreciate feedback on:

• proportions (height, footprint)
• edge treatment (fillets vs chamfers)
• overall silhouette
• anything that makes it feel more “intentional”

Be as critical as you want - trying to improve the design, not defend it.

(Happy to iterate and post revisions if helpful.)

"I'm a 2nd year Product Design student and I want to find ways to make some income to help reduce the financial burden on my parents.

My current skills:

Product design (still learning, not professional level yet)

Basic logo design in Canva, then placing it onto product mockups in Photoshop using free templates from Freepik (e.g. t-shirts, packaging, mugs)

3D modeling in Rhino (intermediate) and Blender (beginner-intermediate)

Rhino: can model but Grasshopper is basically zero

Blender: below intermediate, mostly basic modeling and rendering

I'm not at the level where I can take on real professional product design clients yet. What are some realistic ways I can start making money with my current skill set as a student?"

I’ve had an idea for a product for quite some time but I have no idea how to bring it to life.

Are there any product designers in the UK that I can reach out to? Or even better, in Scotland.

It’s a design for an eco friendly alternative to a very common item that just isn’t available anywhere. So preferably someone who is eco-conscious in their designs too please!

TIA

Ideally, at a senior, lead, staff, or principal level, or higher, if possible. Thank you!

Worked quite heavily on this using some optimisation tips from recruiters as I was looking for some product/UI roles.

website: https://adityadey.vercel.app

do give some feedback, would help alot!

At the beginning of the semester I posted a survey to this subreddit gauging interest in a sheetpan organization product, now closer to the end of the semester I have a decent rendering & visual of what the product would be. I would love feedback (I need it for the course), so please feel free to fill out this form if you have a couple minutes (Average completion time is 2 minutes).
https://forms.office.com/r/fdhMX2VgZs

https://preview.redd.it/pt0efxyfe9vg1.png?width=1274&format=png&auto=webp&s=eb9568bb791b3c0df8f4814c930528c39948c59e

A lot ulof UX talk is going around, but I want to remind everyone UX is NOT part of the product design world, just as mechanical design or graphic design isn't. Although tangential to product design, there design aspects fall under the category of speciality design.

Product design is a small part of Industrial design, which incorporate every design aspect involved in conceptualizing, manufacturing, exploitation and recycling of a product, design branches like environmental design, transportation design, data collection design, R&D, and yes, UX aswell, among others. But ttake it with a grain of salt, UX cannot take part without a product, therefore UX IS NOT part of product design!

Also, it's totally wrong to assume you're a product designer just because you are an UX designer. UI is solely limited to smart products and UX only to a product that can be evaluated! You cannot UI a plastic bucket, unless it has a smart module, but you can still design this product, and you cannot UX an inexistent product!

Because of misinterpreting the meaning of graphic interface design and having it's meanings re-alocated to a branch that should not deal with it in the first place, creates a lot of confusion in the general acception responsibilities of a product designer or ID designer in employers and recruiters eyes.

So, therefore, for the sake of political correctness, it's better to refer UI as an interface design part and UX as a dtand-alone part of the design world.

Keep this in mind when applying to a new job, if you don't want to be over your head with the job's requirements and responsibilities.

I’ve been noticing a pattern at work and I’m curious if anyone else is seeing this.

People who are not technical or not used to building things themselves are suddenly creating these massive prototypes using AI tools. I mean dozens of features, pages, etc. Then they take those into user testing straight from whatever default Claude / Lovable spitted out.

And I get the intention, but I have a hard time seeing how valuable the feedback could be.

Showing customers everything at once on a zoom call, of course they say yes, “that looks great”. Like basically asking “would you like more options”. Feels meaningless. Is not integrated into the core app and their current flows or constraints.

As a designer who codes, I do take advantages of AI tools. But I’m trying to not fall into just producing more because I can. Without giving myself time to think through it more.

So when I see these huge AI driven prototypes being used for user testing, it just feels off.

I don’t know how to bring this up without sounding too harsh, but I honestly do not see how those tests can produce useful insights.

Is anyone else running into this?

Hi, I'm a Thai 2nd year Product Design student. Due to some personal issues this semester, I'll likely end up with a low GPA (around 2.5–2.7 cumulative).

For those working in the field — did employers ever ask about your GPA during hiring? Or does portfolio matter way more?

Also curious if this varies (Thailand vs international companies).

Thanks

I’ve been working as a product designer at an international design studio for the past 3 years. Last December, I left to start my own studio. I got a few inbound clients and delivered solid work, but then the AI hype hit, and as you’d expect, the number of founders looking for product design services dropped significantly.

To be clear, I’m not against AI at all. I actually like it. For me, it’s mostly been about switching tools and improving my workflow, and I’ve adapted quite comfortably.

My concern isn’t even “will I find clients for my studio in short term?”, I’m confident I can figure that out one way or another.

What genuinely worries me is this: UI feels like a pre-AI paradigm. I can’t clearly see where product design is heading in the near future. Fully generative UIs? Fewer clients? A completely different role for designers? I don’t know.

Design has been the core of my life for as long as I can remember. I started drawing at 4 years old, and since then I’ve always been someone who takes things and makes them better - visually, functionally, holistically. I’ve always believed this is the most valuable thing I can offer to the world.

Now I’m questioning what that even looks like in the future.

How are you thinking about this shift?
How are you positioning yourself as a designer right now?
What bets are you making for the long term?

I’d really appreciate hearing perspectives from other designers who are actively navigating this.