Episode Details

So this month Marcus and I get into a slightly uncomfortable question. If AI can knock out decent interfaces from a text prompt, where does that leave the people whose day job is opening Figma and making screens look nice?

We start with Google Stitch, which has been getting a lot of attention lately. Then we zoom out into something I have become mildly obsessed with, which is building AI skills. Not prompt snippets, but reusable, documented processes that let you get consistent work out of AI without drowning it in context.

App of the Month

This month’s tool is Google Stitch (v2), Google’s AI UI generator. You describe what you want, it produces an interface, and you can do some light manual tweaking.

It is not a full replacement for Figma. The editing controls are basic. The bigger story is what it represents. We are now at the point where a decent, usable UI can be generated fast enough that the real value shifts from "can you draw the screens" to "can you judge what good looks like." That is where experience, and yes, taste, starts to matter.

If you want to compare approaches, I mentioned Figr again, which I still prefer for the quality of what it produces.

Are UI Designers Becoming Vinyl?

The question Stitch raises is not "can AI design interfaces". It clearly can. The question is what happens to the job market when "good enough" becomes cheap, fast, and widely available.

I found myself telling 2 different clients recently that they could probably skip hiring a UI designer. They had tight budgets, tight timelines, and already had solid brand guidelines or a design system. In those situations, I could push the work through AI, iterate it a bit, and get something perfectly serviceable.

That line of advice made me feel a bit grubby. Not because it was wrong for those clients, but because it hints at a bigger shift.

My worry is that UI design becomes like vinyl records. Most people will not need it. A small number will care deeply and pay for it. The middle ground shrinks.

Marcus made the important caveat here. Some designers will still be in demand because they bring something AI cannot easily fake. A distinctive visual style. Creative judgment. Brand thinking. The ability to make something feel like it came from a real point of view, not a model averaging the internet.

We also talked about where UI designers can expand their value, because "I make pretty screens" is not a great long-term career plan.

• Broaden into UX and problem solving. Look past the interface and into the business problem, user needs, and research.
• Own the stuff between screens. AI still tends to think screen by screen. Humans are better at flows, journeys, and the messy reality of how people actually get from A to B.
• Lean into information architecture. For websites especially, the structure and content model matter as much as the visual design.

We used a music analogy that will probably annoy some people, which makes it perfect. AI tools can generate "background" output that is fine for low-stakes use. They will not replace great musicians. But they will reduce the number of gigs available.

AI Skills As a Career Asset

After we finished terrifying UI designers, we moved on to something more useful. I think a lot of roles are going to need an AI toolkit. Not a handful of clever prompts, but a proper library of reusable skills.

When I say "AI skills," I mean documented processes that an AI can follow reliably. Think SOPs you can run repeatedly, not prompt snippets you copy and paste.

I now have around 60 skills in my library, and it is growi