AI-Powered Design Tools That Actually Work

TL;DR

• There are dozens of AI design tools. Most are gimmicks. A handful genuinely change how you work.
• The best tools aren't "AI that replaces Figma." They're AI features inside your existing workflow.
• The winner depends on your context: enterprise design system? Rapid prototyping? Solo freelance?

The Tool Landscape

Figma AI (Built-in)

What it does: Auto-layout suggestions, component variant generation, rename layers, first-draft mockups, design-to-code.

Honest take: It's good for small tasks. Rename 200 layers? Great. Generate a complete dashboard? Mediocre. The advantage is that it's inside Figma, so there's no context switching.

Best for: Teams already deep in Figma who want incremental productivity gains.

v0 by Vercel

What it does: Text-to-UI generation. Describe what you want, get React + Tailwind code with a live preview.

Honest take: Surprisingly good for developer-oriented designs. Struggles with highly branded, custom visual design. Excellent for functional UI.

Best for: Designer-developers or design-to-handoff workflows where code output matters.

Google Stitch (formerly Galileo AI)

What it does: Text-to-UI and image-to-UI generation, powered by Gemini 3. Generates complete screens, exports to Figma, and produces front-end code (HTML/CSS/Tailwind).

Honest take: Fast ideation with impressive output quality. The "paste to Figma" workflow is smooth. Designs can look similar to each other across prompts — you'll want to iterate. Accessibility of generated output still needs manual checking.

Best for: Rapid prototyping, exploring layout variations, and getting a head start on front-end code.

Pencil (pencil.dev)

What it does: A vector design tool that lives inside your IDE (Cursor, VS Code). Designs are stored as .pen files in your repo. AI agents can generate and modify designs through the Model Context Protocol (MCP) — meaning Claude, Cursor, or Codex can directly create and edit screens.

Honest take: Game-changer for designer-developers who want design and code to stay in sync. Two-way design-to-code synchronization (React/HTML/CSS/Tailwind) means no more "export and forget." Still new — the ecosystem is smaller than Figma's, but the "design as code" philosophy is powerful.

Best for: Teams that want design files to live in the same repo as code. Especially strong for developer-driven design and AI-multiplayer workflows where multiple agents generate screens in parallel.

Midjourney / DALL-E for UI Assets

What it does: Generate custom illustrations, icons, backgrounds, hero images, and brand assets.

Honest take: Game-changer for teams without dedicated illustrators. Consistency across a set of images is still tricky — you'll need to iterate and refine prompts.

Best for: Marketing pages, onboarding flows, and anywhere custom illustration adds value.

Uizard

What it does: Sketch-to-digital, screenshot-to-editable-design, text-to-wireframe.

Honest take: Great for very early-stage ideation. Output quality drops off for production-ready work.

Best for: Non-designers (PMs, founders) who need to communicate ideas visually.

How to Actually Use These

The trap is using AI tools to do your job. The move is using them to skip the boring parts of your job.

Do This Next

1. Pick two tools from this list. One for generation (v0, Google Stitch, or Pencil), one for assets (Midjourney or DALL-E). Spend one hour with each on a real project task.
2. Build a prompt library. When you find prompts that produce good output, save them. Your prompt library becomes a team asset — share it.