Practical AI Tools for Your Everyday Design Tasks

Alex Baldwin

Alex Baldwin

@alexbaldwin

As designers, we’re always looking for ways to streamline our workflows without sacrificing quality. Recent AI tools offer an opportunity to dip our toes into new methods that can turn hours of work into minutes, especially for repetitive tasks. These tools aren’t about replacing your creative process—they’re about adding a few helpful companions to your existing toolkit.

In this lesson, we’ll look at some practical AI tools that can enhance specific parts of your design workflow. No dramatic changes or radical rethinking required—just straightforward ways to save time on tedious tasks and get a little extra help with ideation. We’ll focus on how these tools can complement what you already do well, helping you work a bit faster and explore a few new possibilities along the way.

  1. Andrej Karpathy: How I Use LLMs

    Andrej explains the best mental model behind how language models work. Understanding this helps you grasp what AI tools can actually do, their limitations, and how to use them effectively.

    Watch the video to understand how these models work, their capabilities, when to use them, and how to best structure prompts.

  2. Bolt.new: From Figma to Code

    This brand new feature converts Figma designs to code. It’s the perfect place to start for a developer handoff.

    Try converting an existing Figma design using Bolt. Where does the tool get it right or wrong?

  3. V0: Prototyping from Prompts

    V0 lets you create production-ready code, through prompts. I’ve found it to be incredibly helpful in making interaction-heavy prototypes that would have taken hours in traditional software.

    Use V0 to mock up an interaction heavy design component like a menu system.

  4. Claude: Copywriting Assistant

    Claude’s Project feature lets you add files to the context window like style guides, examples, and glossaries to keep your writing consistent across your product.

    Create a Claude Project with your brand guidelines and generate copy for a new marketing page.

  5. Perplexity: Real-Time Design Research

    Perplexity helps you quickly research competitors, trends, and user behavior with up-to-date information. I’m a bit biased as one of the designers at Perplexity but I still use it as a starting point for almost every project.

    Generate a competitive analysis, summarize app store reviews, or get a trend report related to your project.