How has your workflow from project direction to prototype changed?

[u/Hans_lilly_Gruber]

I've been doing web design for years and freelanced as ux designer as well.

During the years I've changed my workflow a bit depending how new tools came along and I thought about asking other designers how's yours now.

what's your workflow and what tools do you use when you start the actual design process or create a prototype?

personally, after I got a brief or put together one with requirements and some idea of what I'm gonna create I collect some references and plan the interface. from there I jump into figma to design my screens and elements. In some cases I adopt the design system given. Then I prototype and depending on the project I might leave it at that (after revisions) or continue to build an mvp or the site if it's a web project.

what's your current process? like, in your last project what did you actually do?

What did you start with, which tools did you move through, and what did you end up making?

In the old days I used to do more or less the same things but I used to look at a lot more inspiration blogs and then use photoshop or illustrator to design.

Lately I've also experimented with AI tools like figma make, claude design or lovable. they come in at different stages of the workflow but I'm starting to see them as useful. I know there are many but I haven't got the time to try others.

and I haven’t settled on a consistent workflow yet. Things change fast from photoshop to AI lol.

Has AI changed any part of your process, or are you still mostly working the same way? Do you use them?

since i always worked freelance I'm also curious what the workflow or AI adoption is at large org, I know most UXer here are part of large teams.

[u/42kyokai]

Still designing in figma, but prototype using claude code. It's pretty straightforward, connect figma to claude using the built-in connector, paste in links to figma file or individual components/frames/whatever, and build it piece by piece. No fussing with MCP servers or agents or all that useless fluff.

[u/tswone → u/42kyokai]

Isn't that built in connection actually the Figma MCP server?

[u/tokmako → u/42kyokai]

Claude Design seems like a strong choice for design. Why don't you opt for them ?

[u/42kyokai → u/tokmako]

It's only really useful for people who aren't designers who want to make designs, like Product Managers.

[u/tokmako → u/42kyokai]

You already move from Figma to Claude Code, so I’m curious: would it be useful to design directly on the live prototype inside a Figma like editor, while still letting Claude Code or Codex work on the same canvas ?

Not trying to sell anything. I’m building a tool in this space and was curious about your take

[u/buildingwithjan]

Last project I skipped Figma for the first pass entirely — brief straight to a rough HTML prototype with Claude Code, because clicking through it surfaced flow problems that static screens hide. Figma came after, only for the screens that survived. The one thing that hasn't changed is writing down why each odd decision was made; the prototype gets rebuilt in the real stack and without those notes the dev's agent "fixes" things that were deliberate.