2020: Nice, fancy looking UI with cool animations got you discovered.

2025: None of that matters anymore. Beautiful UI is done by AI.

With the rise of AI tools, many designers fear to be replaced.
​And honestly, this will happen.

That being said, welcome to all the new readers of the Full-Stack Designer! Feel free to respond and share your thoughts, I'll read every message!

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Over the last 6 months, I tried out dozens of AI tools and talked with designers and founders about their experiences, with two things starting to stand out.

Two things that make sure you stay relevant as a designer in 2025.

But before coming to that, let’s quickly look at the tools I tried throughout the last year and which eventually became essential.

Trial & Error to find the perfect AI Design Stack

Creatie & Figma for visual design

In 2024, tools like Creatie started rolling out and become popular. Also, Figma introduced AI features like UI creation.

Especially in the beginning, they did not really live up to my expectations. Of course, it was relatively new tech, but still.

More importantly, getting beautiful UI fast was never a problem for me. I start many design projects with UI Kits like Shadcn UI and Untitled UI, as well as Relume for web projects.

They look amazing, have huge libraries and allow me to design super fast.

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Galileo AI, Figma Slides & Pitch for presentations

Presenting is a key skill for designers, and this got way easier now with tools like this. Tools like Galileo AI and even Figma Slides create nice presentations and visuals for you.

I stuck to Figma Slides, for the main reason that I also like to present prototypes, which Figma made really easy for me.

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v0 & Lovable for prototypes

For rapid prototyping, I haven’t found the perfect tool yet, but tools like Subframe, Lovable and v0 by Vercel are more developer heavy ways to quickly build simple interfaces. I tried to build two prototypes with those tools, and watched several hours of tutorials already, but I wasn’t happy with the results yet.

I honestly think that, if more time invested, learning those tools will immensely increase the value I create, because I can create better, more realistic prototypes faster.

A good YouTube Channel for things like this is Greg Isenberg.

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Claude & Fathom for UX Research

My main use case for AI is in research. I use Claude to assist me in creating good interview questions, to find some relevant public data and to formulize good user stories.

I used ChatGPT a lot in the beginning, but somehow found Claude just better for writing technical and industry-specific content.

Also, I use Fathom Video to record and summarize interviews, which was a game changer for me already.

​Loom is also an interesting tool to look at, but the AI features there are more like nice to have than essential.

Just recently, Lenny’s newsletter did a study on the most used tools for the tech industry, and it’s crazy how AI tools just became part of our daily routines so quickly. Definitely worth a read here.

The two things you need to understand about AI in product design

After those very intense tool testing months, and talking to founders and other designers, two things are absolutely essential to stay relevant as a designer in 2025:

1. Excel in areas that make you irreplaceable

Honestly, this is what The Full-Stack Designer is all about. Just being good at visual design won’t cut it anymore, as AI is just faster and better.

Let’s look at all the areas of a Full-Stack Designer and see which you should focus on more:

1. Visual Design - The easiest to replace. You need to be good at it, to differentiate from good and bad, but actually designing all components? Not anymore. Focus on something else.
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2. Research - As long as humans are unable to formulate clearly what they want, we are safe. Focusing on understanding and identifying real user problems is a key differentiator to save your career as a designer. Get better at it, and your value increases tenfold.
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3. Tools - Learning the right tools, and being good at them is essential, however, instead of learning all the shortcuts and tricks in Figma, you probably should focus on things like research, as simple prompts might solve most issues for you soon, including prototyping.
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4. Business - Focus on this! Knowing which metrics to tackle, and how to design features that really provide business value is really hard. Only the best founders, product managers and designers can do that repeatedly. This won’t be replaced by AI anytime soon.
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5. Collaboration - Same counts for working with others. While design handoffs might become irrelevant soon, you still need to manage expectations, present ideas and be empathic. No AI will replace a good team player and leader.
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To summarize, if you had to pick, focus on improving your research, business and collaboration skills to stay relevant in 2025.
Everyone can design beautiful UI, but providing real value is hard.

No T-Shaped designers anymore, Full-Stack Designers are in demand!

2. Master AI tools to become 10x faster

After establishing how you can expand your horizon and become more valuable as a Full-Stack Designer, let’s see how you can use AI tools to automate the things everyone else can do already.

Visual Design

• UI Kits, for a huge library of UI components
• My favourite is Untitled UI, because it’s one of the biggest

Research

• Fathom to record and summarize, and Claude to write good interview questions

Tools

• Use tools like Lovable to quickly create prototypes

Business

• Honestly, Lenny’s Bot is a game changer when it comes to knowledge about business value and more.

Collaboration

• You can use Figma Slides for better presentations, otherwise; There’s no good reason to become faster or automate.

Final words

UX & Product Designers already had a rough time in 2024, a lot of layoffs and economic downturns led to too many designers for not so many jobs. This won’t get better in 2025.

That’s why it’s even more important to start learning the right skills, namely UX Research, Business & Collaboration Skills and automate the rest with AI.

For some context, maybe a bit too personal but why not:

In 2024, my design agency “Grauberg” really crushed it! We had to stop accepting new clients for two months. I think one of the big reasons why it worked so well is because we are positioned as someone who brings products from 0 to 1 and builds products people pay for. Clients constantly ask for advice beyond the design horizon, like “What do you think we should build?”.

It seems like the small team and I truly provide business value.

So we will continue doubling down on that, and you should probably too.

I’m really curious about the AI tools you use! Feel free to respond to this email and share your experience with me :)

The Full Stack Designer’s Toolbox

The FSD Toolbox presents some quick learnings or tools for every building block of a Full-Stack Designer.

1. Visual Design

Let’s talk about typefaces! Figma just added a bunch of new typefaces which you can use for free. My favorite new one is Commissioner.

2. Research

I recently dove back into doing user journey mappings. They are a great UX tool to identify what the actual jobs are that users need to complete.

A big learning there was: For the time of the session, assume your tool does not exist.

This shifted the focus on the user and their problems.

3. Tools

I shared so many tools today, so honestly not much to add to this section. On a personal level, I usually look at ProductHunt for new tools, but recently I also look at ToolFinder, as there are more detailed reviews, specifically for productivity tools like Rise, Amie or Morgen.

4. Business

7 years ago, when I started my career as a freelancer, I started watching The Futur, as they introduced “value based pricing” to me. This was a game changer in how I price one-off projects for my agency business.

When starting out, I couldn’t imagine charging more than 500$ for a design, but nowadays it feels unfair to only charge 5k for a design that might bring in millions of dollars.

5. Collaboration

You can use prototypes in Figma Slides, so when presenting an idea, you can also showcase a prototype straight from the slide.