I tried early versions of Stable Diffusion be ended up using exclusively Midjourney because of the quality. I’m excited to check out the full list. (Oh, and of course I’ve used DALL-E as well via ChatGPT. But there’s not a lot of control there.)
AI-generated imagery has become an essential part of the modern product designer’s toolkit — powering everything from early-stage ideation…
uxplanet.orgAs a certified Star Wars geek, I love this TED talk from ILM’s Rob Bedrow. For the uninitiated, Industrial Light & Magic, or ILM, is the company that George Lucas founded to make all the special effects for the original and subsequent Star Wars films. The firm has been an award-winning pioneer in special and visual effects, responsible for the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park, the liquid metal T-1000 in Terminator 2: Judgement Day, and the de-aging of Harrison Ford in Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.
The point Bedrow makes is simple: ILM creates technology in service of the storyteller, or creative.
I believe that we’re designed to be creative beings. It’s one of the most important things about us. That’s one of the reasons we appreciate and we just love it when we see technology and creativity working together. We see this on the motion control on the original “Star Wars” or on “Jurassic Park” with the CG dinosaurs for the first time. I think we just love it when we see creativity in action like this. Tech and creative working together. If we fast forward to 2020, we can see the latest real-time virtual production techniques. This was another creative innovation driven by a filmmaker. In this case, it’s Jon Favreau, and he had a vision for a giant Disney+ “Star Wars” series.
He later goes on to show a short film test made be a lone artist at ILM using an internal AI tool. It’s never-before-seen creatures that could exist in the Star Wars universe. I mean, for now they look like randomized versions of Earth animals and insects, but if you squint, you can see where the technology is headed.
Bedrow goes on…
Now the tech companies on their own, they don’t have the whole picture, right? They’re looking at a lot of different opportunities. We’re thinking about it from a filmmaking perspective. And storytellers, we need better artist-focused tools. Text prompts alone, they’re not great ways to make a movie. And it gets us excited to think about that future where we are going to be able to give artists these kinds of tools.
Again, artists—or designers, or even more broadly, professionals—need fine-grained control to adjust the output of AI.
Watch the whole thing. Instead of a doom and gloom take on AI, it’s an uplifting one that shows us what’s possible.
Jedi master of visual effects Rob Bredow, known for his work at Industrial Light & Magic and Lucasfilm, takes us on a cinematic journey through the evolution of visual effects, with behind-the-scenes stories from the making of fan favorites like “Jurassic Park,” “Star Wars,” “Indiana Jones” and more. He shares how artist-driven innovation continues to blend old and new technology, offering hope that AI won’t replace creatives but instead will empower artists to create new, mind-blowing wonders for the big screen. (Recorded at TED2025 on April 8, 2025)
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There has been an explosion of AI-powered prompt-to-code tools within the last year. The space began with full-on integrated development environments (IDEs) like Cursor and Windsurf. These enabled developers to use leverage AI assistants right inside their coding apps. Then came a tools like v0, Lovable, and Replit, where users could prompt screens into existence at first, and before long, entire applications.
A couple weeks ago, I decided to test out as many of these tools as I could. My aim was to find the app that would combine AI assistance, design capabilities, and the ability to use an organization’s coded design system.
While my previous essay was about the future of product design, this article will dive deep into a head-to-head between all eight apps that I tried. I recorded the screen as I did my testing, so I’ve put together a video as well, in case you didn’t want to read this.
Product design is going to change profoundly within the next 24 months. If the AI 2027 report is any indication, the capabilities of the foundational models will grow exponentially, and with them—I believe—will the abilities of design tools.
The AI foundational model capabilities will grow exponentially and AI-enabled design tools will benefit from the algorithmic advances. Sources: AI 2027 scenario & Roger Wong
The TL;DR of the report is this: companies like OpenAI have more advanced AI agent models that are building the next-generation models. Once those are built, the previous generation is tested for safety and released to the public. And the cycle continues. Currently, and for the next year or two, these companies are focusing their advanced models on creating superhuman coders. This compounds and will result in artificial general intelligence, or AGI, within the next five years.
Karri Saarinen, writing for the Linear blog:
Unbounded AI, much like a river without banks, becomes powerful but directionless. Designers need to build the banks and bring shape to the direction of AI’s potential. But we face a fundamental tension in that AI sort of breaks our usual way of designing things, working back from function, and shaping the form.
I love the metaphor of AI being the a river and we designers are the banks. Feels very much in line with my notion that we need to become even better curators.
Saarinen continues, critiquing the generic chatbox being the primary form of interacting with AI:
One way I visualize this relationship between the form of traditional UI and the function of AI is through the metaphor of a ‘workbench’. Just as a carpenter’s workbench is familiar and purpose-built, providing an organized environment for tools and materials, a well-designed interface can create productive context for AI interactions. Rather than being a singular tool, the workbench serves as an environment that enhances the utility of other tools – including the ‘magic’ AI tools.
Software like Linear serves as this workbench. It provides structure, context, and a specialized environment for specific workflows. AI doesn’t replace the workbench, it’s a powerful new tool to place on top of it.
It’s interesting. I don’t know what Linear is telegraphing here, but if I had to guess, I wonder if it’s closer to being field-specific or workflow-specific, similar to Generative Fill in Photoshop. It’s a text field—not textarea—limited to a single workflow.
For decades, interfaces have guided users along predefined roads. Think files and folders, buttons and menus, screens and flows. These familiar structures organize information and provide the comfort of knowing where you are and what’s possible.
linear.app
I decided to re-platform my personal website, moving it from WordPress to React. It was spurred by a curiosity to learn a more modern tech stack like React and the drama in the WordPress community that erupted last month. While I doubt WordPress is going away anytime soon, I do think this rift opens the door for designers, developers, and clients to consider alternatives.
First off, I’m not a developer by any means. I’m a designer and understand technical things well, but I can’t code. When I was young, I wrote programs in BASIC and HyperCard. In the early days of content management systems, I built a version of my personal site using ExpressionEngine. I was always able to tweak CSS to style themes in WordPress. When Elementor came on the scene, I could finally build WP sites from scratch. Eventually, I graduated to other page builders like Oxygen and Bricks.
So, rebuilding my site in React wouldn’t be easy. I went through the React foundations tutorial by Next.js and their beginner full-stack course. But honestly, I just followed the steps and copied the code, barely understanding what was being done and not remembering any syntax. Then I stumbled upon Cursor, and a whole new world opened up.
Obviously, Covid-19 wreaked havoc on the world and countless lives this past year. We all know someone who caught the virus or died from it, or we were infected ourselves. We tried to do our part by staying home to limit our exposure to other people. We stayed away from our loved ones to protect them and to slow the spread. To keep ourselves occupied, many of us took up baking, cooking, knitting, or exercising. I started on what would become a yearlong path of learning about whatever interested me.
Video site YouTube saw an explosion in traffic from people bored in lockdown. I was one of them. At first, I was simply trying to learn how to optimize my work-from-home setup. Channels such as Podcastage and Curtis Judd taught me about microphones, and I upgraded my audio setup.
I’m really proud to announce that DesignScene for iPad has shipped today. From idea to release, it’s been about a year in the making. Here’s a little trailer I made in case you missed it:
I’ll be frank and say that this app was really made for me. Like many designers I spend a lot of my time going from website to website looking at stuff and reading up on trends. I eventually started using RSS feeds but even my feeds got unwieldy. I dreaded opening up Google Reader and seeing “1000+” unread items.
The design blog that connects the dots others miss. Written by Roger Wong.
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