Challenge

A team all over the map — and a landscape that wouldn't sit still

Half the team was new to AI, a few resisted it, and the design tool landscape was shifting under us mid-evaluation.

My team was all over the map. Half were inexperienced with AI, and a few were resistant to it outright. I coached the team on the basics, and built a number of GPTs to guide process and up level quality, while keeping a close eye on the design tool landscape, which was shifting fast enough to make timing tricky. Mid-evaluation, Figma released Agents, Claude released Claude Design, Google launched Stitch, and our engineers started adopting Cursor. In hindsight I'd move faster next time, but the ground was moving under us as we went.

Solution

Test it myself, then let the team own the recommendation

I experimented on personal projects, then gave experienced designers a month to evaluate tools in real work — so we landed on an approach built for how we actually work.

I tested different ways of working myself, on personal projects at home. With each project I'd test how quickly I could get into coding by seeing how little Figma work I needed to do.

Each time, some design exploration in Figma was critical. Sometimes that meant a UI mood board, a few key screens, core components, or some mix of the three.

From there, I gave the team room to find their own process, through coaching, experimentation, and lunch-and-learns where designers taught each other what they'd found. The final decision came when I picked our two most experienced, most curious designers and gave them a month to experiment and evaluate tools as a part of their active project work. They experimented and ran ideas by other designers, delivering a final recommendation.

That let us cut through the noise and land on an approach built for how we actually work, not what was trending that week.
Results

Daily AI use — and buy-in that stuck

Every designer uses AI daily. We standardized on Figma, Claude, and Cursor — and the team felt like they built the approach, not that it was handed down.

Every designer now uses AI daily, across research, copywriting, competitive analysis, idea generation, prototyping, and design work. We've standardized on Figma, Claude, and Cursor, with our process always evolving. Prototypes have gotten more detailed, which is producing sharper, higher-quality insights from user research.

The bigger shift was buy-in. Nobody felt like this was handed down to them. They felt like they built it.