r/webdev • u/physiopeng • 12h ago
Discussion Your AI UI skill is doing the part you were supposed to learn
So a few of my friends have stopped using Figma. They go straight to production and make changes there.
When I first heard this I was honestly confused. Like where do you try things out? Where do you compare two versions?
Then I saw what they were building. The landing page feels like one product, the settings page feels like another, the dashboard feels like a third. Buttons are different, spacing is different, hover is different on every page. There’s no uniformity, no design system, nothing.
So I asked them how they’re doing it, and the answer is always “I use this AI skill” or “I bought this skill pack”. People are actually selling these now. Skill packs, prompt bundles, paid repos. And there are a lot of free ones on GitHub too.
It doesn’t make sense to me at all. How will you learn anything? And how will you polish the product if it looks different every time you generate it?
When I brought this up, someone said just add a memory file so it stays consistent.
Okay, but then how will you make changes? You never decided why the button has that radius or why it’s that grey. The AI decided. So when something needs fixing, you don’t know what to fix. You just prompt again and hope.
And now there are courses around this too. The idea is learn this design vocabulary, tell it to the AI, and you’ll get good UI. They call it beginner friendly. But then you see what’s inside and it’s stuff like:
- spring easing, stiffness, damping
- optical alignment
- vertical rhythm
- morphing transitions
- 60-30-10 colour rule
- type scale ratios
If a senior buys it, it’s fine. They already know what damping feels like, they know what they’re skipping.
But a beginner has never played with an easing curve and seen it go from cheap to smooth. Never moved something 2px and felt it finally sit right. They’re just memorising words and giving them to the AI. You can know the word damping and still have no idea when the bounce is too much.
Selling that as beginner friendly feels like a deceiving thing to me. You learn these words after you’ve actually done the work, not before.
Also design is never one try. I go through so many versions before something feels right. In Figma that’s easy, I put five versions side by side and throw four away. In production code every change costs time, so whatever comes out first just ships.
I’m not trying to dunk on my friends, they’re good at what they do. And I get why these skills are tempting. But paid or free, they’re doing the exact part you’re supposed to learn.
If you’re using one, just try building one page without it. Pick the hover, the spacing, the colours yourself, even if it’s bad. That’s literally how you get better at this.
Anyone else seeing this or is it just me? just my thoughts 🤷