Jul 16, 2024
Wenjia Zong
Product Manager, Creatie
If you could wave a magic wand and turn your napkin sketches into a production-ready UI, would you? Well, with AI design tools, that’s actually possible.
What’s more difficult, though, is trying to find the right tool for your needs. But no, you don’t need to be an expert in natural language processing and other AI processes to find the right design tool.
In this article, we’ll help you understand what kind of AI tool you should be looking for based on your specific use case, as well as seven different tools you can start using today.
How UX designers use AI
Every great digital product needs to have a beautiful and intuitive design to achieve mass adoption. But with more and more startups and software tools launching every day, UX designers can only dedicate so much time to generating new designs and mockups.
This is where AI acts as a great supplementary tool for these busy designers.
Instead of spending hours creating new mockups from scratch, UX designers can use AI tools to quickly generate mockups at scale. This allows them to focus their efforts on the more creative, strategic aspects of the UX process, like implementing user feedback or A/B testing specific user interfaces.
AI-powered prototyping tools also enable iterative testing at scale so UX designers can quickly gather user feedback to refine their designs. In short, speed is the name of the game. By speeding up the design process with the power of AI, UI and UX designers can eliminate repetitive design tasks and focus their full attention on creating a higher-quality user experience.
The types of AI tools available for designers
The modern influx of AI technology (across over 70,00 companies worldwide) means that users can find technology that serves their most niche use cases. This also applies to UI and UX designers.
Here are just a few of the different AI tools that designers can find in today’s market:
Automated design elements
Some AI-powered tools generate basic design elements like color schemes, fonts, layouts, and icons. For example, the AI tool Khroma generates color palettes based on specific emotions and preferences.
Similarly, Adobe has integrated AI into many of its apps to automate time-consuming tasks like cropping photos. These tools make it easy for designers to create consistent, visually appealing designs and save time on routine tasks.
User behavior analytics
Other AI tools provide user behavior analytics through techniques like heatmaps and session replays. Attention Insight is one example—it uses eye-tracking data to show how users engage with a product’s UI. Equipped with this data, designers can then go back to the drawing board and make data-backed decisions on how to best optimize their platform’s UI and UX.
Prototyping
AI has also become integral to rapid prototyping tools like Creatie and Figma. With features like design-to-code generation, intelligent component resizing, and shape and pen tools—which allow designers to craft detailed vector graphics with a few simple sketches—these tools can significantly boost any busy designer’s productivity.
User research
Tools like Maze and UserTesting enable UX designers to conduct unmoderated research by leveraging AI to analyze feedback from prototype tests, surveys, and other self-service methods. For moderated studies, you could also use Otter.ai to automatically transcribe your user interview sessions with contextual accuracy.
By capturing and organizing user insights, these AI research tools allow designers to make data-backed decisions on optimizing usability and customer experience.
7 best AI tools for UX designers
When it comes to AI, your average user is likely familiar with ChatGPT and Midjourney. But beyond basic text prompt image generation technology, there are a slew of user-friendly design tools that you and your teams can leverage.
Here are some of the top AI tools you can use, whether you want to speed up the product design process or conduct user research on your platform’s UI and UX:
Creatie: Best for overall UX design
Creatie’s homepage (Source)
Creatie empowers UI and UX designers using AI. At a high level, the tool uses AI to generate customizable design elements and templates, saving designers precious time on initial ideation and creation. By automating these repetitive design tasks, Creatie allows designers to focus their creative efforts on high-value work rather than rote production.
For UI designers, Creatie makes rapidly crafting beautiful, consistent interfaces simple. UX designers can also quickly validate their concepts by collaborating with the rest of their team, such as product managers and developers, in real time.
What sets Creatie apart from other AI design tools is its sole focus on enhancing the design workflow with AI. While some tools only offer AI through plug-ins, Creatie built AI natively into its platform. Not only does this make it the ideal solution for teams that want to streamline their design workflows, but it also allows users to give feedback and quickly gain access to new AI features based on their specific needs.
Maze: Best for user research
Maze’s product discovery tool (Source)
If you’re looking to back up your product development roadmap with real user insights, you should probably take a look at Maze. This platform accelerates product development with AI-powered user research and testing capabilities.
Maze’s automated analysis features, including its ability to ask users follow-up questions, make it easy for designers to learn exactly what their users do (and don’t) want in a product’s UI and UX. Plus, Maze supports comprehensive testing methods like content testing, card sorting, and surveys to help its users evaluate all aspects of user experience.
In terms of collaboration, its integrations with tools like Figma and intuitive interface make Maze accessible for product development and research teams, too.
Ultimately, Maze provides UX designers with a robust framework to validate concepts, optimize usability, and ensure that their designs align with users’ needs.
Otter.ai: Best for gathering user feedback
An Otter.ai transcript (Source)
Otter.ai enhances UX teams’ productivity and collaboration with its advanced transcription capabilities.
The tool is especially useful for conducting moderated user interviews by automatically capturing participants’ feedback. In short, instead of spending time vigorously jotting down meeting notes, designers can use the platform’s real-time transcription and focus on holding the conversation and extracting user feedback. Additionally, Otter.ai’s speaker identification labels moderators and participants and attributes quotes accurately.
If you don’t have time to skim through a whole transcript, Otter.ai also generates shareable summaries with highlights so you and your designers can quickly find and act on your learnings from user interviews.
Uizard: Best for converting sketches into digital interfaces
Uizard’s interface (Source)
Similarly to Microsoft’s Sketch2Code, Uizard can turn rough sketches into polished digital interfaces with the tool's sketch-to-design conversion capabilities. Uizard then further simplifies the design process with a library of templates and components for easy drag-and-drop building. The platform also offers real-time collaboration that allows teams to iterate on and align designs simultaneously.
If you’re a solo designer, Uizard also offers AI-driven suggestions to help you polish your designs with optimal color schemes, layouts, and typography. While it’s best suited for simpler designs, Uizard provides both design experts and novices with the capabilities to efficiently bring ideas to life and quickly test out new design concepts.
Framer X: Best for generating websites
Framer X’s interface (Source)
If your team is interested in mocking up website designs, then you might want to look at Framer X. This AI tool excels in interactive prototyping and allows designers to craft dynamic, clickable prototypes that closely mimic a published site. This functionality makes it an essential tool for performing realistic user testing and gaining approval from stakeholders before going live with the finished product. Framer X also supports real components, like buttons and sliders, and integrates with services like Google Maps and Mailchimp to ensure that your prototypes are both interactive and functional.
Additionally, Framer X’s responsive design capabilities allow designers to create layouts that adapt seamlessly to different screen sizes, such as desktops and mobile devices. Like some other tools on this list, its ability to export your designs as clean, production-ready code facilitates a smooth transition from design to development and improves efficiency across your design workflow.
Locofy.ai: Best for converting design files into code
Here’s an option for all of the Figma lovers reading this list. Locofy.ai accelerates the transition from design to development by automatically converting files from Figma and Adobe XD into responsive, production-ready code.
To be more specific, this tool scans your designs and generates clean HTML, CSS, and React components while still allowing for extensive customization afterward. Some of the platform’s other key features include reusable modules that help you create consistent design systems, real-time collaboration, integrations with UI libraries like Material UI, data binding capabilities, and support for various frameworks and deployment platforms.
Not only is this a handy tool for designers, but it also frees up your team’s developer resources so they can focus on other urgent tasks.
Attention Insight: Best for optimizing UI based on user activity
An AI-powered user heatmap (Source)
Last but not least, Attention Insight enhances the design process with predictive analytics that model user focus. If conducting more thorough UX research is one of your main pain points, this might be the tool for you.
Attention Insight forecasts where users will look, empowering designers to optimize their user interfaces and prioritize design elements based on objective user data.
By leveraging AI and machine learning, the platform generates heatmaps that identify high- and low-attention areas from your users using a layout of your product or website’s interface. Some of its key features include visual analyses with attention percentages for each element, A/B testing for design comparisons, and integration with tools like Figma and Sketch.
While it’s not a user testing replacement, the platform’s predictive insights complement more traditional user research methods so your team can continue iterating until they find a winning design for your project.
How to choose the right AI tool for your UX team
You should take a few key factors into consideration when selecting the right AI tool for your UX team.
First, think about your team’s size and members’ individual roles. You may find that larger UX teams with researchers, designers, and developers benefit more from scalable tools like Figma. Smaller teams and freelancers, however, can work more effectively with solutions like Creatie, which cater specifically to subject matter experts and solo designers who need to streamline their existing design workflow.
Next, you should clearly identify the specific challenges that your UX team aims to solve, whether that’s streamlining the design process, analyzing user behavior on your product’s UI, or automating repetitive tasks. Then, you’ll want to choose the tools that align with those priorities. For example, while Attention Insight is a great tool for studying user behavior, Creatie would be a better choice if you need a tool to help you speed up the design process.
Finally, you should assess the learning curve of any tool you consider. Try looking for free trials, onboarding resources, or educational content to help your UI and UX team get up to speed on how to use any new design technology you implement. The faster your teams find the right tools for their needs, the more time they’ll have to focus on the work that matters most.
Are some AI tools better for big or small UX teams?
Like with any other piece of technology, you’ll find that most UI and UX teams use a mix of dedicated point solutions and more established technology to meet their needs. For instance, your teams may consider using Figma if you need an established tool with a larger feature set.
However, when it comes to choosing the right AI tools, smaller UX teams may find greater value in specialized point solutions rather than complex platforms like Figma, which are more effective for larger organizations.
You could just as easily use a point solution like Creatie that solely focuses on AI-generated UI and UX design. Unlike Figma, which offers an extensive feature set that comes at a premium, Creatie provides core functionalities like AI-assisted prototyping and collaboration specifically for small teams. From here, you could round out the rest of your design tech stack with other niche point solutions like Attention Insight.
Ultimately, the tools you pick will be a matter of personal preference. That being said, if you are on a large or growing team, you’ll want to ensure that your tools offer seamless collaboration between your team members. With Creatie, for example, you could give a designer, a developer, and a product manager access to one design file so they can collaborate in real time.
Do UX teams need to use all these AI tools?
With new AI design tools launching every day, you and your UI and UX teams may wonder if you need to adopt every new solution that enters the marketplace. Realistically, however, there’s no way you’d be able to evaluate and integrate all of these tools without becoming overwhelmed.
Rather than jumping on the bandwagon for every AI tool, it's smarter to start by analyzing your team's specific needs and challenges. Then, you can selectively choose the tools that will most effectively address those priority gaps.
The hardest part of this process is resisting the temptation to add new tools that don't clearly provide value to your team. This is a pervasive problem across many industries—tech leaders call it “tech bloat.” If you and your teams have to juggle multiple programs, you may become less productive and more scattered than you were before.
Getting started with AI for the first time?
If you’re new to using AI design tools, this list may be a bit overwhelming. Fortunately, all you need to do to get started is pick one tool that meets your immediate needs.
If you’re looking to streamline your design process so you can spend more time being creative, then we recommend starting with Creatie.
Ready to start turning your ideas into production-ready code? Sign up for Creatie and get started for free.
