Imagine walking into a design studio in 2019: designers meticulously crafting interfaces in Figma, teams debating the perfect pixel layouts, weeks spent building prototypes. Now fast forward to today, where AI can generate a functional email application prototype in minutes. You might think this marks the end of traditional design roles. You'd be wrong.
Starting Small, Thinking Big
My founding Engineer and I have been obsessed with email apps and their shortcomings for 15 years. We even maintain a dedicated Slack channel for discussing potential innovations in this space. Recently, we decided to put AI to the test: could we create an interactive email application – coded, deployed, and usable – within an afternoon?
Starting with a quick homepage mockup in Figma, we fed it into V0, an AI-powered development tool. Through strategic prompting and rapid iteration, we achieved something remarkable: a polished, functional prototype in a fraction of the traditional development time. But speed wasn’t the real story – it’s about what happened next.
From Zero to Prototype
The prototype came together in under two hours—a process that traditionally takes weeks. Here's how it unfolded:
0:00-0:30: Foundation
Core email functionality defined
Basic structure and layout established
First working prototype generated
0:30-1:00: Core Features
Inbox view refined
Email composition implemented
Search functionality added
Realistic dummy data generated
1:00-2:00: Polish
Animations fine-tuned
Typography and spacing adjusted
Micro-interactions enhanced
When I presented this example during a guest lecture on AI in Design, someone remarked that it "wasn't really design because I was coding through prompts." This misses the point entirely. Design isn't about the tools—it's about making decisions that shape experiences. Whether you're manipulating pixels in Figma or crafting prompts for AI, you're still designing. We're moving past the artificial divide between creativity and development. These are all creative tools; what matters is how we wield them and bring different capabilities together.
Human Intelligence, Amplified
The democratization of design tools isn't new. We've seen it with website builders, template marketplaces, and no-code platforms. But AI represents something different: it's democratizing competence itself. And that's exactly why human creativity becomes more valuable, not less.
AI will never have taste. It will never have that soul that adds the crucial differentiator. This isn't defensive positioning, it's a fundamental insight into design's future. Our ability to ideate, refine, and elevate thinking isn't changing, only the methods of application.
Building for Reality
This is the true "last mile" of modern digital product design—the journey from AI-generated prototype to scalable, production-ready applications.
Consider what our quick prototype didn't address:
Security and Authentication
Secure user data handling
Authentication architecture
Privacy compliance
Scalability
Handling millions of emails
Database architecture
Real-time updates
Integration
Email protocol connections
API development
Cross-client compatibility
Performance
Load time optimization
Caching strategy
Offline capabilities
This is where modern design proves its worth. It's not just about beautiful interfaces—it's about translating rapid prototypes into robust systems. The most valuable designers bridge this gap, working closely with engineering teams to deliver on the prototype's promise.
Evolving The Craft
Just as Instagram filters made everyone a "photographer" and forced professional photographers to elevate their craft, AI is pushing designers to develop stronger capabilities in areas machines can't touch:
Pattern recognition across domains
Strategic insight
Cultural awareness
Emotional intelligence
Aesthetic judgment
Tomorrow's most valuable designers won't generate the most variations or write the cleanest code. They'll be those who can:
Rapidly identify meaningful patterns in user behaviour
Quickly iterate using AI tools
Make strategic decisions aligned with business goals
Apply taste and judgment to refine AI outputs
Understand technical constraints and opportunities
Transform prototypes into practical solutions
The Real Last Mile
We're past the "AI will replace designers" hype cycle and entering an era where the most successful designers will neither resist AI tools nor rely on them entirely. Instead, they'll leverage AI for the heavy lifting of design production while focusing their uniquely human capabilities on what truly differentiates great design: taste, judgment, and strategic thinking.
Like we always say at Comedia: it’s time to stop talking and start making. We believe in learning by doing, in prototyping and testing real-world ideas quickly rather than getting bogged down in endless planning cycles. Our email prototype showed how AI tools can revolutionize the speed from idea to product. But the true value of design lies in bridging the gap between prototype and production. In a world where anyone can create a convincing prototype in hours, the differentiator becomes understanding how to turn those prototypes into scalable, secure, and performant systems. That's the real last mile – and it's still deeply, fundamentally human.
The future of design isn't about competing with AI, it's about using AI to elevate human creativity to bring ideas to life at scale. The tools are becoming democratized, but the ability to transform promising prototypes into production-ready systems? That remains uniquely human.
Get in touch and let’s build something great together.
