UX AI - Artificial Intelligence and User Experience

Manuel Aparicio
—
Technology
Updated:
8/24/26

Posted:
8/27/24

Being one of the most transformative fields, Artificial Intelligence (AI) can be key to improving User Experience (UX) Design and helping businesses provide more value. What's more, advances like Generative AI (GenAI) have streamlined how design teams work. Without further ado, let's dive deeper into how AI is transforming UX Design!

Why is AI Important in UX Design?

Jakob Nielsen, creator of Jakob's law for web usability, firmly believes that “ AI holds the key to the future of UX,” mentioning that UX professionals who don't embrace AI risk getting left behind. Additionally, studies show that AI tools can improve productivity by up to 66%, leading to around 33% increased productivity in UX Design. Artificial Intelligence can optimize design workflows, leading to better products and increased user satisfaction. As you can see, AI in UX Design can give businesses a competitive advantage over the ones that don't!

How Can AI Help Improve UX?

• UX Personalization: AI can help UX Designers understand target users' preferences better, helping them create more precise User Personas. For instance, AI tools for sentiment analysis in User Research and User Testing can lead to User Journeys and User Interfaces (UI) that address users' needs better. Businesses can also use AI chatbots to provide more personalized customer service by remembering topics from previous conversations.
• UX Accessibility: In the context of both Web Development and App Development, GenAI can help automate the creation of alt text for images and videos, which is crucial for users with visual impairment. Additionally, AI animations can enhance accessibility by generating visually engaging and contextually adaptive animations, providing a more inclusive experience for users across diverse platforms. AI tools can also suggest better color contrast of design elements that are compliant with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG).
• UX Writing: AI tools can improve spelling and coherence to add clarity to your content, transforming AI to human text that feels natural and engaging, making it easier for real users to navigate the product and understand the value it provides. Modern generative AI tools can draft or refine product copy, write content for kickoff meetings, and assist with storytelling.
• UX Research: Artificial Intelligence tools support User Research by writing questions for direct user interviews and analyzing huge volumes of user data faster to gain data-driven insights.
• UX Brainstorming: Generative AI tools can help write content and generate visual design graphics and multiple ideas in seconds. In fact, industry insights show that one of the most common uses of AI in UX involves getting ideas and inspiration. FigJam is a perfect example that can help teams ideate multiple ideas out of prompts and organize them all on a collaborative whiteboard.
• UX Resources: UX Designers can use tools like Midjourney to generate stunning images for workshops, presentations, and storytelling. Tools like Adobe Sensei use AI and Machine Learning to analyze vast amounts of customer data and your existing assets. This way, Adobe’s AI models can help create designs that align with your brand’s voice and target audience.
• UX Productivity: By optimizing workflows and streamlining routine tasks, AI can increase productivity in Product Design. It's worth noting that UX Design has a strong human-focused nature, so AI can't help automate every single aspect of the design process. Yet, AI could potentially help UX Designers double their productivity.

How is Figma Using AI?

Let's talk about how AI features are reshaping Figma, one of the most popular tools for Wireframing and rapid Prototyping in the design industry.

• Interface Design Generator. There already are text-to-design generators, able to support brainstorming sessions and helping overcome the "blank canvas problem." The best thing is that it allows you to play around with different color schemes and generate several screens in one go. Figma's team mentioned that their design generator will be able to create UI elements based on design systems, like Apple's Human Interface Guidelines, Google's Material Design, or your own.**
• Visual Search. Figma AI will include a search feature that allows designers to quickly find a design asset by passing a screenshot of it. For large projects that involve a wide range of design assets, this new feature can help save a lot of time. Similarly, Figma will have a smart "Asset Search" feature that will use AI to understand the context of the asset you're trying to find. For example, designers will be able to use the search keyword "call to action button" even if they use a different name, such as "asset-1" or "btn-1."
• Replace and Rename Layers. The automatic layer renaming feature will help UX Designers keep their assets organized, using descriptive and contextual titles for the new layers. Lastly, Figma AI will also be able to write, rewrite, replace, translate, and shorten text for UI elements.

At the moment, these tools are only available as a beta for a limited number of users. However, you can join the waitlist to get early access to the beta version directly from your Figma account.

Conclusion

While AI cannot replace human designers' creativity and strategic thinking, it can bring a lot of value to UX Design. AI-powered tools can help automate repetitive tasks, helping teams become more productive and deliver better digital designs!