Ammar Ahmed and Ali Shariq Imran offer a systematic look at The Role of LLMs in UI/UX Design:

The studies reviewed in this work collectively point to an important shift in UI/UX design, where LLMs are no longer confined to back-end assistance but are becoming active participants in the creative process. Rather than being used solely for efficiency or automation, LLMs are increasingly embedded as co-creators, supporting ideation, critiquing interfaces, and even simulating users during testing.

It’s interesting to see the academic world confirm what many of us have been feeling in practice: the role of AI in design is undergoing a fundamental change. This paper, a review of 38 different studies, makes it clear that we are moving past the idea of LLMs as mere automation tools. Instead, they are being woven into the entire creative fabric of UI/UX design, acting as genuine collaborators from start to finish. The question is no longer if AI will be part of the design workflow, but how deeply it will be integrated.

What I find most compelling is the breadth of this integration. This isn't just about generating placeholder text or brainstorming a few ideas. The research shows LLMs are being used across the full design lifecycle: creating user personas, generating functional code from prompts, prototyping interfaces, and even simulating user interactions to provide usability feedback. This suggests a future where the design process becomes a fluid dialogue between human creativity and machine-generated possibilities. The most effective applications, this paper notes, embed these capabilities directly into the tools designers already use, like Figma, which lowers the barrier to entry and makes the collaboration feel more natural.

Of course, this shift demands a new mindset from designers. Prompt engineering is emerging as a core creative skill, less a technical chore and more like a new form of sketching or ideation. The designer's role seems to be evolving into that of a curator or an orchestrator, guiding the AI, evaluating its outputs with a critical eye, and steering the collaboration toward a desired outcome. This paper points to a future where our job is less about the pixel-perfect execution of a single idea and more about architecting the conversation with our new, non-human design partners. This is a massive, and frankly exciting, evolution of the craft.