Design has always been visual, but a new trend is making it linguistic. Tools like Figma’s AI assistant, Galileo, and Uizard are giving designers the ability to describe what they want—using plain language—and watch those words turn into functional interfaces.
The approach, often referred to as “vibe coding,” represents a growing movement toward conversational design workflows. Rather than manually constructing every element, designers use prompts to express intent, tone, and hierarchy. The AI then interprets those instructions to generate layouts, color schemes, and component structures.
According to Osman Gunes Cizmeci, a New York–based UX designer and researcher, this marks one of the biggest mindset shifts the design profession has seen since the adoption of responsive design. “Designers are becoming bilingual,” he says. “One language for visuals, another for ideas.”
From Visual Control to Verbal Direction
In a traditional design workflow, everything starts with placement—where to put a button, how much space between elements, which font fits best. With vibe coding, the process begins with conversation. Designers describe a desired emotion or function, and the system builds an initial draft.
“It’s like going from coding by hand to describing what you want the code to do,” Cizmeci explains. “You say, ‘Make this onboarding flow feel calm and clear,’ and the AI translates that into layout and color choices.”
He sees this as an evolution of natural language interfaces, similar to how people now use search engines or AI assistants. “We’re moving from pointing and clicking to describing and refining,” he says. “It’s a more intuitive way to start the creative process.”
A New Kind of Design Literacy
As with any paradigm shift, vibe coding introduces new challenges. Designers must learn to articulate abstract qualities—mood, motion, emphasis—in precise language that an AI model can interpret.
“You have to learn how to prompt with nuance,” Cizmeci says. “Instead of thinking in pixels, you think in feelings. What does approachable mean visually? How do you describe trust as a layout?”
He believes this shift will reward designers who are strong communicators and systems thinkers. “Prompting isn’t just typing instructions,” he adds. “It’s strategy. You’re describing constraints, relationships, and rhythm.”
Balancing Automation and Intent
The rise of conversational design tools has sparked debate about authorship and originality. If a layout is generated from a sentence, who is the designer—the person who wrote the prompt or the system that produced the visual?
Cizmeci believes authorship lies in the direction, not the execution. “The creativity is in defining the intention,” he says. “It’s the same as giving a creative brief to a human designer. The AI just interprets it faster.”
He warns, however, that relying too heavily on automation can erode design sensibility. “If you stop evaluating why something works, you lose the craft,” he explains. “Vibe coding is a tool for exploration, not a replacement for understanding.”
Collaboration Through Conversation
One of the biggest benefits of vibe coding, according to Cizmeci, is how it transforms collaboration. “You can generate prototypes live in a meeting,” he says. “That speeds up brainstorming and brings non-designers into the creative process.”
When everyone can contribute ideas in plain language, design becomes more democratic. “It levels the playing field,” he notes. “You don’t need to know software shortcuts to express a vision.”
Still, he emphasizes the importance of guardrails. “Without clear design principles, these systems can quickly drift into incoherence,” he says. “Conversation can’t replace consistency.”
The Future of Conversational Design
Cizmeci predicts that natural-language-to-UI systems will soon be integrated directly into professional design platforms, allowing teams to switch seamlessly between description and manipulation.
“In a few years, every design tool will have a chat interface,” he says. “You’ll be able to talk to your workspace the way you talk to a collaborator.”
For him, vibe coding represents more than a technical evolution—it’s a philosophical one. “Design has always been about translation, turning ideas into form,” he says. “Now the translation starts earlier, at the level of language itself.”
As conversational AI becomes more capable, Cizmeci sees an opportunity for design to become more expressive, more intuitive, and more human. “The irony is that the more we teach machines to understand us,” he says, “the closer design gets to feeling like a real conversation.”