#11 Design in the Age of AI: What’s Coming, What Breaks, and What Becomes Possible with Lovable
Send us a textIn this episode, we sit down with Mendigas from the Lovable product team — a non-traditional designer, community builder, and AI super-user who went from recruiting in Dublin to quietly influencing how thousands of creators build products today.We unpack what the next 3–5 years will actually feel like for designers, UX researchers, PMs, and product builders in an AI-native world. From the death of traditional workflows, to why “playing daily” with AI tools is the best investment in your career, to how companies are rethinking hiring, prototyping, validation, and creativity, this conversation goes well beyond surface-level commentary.Whether you’re excited, anxious, skeptical, or overwhelmed by the flood of AI tools — this is the grounded, deeply practical, and surprisingly energising conversation the design community needs right now.In This EpisodeMendigas’ non-traditional path from Dublin recruitment to becoming a community builder at InVision, On Deck, Koho — and now Lovable.How he used AI coding tools to turn a Sunday idea into a Thursday paying customer.Why AI-native workflows will replace 70% of today’s design toolchain.The decline of Figma for many real workflows — and why it’s become a “graveyard of pain.”Why non-technical creators will be the next wave of builders.What AI is actually good at today (and what it’s terrible at).The new shape of product roles: designers who think like PMs and build like engineers.What designers should slowly adopt, how to learn, and how to avoid the anxiety spiral.Why play, not pressure, is the single most important learning approach.How mid-60s taxi drivers and teenage app builders are already entering the AI wave.What the next UI paradigm might look like — and why design remains the superpower.The hard questions: Are we building only for ourselves? What happens to jobs? Who pays whom in an automated world?Who This Episode Is ForUX researchers wanting to evolve beyond documentation.Product designers feeling the pressure of an AI future.PMs exploring faster, AI-driven validation and prototyping loops.Founders wanting to ship faster with fewer technical bottlenecks.Designers craving clarity, direction, and grounded advice — not hype.Why This Episode MattersAI is no longer theoretical. Designers are already being hired specifically because they know how to build with AI. Non-technical creators are shipping production apps in hours. And legacy workflows are evaporating faster than most teams realise.This conversation reframes the fear, cuts through the hype, and gives you the playbook, mindset, and realism needed to thrive — not just survive — in the next era of product creation.Mindaugas PetrutisMindaugas Petrutis on LinkedinHelping more people build things - now go make something lovable → http://lovable.devWorking in a small team of serial founders, physicists, and ioi gold medalists who all care about building a great product and shipping fast, towards letting anyone create and maintain software – using plain English.Team previously built the world's most popular open source codegen project (50k github stars).Enjoying the show?If you learned something from this episode, please:Leave a 5★ review on Apple PodcastsShare this episode with a friend or your teamBoth reUXI (UX Institute) Original Podcast 2025. www.uxinstitute.com
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