From Sketches to AI: Embracing the Future of Rapid Design

From sketching wireframes by hand to generating full mockups with AI, the evolution of prototyping has changed how I design—and how I think.

When I started my career as a UI designer for mobile apps and websites, I never imagined how rapidly design tools would advance. Now, whenever I talk about how I worked even just a decade ago, it feels like I’m describing a distant era.

Back in 2015, I attended the CHI conference (ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems), where I saw brilliant computer science students presenting their research. One session, in particular, caught my attention—it was about creating websites automatically without a designer. At the time, I thought it was a bit absurd. The demo wasn’t visually impressive, and I dismissed the idea. But here we are in 2025, and those concepts have become reality. Today’s tools can produce professional-level designs in seconds. That experience made me realize how quickly things can change—and it excites me to imagine where we’ll be in five or ten more years.

As a designer, creating visual outcomes has always been at the core of my work. But I’ve also had a strong desire to build things faster and more efficiently.

Over the years, I’ve explored everything from JavaScript and CoffeeScript to R and Esri’s GIS tools—all in service of turning ideas into reality quickly.

Early on, I used JavaScript to create interactive prototypes and learned CoffeeScript with Framer to build playful animated mockups. (Here’s a link to my older design process, written in Korean.)

As I transitioned from B2C to B2B companies, I began designing more complex dashboards filled with charts and data. While working on business intelligence (BI) tools at a finance company, I took data analysis seriously and chose to learn R because it’s open-source and powerful.

Using R, I created charts with the ggplot2 library and explored several packages for dashboards and interactive maps. I even applied R in real projects—like at Johnson Controls, where I worked on a vibration analysis tool to detect motor issues. I was responsible for designing accessible color schemes for complex line charts that clearly communicated critical information.

I’ve always been drawn to unconventional tools to enhance my design process. (Here’s a link to my design work process slides in English.)

How I utilize R programming to rapidly generate Complex Charts

Lately, I’ve been experimenting with AI-powered tools like Lovable and Bolts—exactly the kind of solutions I dreamed of years ago. They help me generate mockups quickly and bring ideas to life interactively.

I’ve even used them to build personal projects and create games for my 7-year-old daughter. While these tools make initial creation easy, iterating and fine-tuning still requires thoughtful effort—just like always.

In a world where anyone can generate a layout in seconds, what do you think makes a designer’s touch truly essential? How do you balance speed with meaningful design?