Imagine this: you’ve just used your favourite AI tool to generate a new interface. At first glance, it looks ready to ship. It’s polished, the buttons all work, and you can’t believe you’ve gone from a rough idea to a working prototype in a matter of minutes.
But look a little closer. Is the most important information actually the most prominent? What happens if a user makes a mistake? Could someone navigate this interface using just a keyboard or a screen reader, and how does it all look on a smaller screen?
These are the kinds of details that make or break the user experience, and it’s not a given that AI will get them right.
Vibe coding can be a helpful shortcut, but it’s no substitute for human expertise. Without designers who understand what makes a good user experience, we risk flooding the internet with AI-generated websites that look great but fall short on the fundamentals.
So, yes to vibe coding, but not without human judgement. In this guide, we’ll explore how the two go hand in hand. We’ll cover:
- What vibe coding is (a quick definition)
- 8 essential design skills to draw on when vibe coding, with practical examples of how to apply them
- A handy checklist for reviewing and improving AI-generated interfaces
Let’s jump in.
What is vibe coding and what does it mean for UX designers?
Vibe coding is an AI-assisted approach to building websites, apps and other digital products. Instead of writing code yourself, you describe what you want in plain language and AI generates the code for you.
For example, you might ask Claude to “build a three-step onboarding flow for a fitness app” or “create a dashboard for tracking monthly expenses.” The AI tool generates a working version, and you can keep prompting it to make changes and improvements.
For UX designers, this opens up some exciting possibilities. You can easily experiment with different directions and quickly turn ideas into interactive prototypes without needing to code everything from scratch.
But, crucially, it’s not a catch-all solution. It’s still just one step in a wider design process that must be led by humans. And not just any humans… humans with expertise in user experience and user interface design.
With that, let’s explore the essential skills you’ll need to draw upon when vibe coding.
8 essential design skills to apply when vibe coding (with practical examples)
1. Visual hierarchy: Is the most important information getting noticed?
Visual hierarchy is all about guiding the user’s attention. You use things like typography, colour, contrast, spacing and positioning to establish what’s most important, helping people make sense of the information in front of them.
Let’s say you’ve asked AI to generate a pricing page for a subscription-based product. The result looks clean and professional, but everything carries roughly the same visual weight. The plan names, prices, features and call-to-action buttons all compete for attention, making it harder for users to compare their options.
With a solid understanding of visual hierarchy, you’ll recognise the problem and know how to fix it.
To fix it, you might prompt AI to “Make the pricing page easier to scan. Give greater visual prominence to the plan names and prices, group related features, and establish a clearer distinction between primary and secondary information.”
You’ll then need to review the updated design to make sure the changes actually improve the experience.
What to check when vibe coding: Can users immediately identify the most important information? Is there a clear visual hierarchy, or are too many elements competing for attention? Does the layout guide users towards their next step?
2. Interaction design: Does the interface behave as users expect?
An AI-generated interface might look professional and intuitive, but that doesn’t automatically mean that it behaves as such.
You might have all the right elements in place, buttons, dropdowns, menus and forms, but do they actually work in the way users would expect? Is it clear what’s clickable, what happens when you take an action, and whether that action has been successful?
Imagine you’ve used AI to build a hotel booking form. It includes a date picker, a dropdown for selecting the number of guests, and a button to confirm the booking.
Everything looks fine at first glance. But when you test the form, you notice that selecting a date doesn’t provide any visual feedback. The confirmation button also looks exactly the same whether it’s available to click or not.
These might seem like minor details, but they can leave users feeling confused or unsure about what to do next.
To improve the experience, you might ask AI to make some small yet meaningful changes: for example, add a clear selected state to the date picker, provide feedback when users make a selection, and make sure the confirmation button looks visibly different when it’s disabled.
What to check when vibe coding: Is it obvious which elements are interactive? Do buttons, menus and other controls behave as expected? Does the interface provide clear feedback when users take an action?
3. Usability: Can people actually complete their tasks?
When vibe coding, it’s easy to get caught up in what you can build, rather than questioning whether you’re making things as simple as possible for your users.
Let’s say you’ve asked AI to create a registration flow for a new productivity app. It produces a polished sign-up form with attractive typography, neatly aligned fields and a prominent “Create account” button.
So far, so good. But the form asks users for their full name, date of birth, phone number, company name, job title and several other details before they can get started.
Do users really need to provide all that information just to create an account? Probably not.
With your human expertise in usability, you’ll recognise that the form creates unnecessary friction. You can then ask AI to remove non-essential fields, simplify the flow and make it easier for users to get started.
Of course, you can’t judge usability on appearance alone. An interface might seem perfectly intuitive to you, especially when you already know how it’s supposed to work. That’s why it’s still important to test your AI-generated designs with real users and validate your assumptions.
For a deeper dive, check out our guide to the seven core usability principles.
What to check when vibe coding: Can users complete their main tasks easily? Are there unnecessary steps, fields or decisions? Does the interface follow a logical flow, and have you tested your assumptions with actual users?
4. Accessibility: Can everyone use the interface?
Accessibility is a non-negotiable for good UX/UI design, and it’s something you should never assume AI has taken care of automatically.
Imagine you’ve used a vibe coding tool to create an analytics dashboard. It looks great to the untrained eye, but a few issues stand out. The pale grey text is difficult to read against the white background, several buttons rely entirely on icons, and the custom dropdown menus can’t be operated using a keyboard.
These are all potential accessibility barriers that could prevent people from using your interface.
As a designer, it’s up to you to spot these issues and know how to address them. That means understanding the fundamentals of accessible design, including colour contrast, keyboard navigation, meaningful labels and visible focus indicators.
You could prompt AI to improve the dashboard’s colour contrast, add accessible names to icon-only buttons and ensure all interactive elements can be operated using a keyboard.
But don’t stop there. Check the interface against the relevant Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) and test it using a keyboard and screen reader. It’s also worth using automated accessibility tools to flag potential issues with your design.
For more practical guidance, bookmark our UX design accessibility checklist.
What to check when vibe coding: Is text easy to read? Are interactive elements accessible by keyboard? Can screen reader users understand and navigate the interface? Does the design rely on colour alone to communicate important information?
5. Content design: Is the interface clear and understandable?
AI can generate all the text you need for an interface in seconds, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s useful or appropriate for your audience.
Let’s say you’ve used AI to create a checkout flow for an online shop. The layout looks great, but the buttons are labelled “Continue” and “Submit”, and if something goes wrong with the payment, users simply see “An error occurred.”
Technically, the interface has all the necessary text elements. But are those words actually helping the user? Not particularly.
This is where your UX writing skills come in. You can replace vague button labels with specific actions like “Review your order” or “Pay now.” And instead of a generic error message, you might write: “We couldn’t process your payment. Check your card details or try another payment method.”
You can also ask AI to suggest alternative copy, but it’s up to you to make sure the wording is clear and suited to your audience.
For more guidance, check out our introduction to UX writing and these content design examples for inspiration.
What to check when vibe coding: Are button labels clear and specific? Do instructions help users understand what to do? Are error messages genuinely useful? Is the language consistent with your audience and brand?
6. Responsive design: Does it work across different devices?
Picture this: you’ve used AI to create a dashboard for a project management app. On your laptop, everything looks great. There’s a sidebar for navigation, a central task board and a panel displaying upcoming deadlines.
Then you open it on your phone.
The task board requires endless horizontal scrolling, the navigation takes up half the screen and the buttons are far too small to tap comfortably.
This is why responsive design is such an important skill to draw on when vibe coding. You need to understand how layouts should adapt to different screen sizes, how to prioritise content and when to adjust elements like navigation, spacing and grids.
Rather than simply asking AI to “make it mobile-friendly,” you can give it more specific instructions based on how you want the interface to behave.
For example: “On smaller screens, collapse the sidebar into an accessible navigation menu, display task cards in a single column and move the upcoming deadlines panel below the main task list. Make sure buttons and other interactive elements are easy to tap.”
You’ll then need to test the updated design on different screen sizes, checking that content remains readable and that no essential functionality is lost.
For more on the fundamentals, check out our complete guide to responsive grids.
What to check when vibe coding: Does the layout adapt appropriately to different screen sizes? Is important content still easy to access? Are buttons and controls usable on touchscreens? Does anything overlap, disappear or require unnecessary horizontal scrolling?
7. States and edge cases: What happens when things don’t go to plan?
It’s one thing to build an interface that works when everything goes according to plan. But what happens when a user encounters an error or does something unexpected?
Take a file-upload feature, for example. You’ve asked AI to create a simple interface where users can select a file, click “Upload” and see it appear in their account.
It works perfectly when someone uploads a valid file. But what if they try to upload one that’s too large or in the wrong format? What if the upload fails halfway through? And how will users know whether their file has been uploaded successfully?
This is where your understanding of different UI states and edge cases comes in. You need to look beyond the ideal user journey and consider all the other scenarios your interface might need to handle.
For the file-upload example, that could mean adding a progress indicator, clear error messages for invalid files, a success confirmation and an option to retry if something goes wrong.
You can ask AI to implement these features, then test the different scenarios yourself to make sure everything works as intended.
What to check when vibe coding: Have you accounted for loading, empty, success and error states? What happens when users enter unexpected information? Can they recover easily when something goes wrong?
8. Critical design review: Can you recognise what’s wrong and explain why?
This final skill brings everything together. You can use AI to generate interfaces, explore different layouts and make changes in seconds. But ultimately, it’s up to you to decide whether the result is actually any good.
That means looking beyond personal preferences and surface-level aesthetics.
Imagine you’ve used AI to create a landing page for a new financial planning app. The design is modern and polished, with attractive illustrations and smooth animations. But as you review it, you notice a few problems.
The main call to action is buried halfway down the page. The copy focuses on product features rather than addressing users’ needs. And the page asks people to connect their bank accounts without clearly explaining how their data will be protected.
These are all issues that could undermine the user experience, even if the page looks impressive.
Your job is to identify what’s not working, understand why it matters and decide what needs to change. That means drawing on everything we’ve covered so far, as well as your knowledge of your users, their goals and the wider context of the project.
You can then use AI to explore and implement improvements, and test your decisions with real users rather than relying on assumptions.
What to check when vibe coding: Does the interface solve the right problem for the right users? Are there any design decisions that don’t make sense in the context of your project? Can you explain why something works (or doesn’t), and back up your decisions with evidence?
Your vibe coding UX design checklist
Next time you find yourself vibe coding, use this handy checklist to review what you’ve built. It’ll help you keep the user experience front and centre, and make sure you’re not leaving all the important design decisions to the robots.
| Design skill | What to check |
| Visual hierarchy | Is it immediately clear what’s most important? Can users easily scan and understand the information? |
| Interaction design | Do buttons, menus and other interactive elements behave as expected? Is there clear feedback when users take an action? |
| Usability | Can users complete their main tasks easily, without unnecessary steps or friction? |
| Accessibility | Can people with disabilities navigate and use the interface, including with assistive technologies? |
| Content design | Are labels, instructions and messages clear, useful and easy to understand? Is the tone of voice appropriate for your audience? |
| Responsive design | Does the interface work across different screen sizes and devices? |
| States and edge cases | Is it clear when something is loading, when an action has succeeded or when something has gone wrong? Can users easily recover from errors? |
| Critical design review | Does the design genuinely meet user needs? Can you explain and justify your design decisions? |
You don’t need to run through the entire checklist every time you make a small change. Just keep it close to hand as you work, checking the areas most relevant to what you’re building.
And remember: asking AI to fix something is only half the job. You’ll still need to review the changes, test how they work and keep refining until you’re happy with the result.
The takeaway and next steps
Vibe coding is changing how designers can bring ideas to life, making it faster and easier to build interactive prototypes and turn concepts into working interfaces.
But the fundamentals of good UX/UI design haven’t changed. People still need digital products that are intuitive and accessible, and that solve a genuine user problem. And designers still need to understand those requirements, recognise when they’re not being met and know how to put things right.
As such, developing strong design fundamentals is one of the best ways to make the most of AI-powered tools. The better you understand what makes an interface work, the more effectively you can guide AI and improve its output.
Want to strengthen your UI design skills? Consider the UX Design Institute’s Professional Certificate in UI Design.
You’ll develop a solid foundation in visual and interaction design, learning the principles and techniques behind effective, user-friendly interfaces. Whether you’re designing from scratch or experimenting with vibe coding, these skills will help you approach every project with greater confidence and a critical eye.
For more practical guides and industry insights, check out the following:
- What is AI prototyping and how is it changing early-stage design?
- 11 AI prompts every designer should save
- How to leverage AI for user research
Emily is a professional writer and content strategist with an MSc in Psychology. She has 8+ years of experience in the tech industry, with a focus on UX and design thinking. A regular contributor to top design publications, she also authored a chapter in The UX Careers Handbook. Emily also holds a BA in French and German and is passionate about languages and continuous learning.
