Hardly Any Figma: Why I Design in Code Now

A year ago I wouldn't have believed that sentence myself. For more than 20 years my tool was the design file: drawing screens, measuring spacing, mapping states, handing everything over cleanly to development. Today I work almost exclusively in Visual Studio Code, together with Claude Code. I design directly in real code – and I feel more like a frontend developer than a UI designer.

The process is surprisingly unspectacular: I describe what I want to see. The change lands in the code, I see it instantly in the browser – on desktop, on mobile, light and dark. Then I correct. Not in broad strokes, but precisely: 4 pixels more room below the card. The title a touch larger than the label above it. The label in capitals. The line at the bottom too, not just at the top.

Exactly this fine-tuning used to take the most time – and was the first thing to get lost. Between mockup and finished page there were tickets, questions and compromises. Today there is nothing in between. What I see is what goes live.

I looked at the history of this website. The first commit dates from 29 December 2025. Since then:

• around 800 commits – small, traceable steps
• about 50,000 lines of TypeScript in more than 340 files, fully bilingual (German and English), with light and dark mode
• a website analysis that checks a site in 7 categories (performance, SEO, accessibility, security, user experience, AI visibility, social media) – with connected testing services, history, PDF and CSV export and reports by email
• an AI check that probes typical mistakes when introducing AI and then sends matching templates
• a budget check with an interactive 3D stage
• scroll-linked animations: cards on a semicircle, figures that move together, before/after sliders with pixel transitions
• an "animations off" setting for anyone who prefers it calm
• security headers that earn the site an A+ on Mozilla Observatory

I could never have built any of this without a programmer before. Most of it I wouldn't even have attempted.

I no longer define spacing in a redline layer, but once, centrally, in code: a page margin from 16 pixels on mobile to 52 pixels on large screens, and every page follows it. When I decide today that the space below the last card of a page should be exactly as wide as the side margin, ten minutes later it applies to every page – checked on every device.

I no longer build pictures of interfaces. I build the interface.

That doesn't mean I've become a classic developer. I still think first about the people who will use something. But the result of my work is no longer a design – it's working frontend code.

The most important work happens before the first pixel: understanding who uses something, where it gets stuck and what is really needed. No AI does that for me. It takes over the repeatable – I make the decisions. With more than 20 years of experience I can tell when a suggestion is good and when it only looks good.

And yes: for early ideas, moodboards and quick sketches, a design file is still handy. But it's no longer the goal – just a step along the way.

The division of labour gets clearer. The frontend – layout, spacing, states, animation, accessibility – comes finished and tested from my side. Developers can focus on what actually interests them: data models, APIs, security, scaling. Instead of a specification, they get code that already runs.

• prototypes are no longer mock-ups but real pages you can test
• changes take minutes instead of sprints
• fewer hand-offs mean fewer misunderstandings
• the time that used to go into coordination now goes into details users notice

AI makes mistakes – sometimes confidently. That's why I check every change in the browser, on several devices and in both colour modes, before it goes live. Architecture, security and anything involving data still belong in experienced hands. And taste can't be automated.

After almost a year, one thing is clear to me: the UI designer isn't disappearing – the role is moving closer to the finished product. The scalpel doesn't replace thinking. It just makes sure nothing of what was thought gets lost.