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Transforming UI/UX Design: The 7 Best AI Tools for Rapid Prototyping and Mockups

Artificial intelligence (AI) is revolutionizing user interface (UI) and user experience (UX) design. New AI-powered tools allow both expert designers and beginners to quickly create prototypes, wireframes, and high-fidelity mockups that would have previously taken days or weeks.

This guide covers the top 7 AI web and mobile app design tools available today. For each tool, we’ll explore:

  • Key capabilities and features
  • Primary benefits for designers
  • Examples and use cases
  • Pricing options

By leveraging these AI tools, you can speed up design while reducing costs. Even those with no coding or artistic ability can bring their ideas to life. Read on to learn how to supercharge your design workflow.

1. Uizard – AI That Does the Design Work For You

Uizard bills itself as “AI that designs for you.” It combines powerful AI and ML technologies to let anyone generate responsive website and mobile app designs in minutes.

Key Features

Uizard’s standout tools include:

  • Auto Designer: Create mockups straight from text descriptions
  • Screenshot Scanner: Upload screenshots to convert them into editable markup
  • Text Assistant: Turn text prompts into interface mockups
  • Hand-Drawn Wireframe Conversion: Scan sketches to convert them into digital UI
  • Built-in Design Editor: Edit everything in a user-friendly visual interface

You can also easily resize elements and containers to make responsive, multi-platform designs.

Benefits

  • Create designs faster even with no artistic skill
  • Convert sketches and screenshots into editable UIs
  • Collaborate with and gather feedback from stakeholders
  • Export production-ready assets

Examples

Let’s say you want to design an onboarding flow for a mobile travel app. With Uizard, you can simply describe the screens and interface elements in text. The AI will generate responsive mockups you can tweak and iterate on.

Uizard is versatile enough to help with everything from early-stage prototypes to polished visual designs ready for engineering handoff.

Pricing

Uizard offers a free plan along with paid Pro plans starting at $12 per month. Enterprise pricing is also available.

2. Anthropic – AI Assistant for All Design Needs

Anthropic is the startup behind the viral ChatGPT conversational AI chatbot. They also offer Claude – an AI assistant focused specifically on design tasks.

Key Features

Claude can help with:

  • Design critiques and feedback
  • Turning descriptions into interface mockups
  • Creating color palettes
  • Choosing fonts
  • Identifying design issues
  • Suggesting improvements

Benefits

Claude speeds up ideation, critique, and creation. The AI assistant acts as an always-available virtual creative director. Claude also explains the reasoning behind its design suggestions so you can have thoughtful conversations.

Examples

Here are a few ways to leverage Claude for UI/UX projects:

“Please create 3 color palette variations appropriate for a mobile banking app design.”

“Review this e-commerce website mockup and explain any issues you see with the information architecture or layout.”

“I’m designing an onboarding experience for a task management tool. Can you suggest ideas for gamifying the process?”

Pricing

Anthropic charges $20-30 per month for limited Claude usage. Bulk discounts are available for enterprise teams.

3. Synthesia – Convert UI Designs Into Interactive Prototypes

Synthesia utilizes AI to convert static design files into clickable, dynamic prototypes. This helps teams validate concepts without waiting for engineering resources.

Key Features

With Synthesia Studio, you can:

  • Import Sketch, Figma, Adobe XD, JPEG, PNG files
  • Add hotspots and touch interactions
  • Connect screens together into flows
  • Export a sharable interactive prototype

The AI handles turning images into web-based clickable demos.

Benefits

  • Test ideas early without coding skills
  • Get stakeholder feedback on prototypes
  • Smooth handoff for developers since assets are aligned
  • Significantly faster than making prototypes manually

Examples

Synthesia helps both startups and enterprises like Starbucks, AWS, and Box ship better products faster. For example, a digital marketplace startup could upload their wireframes and screen mockups to easily create a prototype simulating real app usage.

Interactive prototypes made with Synthesia feel like the real app. This allows for more insightful design research and user testing.

Pricing

Synthesia offers a free plan for individuals with paid plans starting at $8 per editor per month. Volume discounts are available.

4. supUI – Advanced Web Design Mockups From Text

supUI uses a powerful AI engine to turn text descriptions into stunning web UI mockups. The AI considers design best practices to generate clean, modern interfaces.

Key Features

With supUI, you can:

  • Generate visual designs from text
  • Export PNGs and code snippets
  • Optimize for mobile/desktop
  • Customize fonts, colors, layouts
  • Take inspiration from 50+ templates

Benefits

  • Go from idea to mockup 10x faster
  • Requires no graphic design experience
  • Works well for marketing sites, admin dashboards, web apps

Examples

supUI speeds up the workflow for freelance designers, marketers, and bootstrapped startups.

For instance, you could prompt supUI to “Create a responsive homepage mockup for a crypto trading platform featuring a hero section with a call-to-action button below a few key features”. In seconds, you’ll have a polished, professional design ready for client review.

Pricing

supUI offers a free plan for simple designs. Paid plans start at $12 per month. Team pricing is also available.

5. Virtus – Convert Drawings To Digital UI

Virtus uses AI to transform hand-drawn interface sketches into clean, usable web and mobile designs. This humanizes the design process while still benefiting from automation.

Key Features

With Virtus, you can:

  • Scan sketches on any device
  • Click areas to define screens and elements
  • Let the AI generate designs from drawings
  • Edit AI output directly within the editor
  • Export production-ready assets

Benefits

  • Natural drawing-based workflow
  • No need for solid draftsmanship skills
  • Works for low and high-fidelity mockups
  • Saves significant design time

Examples

Virtus excels at the beginning stages of design when you want to think with paper and pens instead of software tools.

For example, after an initial customer interview, you could sketch some rough user flows and wireframes showing potential features. Feed the sketches into Virtus and instantly convert them into shareable design drafts. This helps ideate and align with stakeholders faster.

Pricing

Virtus offers a free version with limited monthly usage. Paid plans start at $12 per month for individuals, with custom enterprise pricing available.

6. Unfold – Generate UI Ideas From Text Prompts

Unfold leverages AI to turn text prompts into graphic design elements including icons, illustrations, and interface blocks. The AI considers aesthetics and layout in its output.

Key Features

Unfold allows you to:

  • Get AI-generated graphics from text
  • Customize size, colors, and style
  • Browse 500k+ existing AI creations
  • Integrate with Figma and Sketch
  • Request new illustrations on demand

Benefits

  • Simplifies ideation and early design phases
  • Continuously expand mood board possibilities
  • Alternative to stock photos/graphics
  • Can save time on repetitive design tasks

Examples

Unfold is flexible enough to enhance all stages of design work. You can use it to kickstart brainstorming, fill in gaps in existing mockups, or add custom illustrations.

For example, prompts like “diagram showing artificial intelligence assisting with mobile app design tasks” or “animated icon representing speed of transactions” allow you to populate mood boards and style guides.

This helps designers ideate faster and creates more engaging visual content.

Pricing

Unfold has a basic free plan. Paid plans start at $8 per month for individuals. Team and enterprise pricing is also available.

7. Stark – Create Interactive Apps Without Code

Stark provides a powerful online design editor for building interactive mobile apps, entirely visually with no code required. The AI handles translating interface designs into working prototypes.

Key Features

With Stark, you can:

  • Drag-and-drop UI components
  • Define visual logic and rules
  • Preview on device emulators
  • Add animations and microinteractions
  • Export native code or runnable apps

Benefits

  • Design, build, and test apps without programming skills
  • Incorporate advanced interactivity early
  • Accelerates prototyping velocity
  • Smooth handoff to engineering

Examples

Stark excels when you need to prototype advanced application flows involving complex logic or animations. For example, an enterprise team could design the end-to-end flow for a sales dashboard incorporating real-time notifications, interactive charts, and gamified data entry.

Stark allows you to simulate real-world usage to identify usability issues early before committing development resources.

Pricing

Stark offers a free plan for simple apps. Paid plans start at $16 per user per month. Enterprise pricing is also available.

Conclusion

These seven AI platforms show the massive potential to transform user interface and user experience design using artificial intelligence.

Key benefits include:

  • Speed – Create prototypes in minutes instead of weeks
  • Cost – Reduce or eliminate reliance on large specialized teams
  • Simplicity – Design apps and websites without advanced artistic, coding, or design skills

Virtually everyone, from entrepreneurs to Fortune 500 companies, can benefit from incorporating AI rapid prototyping and mockup tools into their design workflow starting today.

Over the coming years, expect AI to automate more parts of the design process. This will empower product teams to build better solutions faster than ever before. The future of AI looks bright indeed!