What you’re looking at is Don Bora's dream—and what might seem like a nightmare to others: designers and devs in the same environment. Same tools. Same workflow.

I’m a designer who doesn’t code, but this is my screen—my branch from an app we’re building in Flutter. VS Code + GitHub Copilot. No Figma in sight.

I wouldn’t attempt this without Don. He has seen and done everything in software—a true wizard when it comes to building applications—as well as a great teacher and collaborator. We’re having a blast and constantly amazed by the new possibilities opening up.

Don is doing the heavy lifting, actually making the app function (he’s using all sorts of AI for coding and inside the app), but if I can actually handle the UI layer, that would be something.

I've resisted this for over 15 years at Eight Bit Studios. Perfectly content in my tools built for designers. Too scared to pull, merge, and commit. Still nervous, honestly.

To be clear, I have NO idea what I’m doing. This wouldn’t be possible without AI tools like GitHub Copilot, which is seriously impressive. It’s writing the code, giving me terminal commands, resolving errors—I’m just telling it what I want. Like that bubble chart in the screenshot. It doesn’t look good yet, but it will.

My goal is to work in the codebase as much as possible, leveraging Material Design and reusable components—though I may still use Figma for some elements and the design system. Why waste time making static screens when AI can generate them for me?

Last year, I wrote about manual software design being on its way out. I talked about how the designer’s role is shifting from pixel-perfect crafting to strategic guidance, and how AI is stepping in as a design partner. It made sense in theory, but seeing is believing.

Designers—would you ever ditch your design tools and go straight to code?

Developers—is this a dream or a nightmare?