If you’ve ever talked to someone on the Webflow Product Design team, you’ll notice something quickly: we’re a bit obsessed about how things actually work.
Not just how they look, but how ideas move from concept to behavior, how files stay legible over time, how decisions get made and shared across a fast-moving Product org. For us, craft lives in those systems and workflows as much as it does in the interface itself.
Lately, that mindset has pushed us to rethink how we design with AI in a very Webflow way: not as a shortcut, but as a creative power-up. A way to get closer to the "material" of the web earlier – real interactions, real contractions, real tradeoffs.
So when our Senior Product Designer, Jeff Jean-Baptiste (JB to us), sat down for a series of Sneak Peek conversations about how we prototype, organize, and share work, it felt like the right moment to open things up.
We wouldn’t call it a “playbook.” It’s an honest look behind the curtain into the habits and decisions that shape how we design every day. It builds on ideas we’ve shared before about how AI-powered prototyping is changing our work, but more about how it shows up in practice.
It’s the kind of context you usually only learn once you’re on the team. So whether you’re building your own products, curious how another design team is navigating this moment, or interested in joining ours, we hope this is useful.
Why we’re sharing this
AI-assisted workflows promise speed, but most break down when things get complex. We’re all familiar with the reality: Design systems weren’t built for AI. Step up friction slows momentum. And many prototypes still fall apart the moment real interactions or state enter the picture.
We ran into the same constraints, so we redesigned our workflows instead of working around it.
We’re sharing these behind-the-scenes videos because we know we’re not the only team navigating this shift. The future of the web is interactive and increasingly agentic, and designers need tools (and workflows) that don’t cap their craft. Sharing what we’re learning in the open helps move the work forward for everyone.
Designing with AI: Prototyping at the speed of curiosity
There’s fast, and then there’s “what used to take a week now takes under five minutes.”
That’s how JB describes prototyping in Cursor, the AI coding environment our team uses to design high-fidelity, interaction-rich, work – the kind that usually gets flattened in static tools.
Static screens can show you a picture of the product. Code-backed prototypes let you experience it: hover states, dynamic content, user roles, real logic – all the invisible details that make something feel alive. When AI handles the scaffolding, designers can focus on the good part: what this thing should actually feel like in someone’s hands.
As JB puts it:
“You’re free to think about the richness of the experience itself when all the simulation comes for free.”
AI expands the space where craft happens by raising the ceiling on what designers can do on their own. Tools like Cursor make it easier to explore and fine-tune advanced interactions without waiting on engineering support. When designers work this close to real behavior, decisions get better because they’re grounded in how things actually work instead of static approximations.
We also enable earlier-stage prototyping across the Product org with lighter-weight tools like Figma Make. That allows more people across the team to turn rough ideas into tangible artifacts, because prototypes are a powerful communication tool for higher quality decision making. This helps with product direction and allows our designers to focus where their craft and judgement have the biggest impact.
Organizing for clarity: A Figma setup that won’t make future you cry
We’ve all opened that one Figma file with 40 exploration frames piled into one page titled “WIP FINAL_FINAL.”
It’s chaos. It slows collaboration, dampens creativity, and it turns onboarding into detective work.
JB’s approach is intentionally simple: one page per week, labeled by date.
The result is a living timeline. You see ideas evolve spring by sprint. You always know where to look, and nothing gets buried. When coming back to work from weeks or months past, these signposts help JB reorient quickly, understand past explorations, and find the rice assets without having to retrace from scratch.
It’s a small habit, but it sends a signal: clarity isn’t cosmetic, it’s part of how we work. And when your team spans multiple product pillars and five countries, clarity becomes your love language.
“Clarity in the file leads to clarity in the work. It keeps everyone moving in the same direction.”
Small systems create big alignment.
Sharing work as a fully distributed team
With over 30 designers, researchers, content designers, and design systems partners — all fully distributed — our rituals are the glue that keeps us aligned.
Standups are about visibility: making sure everyone can quickly understand the moving parts across fast-shipping, deeply interconnected platform.
“We ship constantly, the velocity is wild, so awareness is critical. Standup helps us see all the moving parts across the product.”
Instead of showing a single screenshot, JB shares three to show the radius of impact:
- Where the feature lives
- Which adjacent surfaces or teams are affected
- What’s actually being designed
“I use three screenshots to show the whole picture — where it lives, who it touches, and what’s changing.”
Then *chef’s kiss* he links directly to the PRD and design file so no one has to hunt for context Slack or documentation. This kind of clarity matters as much to us as pixel polish.
Our standups are intentionally lightweight — 30 minutes, about a minute per person — but the leverage comes from how updates are framed. Designers focus on this week’s priority, call out by name who they need to collaborate with (and why), and make the update visual so the impact is easy to grasp. Deeper dives happen elsewhere; standup is about clarity, momentum, and getting the right people aligned fast.
Our PD Monthly meeting is where we zoom out: vision, multi-year direction, AI enablement, and the evolution of our craft as a design org. If standup is tactical alignment, PD Monthly is strategic energy.
Why this matters (especially if you’re thinking about joining us)
AI shouldn’t take the pencil out of a designer’s hand, just make it sharper. For us, this work is an extension of Webflow’s mission: bringing development superpowers to everyone.
Yes, we care about beautiful interfaces. But we care just as much about:
- Designing with real behavior early
- Keeping our work clear and intentional
- Communicating like product thinkers
- Using AI to get closer to the real experience
- Sharpening our craft together
Most of all, we value curiosity.
We’re designing at a real inflection point, where creativity and technology intersect in ways that let us work closer to the material of the web than ever before. As we design toward an AI-native, agentic web, these habits are how we make sure the future feels intentional and natural for our customers
If this sounds like your kind of design team, well… we’d probably love working with you.
We’re always looking for thoughtful, curious designers who sweat the details.
Join our team
Ready to help shape the future of the web? Let’s build it together.
