If you’ve ever talked to anyone on the Webflow Product Design team, you’ll quickly notice something: they’re a little obsessed with how things actually work.
Lately, that mindset has led them to rethink how to 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 sooner – real interactions, real contractions, real trade-offs.
So when our Senior Product Designer, Jeff Jean-Baptiste (JB to us), sat down to give us a sneak peek into how they prototype, organize, and share work, it felt like the right time to open things up.
We wouldn’t call it a ‘playbook’. It’s an honest, behind-the-scenes look at the habits and decisions that shape how our team designs every day. It builds on ideas we’ve shared previously about how AI-powered prototyping is changing our workbut more about how it works out in practice.
It’s the kind of context that you usually only learn when you’re on the team. So whether you’re building your own products, curious about how another design team is navigating this moment, or interested in joining us, we hope this is helpful.
Why we share this
AI-enabled workflows promise speed, but most fail when things get complex. We all know the reality: design systems are not built for AI. Increasing friction slows momentum. And many prototypes still fall apart when real interactions or states come into view.
Our designers ran into the same limitations, so they redesigned the workflows instead of working around them.
We share these behind-the-scenes videos because we know our team isn’t alone in making this shift. The future of the web is interactive and increasingly active, and designers need tools (and workflows) that don’t limit their craft. By openly sharing what we learn, we can advance the work 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 less than 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’s usually flattened out in static tools.
Static screens can show you a photo of the product. Code-supported 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: how this thing should actually feel in someone’s hands. As JB puts it:
“You are free to think about the richness of the experience itself when all simulation is free.”
AI expands the space where crafts happen by raising the ceiling of what designers can do themselves. Tools like Cursor make it easier to explore and refine advanced interactions without having to wait for technical support. When designers work so closely to real behavior, decisions become better because they are based on how things actually work rather than static approximations.
His team also enables earlier-stage prototyping across the Product Organization with lighter tools like Figma Make. This allows more people across the team to turn raw ideas into tangible artifacts, because prototypes are a powerful communication tool for higher quality decision making. This helps direct the product and allows our designers to focus on the areas where their craft and judgment have the greatest impact.
Organize for clarity: a Figma setup that won’t let the future cry
Every product designer has opened that one Figma file with 40 exploration frames stacked on one page titled ‘WIP FINAL_FINAL’. It’s chaos. It slows down collaboration, dampens creativity and turns onboarding into detective work.
JB’s approach is deliberately simple: one page per week, labeled by date.
The result is a living timeline. You see ideas evolve spring after sprint. You always know where to look, and nothing gets buried. When he returns to work weeks or months ago, these signposts help JB quickly refocus, understand past explorations, and find rice supplies without having to search all over again.
It’s a small habit, but it sends a message: clarity is not cosmetic, it is part of working effectively. 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 in the same direction.”
Small systems ensure great coordination.
Share the work as a fully distributed team
With more than 30 designers, researchers, content designers, and design system partners – all fully distributed – rituals are the glue that keeps the team aligned.
Standups are about visibility: making sure everyone can quickly understand the moving parts on a fast-dispatched, deeply interconnected platform.
“We ship constantly, the speed is tremendous, so awareness is critical. Stand-ups help us see all the moving parts of the product.”
Instead of showing one screenshot, JB shares three to show the impact radius:
- Where the function lives
- Which adjacent surfaces or teams are affected
- What is actually being designed?
“I use three screenshots to show the whole picture: where it lives, who touches it and what changes.”
Than *chef’s kiss* it links directly to the PRD and design file, so no one has to search for context Slack or documentation. This kind of clarity is just as important as pixel polishing.
Their stand-ups are deliberately lightweight – 30 minutes, about a minute per person – but the influence comes from the way updates are framed. Designers focus on this week’s priority, name who they need to work with (and why), and make the update visual so the impact is easy to understand. Deeper dives happen elsewhere; Stand-ups are about clarity, momentum and getting the right people aligned quickly.
During their PD Monthly meeting, they can zoom out: vision, multi-year direction, AI enablement, and the evolution of craft as a design organization. If standups are tactical alignment, PD Monthly is strategic energy.
Why this matters (especially if you’re thinking about joining us)
AI should not take the pencil out of a designer’s hand, but only make it sharper. For our product designers, this work is an extension of Webflow’s mission: to provide development superpowers to everyone.
Yes, they care about beautiful interfaces. But they think it is just as important:
- Early designs with real behavior
- Keeping our work clear and focused
- Communicating as product thinkers
- Using AI to get closer to the real experience
- Honing our craft together
Above all, they value curiosity.
Our team is designing at a true inflection point, where creativity and technology intersect in a way that lets us work closer to the fabric of the web than ever before. As we design toward an AI-native, agentic web, these habits make the future feel intentional and natural to our customers
If this sounds like your kind of design team, then we’d probably like to work with you.
We are always looking for thoughtful, curious designers who have an eye for detail.
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