How We Use AI at BABCO to Move Smarter and Faster
Today at BABCO, we held one of our standing internal classes that further our own hard and soft skills—a space we’ve carved out intentionally to stay inventive, critical, and collaborative.
In the session today, our very own bab Mia led us through her latest product design workflow. Using Bolt + ChatGPT to zip through rounds of explorations. Allowing her to generate 20 variations of a single flow, ideate, test, repeat, in a fraction of the time it use to take her to do 1 mock… she gave us a real-time look at how design is shifting in practice—not in theory.
This isn’t about chasing trends. It’s about building systems that help us move faster without compromising quality, care, and our craft.
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What We're Learning as We Go
Mia has been hands-on, experimenting with how AI fits into real client work—from building new flows to adding features mid-project. She walked us through how she sets up design environments in ChatGPT, collaborates with Bolt to prototype new screens, and uses HTML-to-Figma workflows to move from raw idea to refined direction.
What stood out was how much groundwork goes into making AI actually useful. Feeding it brand guidelines, uploading reference screens, asking thoughtful questions, and adjusting the outputs until they resemble something usable. It’s not “AI does the design”—it’s “designers use AI to generate better starting points, faster.”
“It used to take me 30 minutes to design and test a flow, now I can get to something visual in minutes. Bolt doesn’t just save time—it helps me figure out where I actually want to spend it.” - Mia
“It takes that exploration time—the time where I’m usually trying to figure out what direction to go—and gives me something visual I can start reacting to. That’s what makes it powerful.” - Mia
That shift—from effort to intention—is the core of what’s making our process better.
It’s Not Replacing Design—It’s Reframing It
The tools are improving, yes. But what’s really changing is our workflow.
AI lets us generate multiple solutions instantly—giving us more to react to, vet, remix.
It takes heavy lifting off the starting line—so we’re not spending hours staring at a blank canvas.
It compresses what used to take days into minutes—so we can spend our real energy on what matters: storytelling, layout logic, brand feel, the vibe.
But it also reminded us: nothing replaces human instinct. The audience insight. The emotional clarity. The nuance of a well-placed button or perfectly quiet screen.
“The AI doesn’t know what to care about, that’s still our job.” - Mia
AI Is a Team Member—But It’s Still Learning
We also talked openly about the frustrations.
Things still break. Plugins crash. Tools feel disconnected.
There’s still a very real tension between speed and control.
And we’re still ironing out the balance between visual exploration and technical fidelity.
“It’s not just one click and done,” Mia said.
“You have to teach it—feed it context, style, logic. But once you do, it becomes a real part of your process.”
Today’s class made one thing clear: when we give AI better inputs, we get better momentum.
It’s no longer about outsourcing the work—it’s about elevating how we start so we can spend more time getting it right.
Where We’re Headed
If there was a theme today, it was this: the speed bar has moved. Again.
And if we want to keep delivering meaningful work, we have to move with it—not by compromising what makes our design strong, but by being bold enough to reshape how it’s done.
The new expectation in tech isn’t just quality—it’s quality at the speed of AI.
What used to be fast is now normal.
We’re building for that world.
And we’re designing a process that lets us stay sharp, curious, and creatively dangerous—without burning out.
Want a walkthrough of how we’re using Bolt internally? Or want help building your own AI-accelerated creative workflow?
Let’s talk. We’re always down to share what we’re learning—and learn from others building the future.
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