In this video I’m doing something a bit different: instead of another step-by-step tutorial, I’m walking you through the exact design + AI stack I’m using in 2025—and why each tool has earned its place in my workflow. I’ve tried everything from the old Adobe Photoshop days (and yes, the dreadful Adobe XD/Sketch era) to modern tools like Figma. But I don’t keep tools just because they’re trending. Every app in my toolkit has a clear job, and together they cover the full product design loop: UI, prototyping, motion, research, inspiration, and shipping real websites. I start with my day-to-day design tools: Figma is the core (variables, tokens, auto layout, components, plugins, Dev Mode—the whole product designer-friendly system). For motion, I’m honest about Figma prototyping being clunky for micro-interactions, so I use Jitter for fast UI animations and After Effects when I need the “spaceship with 2,000 buttons” level of power. On the UX side, I use Hotjar to watch real behavior (heatmaps, recordings, rage clicks) and SurveyMonkey for quick, structured validation. For web concepts, I use Relume to go from idea to concept fast, then refine in Figma. For inspiration, Mobbin is my pattern library, plus Dribbble/Behance for trends. Then I cover how I actually use AI: not to replace my core tools, but as assistants—ChatGPT for brainstorming and copy/flows, Claude for longer structured thinking, Lovable for quick coding experiments, and Midjourney/Adobe Firefly for moodboards and visual exploration. I wrap with a giveaway: suggest a tool I should test, and if I integrate it, you’ll get early access to my upcoming Figma plugin focused on design system tokens and variables.