Developer
Groups
Un-AI your UI
Building software got faster.
Deciding what's worth building didn't.
Hi, I'm
Rudisang
Morake
Software engineer
at Leverage Point
Even before AI, UI was an afterthought
“Yeah, the UI is ugly.
But at least it works.”
Get it working first. Make it look good later.
Database, logic and API got the planning. The UI got whatever time was left.
And we got away with it, because for the most part it worked.
With AI, that habit
now happens at scale
It looks finished, even when
nobody decided anything
Old UIs looked unfinished, so people asked questions.
AI output comes out shiny, so it sails through review.
Underneath, hundreds of small calls nobody actually made.
Expense Tracker v0.3 (beta)
| Date | Item | Amount | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 12/11/2012 | Groceries | 350.00 | edit | delete |
| 13/11/2012 | Taxi | 12.5 | edit | delete |
| 13/11/2012 | airtime | 50.00 | edit | delete |
Item: Amount: Submit
Error: amount must be a number!!
“At least it works” doesn't
set you apart anymore
Getting it working was the hard part.
An agent gets most things working in an afternoon. Everyone starts here.
You've probably seen this website
Meet DoMorely. I made it up for this talk.
Unlock your
full potential.
Your all-in-one platform to streamline workflows, supercharge productivity, and transform the way you work.
Seamless integration
Connect everything. Unlock possibilities. Make your workflow work for you.
Powerful insights
Turn information into impact with the tools you need to do more.
Effortless collaboration
Bring your team together and take productivity to the next level.
So what does it actually do?
Swap in another name and the page still works.
So the design isn't saying anything about the product.
The familiar AI DNA
Never one thing. A bundle of defaults that keep showing up together.
None of this proves a model made it. It shows someone went with the defaults.
- 1A purple gradient, a glow and a giant centred headline
- 2A pill that says “THE FUTURE OF” something
- 3Floating badges, everything rounded
- 4Three identical cards, icons in rounded squares
- 5Copy that unlocks, empowers and streamlines
Unlock your
full potential.
Your all-in-one platform to streamline workflows, supercharge productivity, and transform the way you work.
Seamless integration
Connect everything. Unlock possibilities. Make your workflow work for you.
Powerful insights
Turn information into impact with the tools you need to do more.
Effortless collaboration
Bring your team together and take productivity to the next level.
Does it matter if it looks AI?
Yes and no.
Yes: people skim your page like a CV in a pile
200 CVs on the desk. Each one gets a few seconds.
One says what this person actually did. That one gets read.
Your homepage is your product’s CV.
No: a familiar layout is fine.
Two hundred identical ones aren’t.
A normal CV layout helps. The recruiter knows where to look.
AI can write two hundred of the same CV in an afternoon.
On the web, that's cards, rounded corners and a sensible font.
They worked long before AI. The models learned them from us.
The problems that matter more than the purple
The code works. Nothing crashes. No test fails.
The design still lets someone down.
Dark mode can change
what your screen means
Give each colour a job, not a hex code:
Put a word or an icon next to any colour that means something. Check both themes.
NN/G, Dark Mode (2023). WCAG 1.4.1: colour can't be the only signal.
Correct numbers can still
tell the wrong story
bars start at 0%
bars start at 93%
UK ONS: bar charts start at zero, because the length is the comparison. Made-up values.
Your imaginary user has
a very easy life
The Alex we design for
- Short name
- Perfect eyesight
- New laptop, two free hands
- Nowhere else to be
The real Alex
- Phone in one hand, bag in the other
- Bus in 2 minutes
Pale grey texthard to readTiny iconhard to hitHover tipphones don't hover
Last name is required
A page can look right and
answer the wrong question
Asked for a “profile page”
Lerato Molefe
Coffee, code and sunsets ☀
What the student needed
Hi Lerato
Due next
Your courses
Lerato Molefe, profile
Before asking if it looks good, ask what someone should notice first.
NN/G, AI Prototyping in Real Design Contexts (2025).
How we can un-AI our UIs
Give the model better direction.
Give it good examples.
Check the decisions it makes.
A wish leaves the model guessing
Effort
LowMediumHighXHighMaxAnything you don't specify, the model fills in with the most common answer it has seen.
A brief gives it decisions to follow
Follow up on the decisions,
not the looks
Prompts only get you as far
as your design knowledge
You can't ask for a fix to a problem you don't know exists.
A skill brings the know-how of people who've already solved these.
A skill writes that know-how
down once
Turns “have better taste” into things to do
- Concrete directions for composition, type, colour and imagery
- Inspects the page and reviews screenshots of what it built
- References drawn from 247 curated gallery sites
Most model providers ship one too.
Skills have opinions.
That's the help and the risk.
Night
Market
Fridays from 6pm. Food, music, makers.
Get a stallMarketing page: memorable
Payroll
Run 1 of 3. Review 214 rows.
Screen used all day: exhausting
A ban on gradients is a house preference, not a law of usability.
Read the skill you install. No general skill knows your users or your brand.
So we wrote two skills of our own
Slopless
helps while we build- Reads what's there: a real design, an untouched starter, or nothing yet
- Asks a few plain questions, then picks a direction
- Applies house rules for layouts, forms, labels, nav and delete actions
- Finds something specific first: payday, not “premium SaaS energy”
Slop Police
checks what came out- Scanner for the mechanical tells
- Checklist for what a scanner can't see
- Screenshots it actually looks at
The scanner catches about half. The review asks: does it make sense, and does it still look good?
Built without the skillsSame budgeting app brief. AI defaults everywhere.
Retrofitted with the skillsSame site, same brand colour and font, every tell replaced.
Built from scratch with the skillsIts own direction, built around payday.
What we found
Scanner findings on a landing page and a settings page. Not a usability study.
A blank page also scores zero.
Our first try scored 0 and looked thin. We'd taught the agent what to remove, not what to put back.
Every tell was doing a job. Replace the job:
Show the agent your design.
Don't describe it.
# Style guide
Use clear hierarchy, comfortable spacing, and consistent buttons.
Safe to spend
Body text at the size people will read it.
Enter your rent, or 0 if you don't pay any.
None of these is the whole answer.
Use the combination.
The person, the task, the priority, the constraints
Repeatable decisions, references and a review process
Examples to inspect, reasons to follow
Real content, in the conditions people use it
Start with one important screen
- Decide what someone needs to understand first
- Give the agent that context
- Use a skill that fits
- Point it at a real example
- Look at the result where people will use it
Make a UI where you can tell someone thought about the person using it.
Thank you
Rudisang Morake
Software engineer at Leverage Point