I recently interviewed a designer, and she said something that stuck with me when I asked her if she was using AI in her process. She mentioned a couple non-design tools, but didn’t know what the industry standard was yet.

For most of our careers, there have been a handful of tools that really mattered at any given time. Adobe Suite dominated for over a decade. Sketch changed how we approached UI design. Figma changed how we collaborated. Up until now, there has always been one or two leading tools for each sub-category under our industry.

An example of this was early in my career when I was interviewing for a design role. I was using Adobe XD, but the team was using Figma. As soon as they found out I didn’t have extensive Figma experience I wasn’t able to move on in the interview process. So I stopped using Adobe XD, and learned Figma.

That experience reinforced a belief that the safest move for a designer is to use whatever tool the industry picks. But the last couple of years has changed this belief and we’re all trying to catch up, running in circles, when what we need to do is change our thinking around tools.

With AI, the landscape looks completely different. There are new tools launching every week. And these tools are shipping updates so fast that the version you learned last week or month might already feel different.

If you've read my post Toolkit Overload article, you know I've talked about the feeling of being overwhelmed with all the options. But this goes deeper than that. We’re operating with the old way mindset of focusing on the tools. We should be shifting our focus on the outcome, and using whichever tool allows us to do that. The goal is to be nimble, and not specialize or hone in on a single tool.

And I actually think that's okay!

Instead of asking "which tool should I learn?" I've been asking myself "what am I trying to accomplish, and what's the best way to get there right now?" That shift in thinking has made a real difference for me. Let me walk you through where I'm seeing it play out.

This is the one area where a leader is starting to emerge. Claude has been my go-to for months, and I'm not the only one. More designers and creatives I talk to are switching to Claude as their primary AI assistant for writing, strategy, brainstorming, building workflows…etc.

That said, it's still early. ChatGPT, Gemini, and others all have their strengths. But here's the thing I keep coming back to. The skills you develop working with an AI assistant (how to prompt well, how to use it as a collaborator, how to integrate it into your process) those transfer no matter what tool you're using. And often times each of these do better depending on the task.

This is where the "no standard" reality is most obvious to me. A new way of generating images/video has emerged: Node based. Just last year I was only using ChatGPT and Midjourney. But with these newer tools I find myself flipping through a handful depending on the task at hand: Weavy AI, Freepik Spaces, Flora AI, Krea, Midjourney.

Aside from Krea and Midjourney, which provide slightly different ways of working, the other tools differences come down to interface preferences and specific use cases. But if you understand the foundational concepts (how prompting works, how to use reference images, how to iterate on outputs) you can move between tools without starting over.

That's the part I keep coming back to. You're not learning "how to use Weavy vs Freepik Spaces vs Flora AI." You're learning how to direct AI image generation. The tool is just where you practice it.

This one has really taken off for designers. I see a trend emerging where designers are using Cursor and there is a sense that this is a must-use tool, but if you’re not using it, you’ll be just fine!

Just like the other categories there are so many tools available for us to experiment with. It also depends on your level of comfort with being technical. Aside from Cursor, there is VS Code and Open Code. If you want something quick and easy you can use Lovable, V0, Replit Agent 4…etc. If you’re looking for something in the middle, the place I personally build in is within Claude Code Desktop, and Codex by OpenAI.

Experiment with each of these tools and find what works for you. You don’t have to follow what everyone else is doing to get a good outcome! I personally don’t consider myself to be technical, but I have been learning how to push through that to learn how to build with Claude Code. Especially since Cloudflare just launched EmDash. I’ll have a dedicated post to this after I’m done with my experimentation. But so far I’ll say, this has the potential of changing the way website’s are built in the future!

I know this shift can feel uncomfortable. For years, the path was clear. Learn the tool everyone's using, and you'll be fine.

But I think there's a different kind of safety now. Instead of betting everything on one tool, you invest in understanding the concepts behind the tools. How AI assistants work. How image generation works. How vibe coding works. Those foundations don't expire when a new tool launches.

If you're someone who's been waiting for the industry to tell you which AI tools to learn, I want to gently push back on that. The green light might not come. And I think that's actually a good thing. It means you get to choose based on what works for you and your workflow, not based on what everyone else decided.

For now, the best approach is to stay curious, focus on the outcomes you're trying to create, and give yourself permission to experiment without the pressure of picking the "right" one.

This has been my trick and I think it’s worth trying! Whenever I get overwhelmed by the amount of tools I feel like I need to learn, or when my prompt isn’t generating what I want it to, I take a break and use these tools to just play. It takes off the pressure while learning!