My head has been in the world of code generation for the last few years. Now that I’m also thinking about design generation, I’m seeing a lot of similarities but also some fascinating differences.
For example, it is cheap to ask AI for things. I will ask it to start from scratch and do a lot of extra work that I would never ask of my team mates.
What isn’t cheap though is the human side of reviewing all of the code that AI creates. Reading through them, parsing the differences, holding them in working memory—it’s real cognitive load. It takes time, and time is expensive.
With designs though, the calculus is a bit different. It is still cheap for AI to spin up variations, but human review? Our visual brain is ridiculously efficient. You can glance at six screens side-by-side and instantly know which one sparks “ugh” and which one sparks “oh yes!”. That “emergence” moment—that’s the magic.
Which brings me to a new Stitch feature: Design Variants. It does exactly this. When looking at one of your app UI screens, simply click on “Create variants” and you get a spread of designs.
Here you see the entropy, the unexpected angles, the one idea you wouldn’t have thought of yourself. You select, delete, iterate. Fast. Natural. Fun.
This is just the first version. We’ll be adding a lot more ways to let the AI flood the canvas with possibilities while keeping the cost of selection close to zero.
A picture is worth a thousand words. Design Variants is here to give you … ten thousand?
NOTE: The example image above is a shared public project … another feature the team shipped this week! I would love to see any of your Stitch projects!