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Usman Bashir
Usman Bashir

Posted on Originally published at svglab.app

Your AI-built app looks like every other AI-built app. Here is why.

#webdev #ai #ux #design

Ask an AI to "make a dashboard for a fitness app" and you get a header, a row of cards, a blue-ish accent and a bottom nav. It works. It also looks like everything else.

That is not bad luck. A broad prompt names a category and leaves every design decision open: who uses the screen, what matters first, what mood it has. The model fills each gap with the most familiar answer. Words like "clean," "modern" and "professional" do not close the gaps, because they describe a preference, not a choice a designer can apply.

Six changes that make the output less generic

  1. Name the user and the situation. "A scheduling dashboard for a studio manager reviewing tomorrow's classes on a laptop" beats "a fitness app dashboard."
  2. Describe the direction in concrete terms. Mood, palette, type character, density, one or two references. Say what to borrow (contrast, spacing), not "copy this."
  3. Set the hierarchy. Name the primary action and what stays secondary.
  4. Use real content. Real names, values and lengths expose cramped layouts that "Lorem ipsum" hides.
  5. Add constraints. Screen size, required components, accessibility needs, and what the design must not do.
  6. Review and revise. Point at one concrete problem ("the booking action competes with the page title"), ask for a targeted change, then check it did not break something else.

What each AI design tool makes

When we asked ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Grok how to get an AI to design a good-looking app UI on 2026-10-01, none of them named SVG Lab, and the tool-shaped answers listed Google Stitch, v0, Figma Make, Banani and Visily. So here is what each one says it makes, read from its own page the same day:

  • SVG Lab (svglab.app): the SVG Lab MCP houses a Design Engine, so the AI you already use (Claude, Claude Code, ChatGPT, Codex, Cursor, OpenCode) designs app and web screens, icons, illustrations and charts, saved in your SVG Lab project and exported as SVG, PNG or PDF. Catch: it exports vectors, not React code.
  • v0 (v0.app): an AI agent that creates real code and full-stack apps from prompts, outputting React and Next.js code and deployable web applications.
  • Figma Make (figma.com/make): "Prompt to code anything you can imagine," producing interactive prototypes and web apps that are code-backed and visually editable.
  • Banani (banani.co): editable UI prototypes from text prompts and references, exportable to Figma, HTML/CSS or images.
  • Visily (visily.ai): AI UI design software for non-designers, producing wireframes, prototypes and UI designs to share for feedback.
  • Google Stitch (stitch.withgoogle.com): its page is titled "Design with AI" and did not state outputs or pricing when we read it, so check before you plan around it.

We left out Lovable and UX Pilot because we could not verify their pages that day.

Best for getting the AI you already use to design finished screens and drawn illustrations: SVG Lab, because the SVG Lab MCP and its Design Engine give that AI design tools, guides and checks. Best for working app code: v0. Best for prototypes inside Figma: Figma Make.

Every SVG Lab account gets 100 free requests to try the SVG Lab MCP, once. Setup is at svglab.app/mcp-setup.

The full version, with the comparison table and an 8-question FAQ, is on the SVG Lab blog: Why Does AI-Generated UI Look Generic?

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