Reactive design and development

Front-end frameworks have made it easier and more affordable to launch new web applications. However, they’ve also encouraged a more careless approach to development, leading to sloppier code and more bugs—since rebuilding is always an option. Despite this, the process is still expensive enough that teams often wait a year or two before making significant changes. This cycle has become an accepted way of working.  

But that could change. AI might disrupt this pattern by making frameworks less relevant—eventually eliminating the need for them altogether. In the future, software could be rebuilt on demand simply by providing an AI with a prompt. If the result isn’t satisfactory, we just tweak the prompt and try again. This shift would dramatically reduce the cost of coding when starting a new feature.  

As a result, traditional developer experience (DX)-driven frameworks may fade away, giving way to AI-powered tools and autonomous agents that focus on automation and adaptability. Instead of rebuilding software at fixed milestones, continuous renewal and iteration could become the norm.  

While this shift might improve code quality, it could come at the cost of UX, consistency, and reusability. Buttons might not always look the same, and subtle variations in form behavior could become the norm. When changes are fast, cheap, and effortless, maintaining a consistent, predefined UX will become significantly harder—far more challenging than it already is. As a result, expensive UI libraries built for strict reusability may no longer make sense. Instead, UI frameworks and libraries will need to be highly adaptable, flexible, and easily extendable to keep up with the pace of AI-driven development.

The intersection of service design and data services could still create bottlenecks, slowing progress. However, design systems may play a crucial role in bridging this gap by integrating design and data through AI-driven agents. Reactive frameworks may dissapear, but reactive design and development is just around the corner.  

#designsystems #frontend #UX