During my years working in FinTech, I have noticed that many teams independently arrive at similar solutions. While this repetition initially looked like a failure of imagination to me, I came to see that it was not about creativity, but about teams responding to the same incentives and constraints.
When I later read a 2023 Figma report, “Redesigning Finance” I was surprised by how closely its conclusions aligned with my own experience. The report observes the growing influence of Gen Z’s digital demands. The now adults of a completely online generation are shaping the expectations for speed and institutions they trust. In a 2022 survey by Insider Intelligence, it turned out that Gen Z found more trust in Apple than current banking relationships.
Today, the pressure to deliver seamless digital experiences is higher than ever. AI can generate interfaces rapidly, but it has not mastered the discipline of design systems, the infrastructure that turns experimentation into trust.
Better experiences still attract and retain customers by creating preference an differentiation. But in markets where features converge and switching costs are low, design is no longer just about polish.
Users are no longer locked in by capability alone. They stay because of the experience, and while AI can generate functionality at speed, it still falls short when it comes to design systems that create attachment, preference, differentiation, and long-term retention.
AI has already transformed how software is built. The next meaningful step is for AI to bridge the gap between development and design. In a world you can just make things, what matters most is building the right thing, the right way.
The current state of AI and development is exciting, but meaningful progress will come from prioritizing design, tightening the feedback loop between design and development, and being clear about where AI still requires human oversight.
For me, that bridge is MCP, or simply Markdown.
If design systems are what create coherence and trust, they cannot live only in tools meant for humans. They need to be accessible to the systems now helping us build software.
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