When An AI Tool Finally Gets You

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If you’ve seen me in your X feed, you know I love creating in public. As Every’s creative lead, I find that design works best when it’s an open-ended conversation where I share my ideas, gather feedback, iterate openly, and learn publicly along the way.

This transparent approach has connected me to some promising creative tools, one of which is Flora, a generative canvas. One of its founders reached out to me saying they'd been following my X posts and thought I might be interested in trying out their new product.

Flora bills itself as “your intelligent canvas.” It combines multiple generative capabilities—like image generation, ideation, and organization—into a single workspace. The founders weren't pitching it as a magical AI tool that would replace designers, but rather as something built specifically for creatives, with our unique workflows in mind.

There's something really intriguing about finding a tool that feels like it was made for you. When software aligns with your natural thinking patterns, it stops feeling like you're fighting against it and starts feeling like it's extending your abilities. That’s the feeling AI tools are chasing—let’s see how close Flora comes to catching it.

Design is not an assembly line

The first wave of AI design tools followed a familiar pattern: Engineers would get excited about a new AI capability, wrap a basic interface around it, and market it as a "designer's tool." But these tools fundamentally misunderstand how designers work.

Take the standard image generation workflow in tools like DALL-E or Midjourney. You type a prompt, wait for a result, and if you don't like it, you start over. It's a linear, one-shot process that treats design like a slot machine: Input prompt, receive image, and see how lucky you get. But that's not how design works.

Real design is messy, iterative, and non-linear. We explore multiple directions simultaneously. We combine elements from different attempts. We refine and adjust constantly. Most importantly, we need to see our options side by side, comparing and contrasting until we find the right direction.

Flora is the closest thing I’ve seen to a tool that emulates this process: It lets me explore multiple iterations simultaneously. Having the freedom to sketch, experiment, and pivot rapidly feels liberating. I can swiftly iterate and iterate again, nudging the results closer to my vision without losing momentum.

End the workflow ping-pong

A designer’s workflow typically goes like this: "Let me export this image from Midjourney, then import it to Photoshop, then try to remember which folder I saved the reference images in, then switch to Figma to see how it fits with the rest of the design.” But toggling among multiple tools completely derails the creative flow.