Podcast Summary: How I AI – "A Designer's Guide to Cursor" with Elizabeth Lin

Release Date: June 16, 2025
Host: Claire Vo
Guest: Elizabeth Lin

Introduction

In this episode of How I AI, host Claire Vo welcomes Elizabeth Lin, a seasoned designer and power user of Cursor—an AI-driven tool designed to enhance design workflows. Elizabeth shares her innovative approaches to leveraging Cursor for creating interactive prototypes, exploring diverse visual styles, and transforming complex data visualizations into engaging user experiences.

Leveraging Cursor for Diverse Design Styles

Elizabeth begins by highlighting how Cursor has expanded her creative horizons. She emphasizes the importance of diversifying sources of inspiration to teach Cursor's language and enhance its creative output.

"[00:09] Elizabeth Lin: The biggest key is to broaden your sources of inspiration and help them understand what you're inspired by."

By feeding Cursor eclectic inputs—from K-pop music videos to unconventional art pieces—Elizabeth ensures that the AI generates unique and varied design elements. She enjoys the unpredictability of Cursor’s outputs, often revisiting the tool to see what new surprises it offers with the same prompts.

Iterative Prototyping with Cursor

Claire observes Elizabeth’s method of prompting Cursor to suggest design styles, allowing the tool to actively participate in the creative process.

"[05:56] Claire Vo: What's interesting about this flow is you're not actually coming in with an idea of an aesthetic that you want to put into the design. You're actually prompting Cursor to give you some ideas of design styles that you might be able to use."

Elizabeth explains her technique of starting with a blank canvas and using Cursor to propose styles such as Brutalist and Y2K, showcasing Cursor's ability to interpret and implement diverse aesthetic directions. She appreciates how Cursor can produce vastly different results with the same prompt, encouraging multiple iterations to refine the design.

"[10:17] Claire Vo: And let's say, I mean, this is obviously perfect. Hang it in the loop. But let's say you, you didn't love this. You're like, you know what? I don't need the glossy hover effect. I don't need, you know, the glow. How would you. Would you just reprompt this again to try to get something different?"

Elizabeth advocates for a step-by-step approach, focusing on one or two adjustments at a time to guide Cursor towards the desired outcome without overwhelming the AI with multiple directives.

Building Interactive Prototypes with Cursor

One of the standout examples Elizabeth shares is a working digital piano prototype she created using Cursor. Unlike traditional design tools like Figma, Cursor allows the integration of sound and interactivity seamlessly.

"[12:54] Elizabeth Lynn: One of the things that I built as, like, one of the earliest prototypes was this working piano, and stuff like this was really, really hard to do with existing prototyping tools."

This prototype not only visually mimics an old Mac OS aesthetic but also incorporates functional audio elements, demonstrating Cursor's capability to handle complex, interactive features with minimal effort.

Enhancing Design with References and AI Taste

Elizabeth delves into the challenge of teaching AI models to possess "good taste" in design. She emphasizes the role of specific references and iterative prompting in refining Cursor’s outputs.

"[21:23] Claire Vo: So you like smaller prompts. And when you're doing an iteration, it seems like you're focusing on, like, one or two key things. Not like, you know, fix everything."

By providing targeted feedback and referencing renowned design examples such as Edward Tufte, Elizabeth guides Cursor to align its designs with high-quality visual principles.

"[26:43] Elizabeth Lynn: ... it does look very like. It does look pretty Edward Tufte with the colors right now, it's not necessarily my style, but you'll notice that I kind of like change the edges to be a little bit more square, too."

She also maintains a document of effective prompts and Cursor rules, ensuring consistency and ease of reuse for future projects.

Designing Data Visualizations with Cursor

Data visualization is another area where Elizabeth harnesses Cursor’s strengths. She showcases a personal finance dashboard prototype that evolves through iterative prompting, enhancing both aesthetics and functionality.

"[25:04] Elizabeth Lynn: Now we have the background, and so let's try a different prompt now. I kind of want it to simplify the colors a little bit on the page."

The ability to quickly generate and refine charts, integrate hover effects, and connect with real-time data sources like Notion databases positions Cursor as a powerful tool for creating dynamic and informative visualizations without the time-consuming processes typical of traditional design tools.

Practical Applications and Team Integration

Elizabeth discusses integrating Cursor into design teams by migrating existing design systems into code-compatible formats. This approach allows team members to collaboratively build and iterate on prototypes using shared components, streamlining the design workflow.

"[18:52] Elizabeth Lynn: ... you typically need to think more about, like, things that I personally find a little bit more boring. But, like, how do I use, like, a design system?"

Lightning Round: Designer Insights and Tips

In the final segment, Claire poses rapid-fire questions to Elizabeth, eliciting valuable insights:

• Favorite Manual Design Tasks: Elizabeth enjoys hands-on graphic design tasks, such as creating personalized posters and photoshopping for friends, appreciating the tactile and creative satisfaction they provide.

• Infusing Creativity with AI: She advises designers to broaden their inspirational sources and engage in meaningful conversations with AI tools to cultivate unique and innovative styles.

• Handling AI Frustrations: When Cursor's outputs don't meet expectations, Elizabeth recommends iterative prompting focused on specific adjustments and, if necessary, restarting the session to reset the AI’s creative direction.

"[33:33] Claire Vo: ... how do you get it to do what you want it to do when it's really not listening?"

Elizabeth emphasizes patience and strategic prompting, ensuring that designers can effectively guide AI tools to achieve their creative visions.

Conclusion

Elizabeth Lin’s expertise illuminates the transformative potential of Cursor in modern design workflows. Her strategies for interactive prototyping, style exploration, and data visualization offer designers actionable insights into harnessing AI tools to enhance creativity and efficiency. By fostering a symbiotic relationship between human intuition and AI capabilities, Elizabeth exemplifies how designers can thrive in the evolving landscape of AI-assisted creation.

For more insights and resources, Elizabeth can be found online as lilislabeth, and she offers a course titled Prototyping with Cursor at designisaparty.com.

Thank you for reading this summary of the "How I AI" podcast episode featuring Elizabeth Lin. For the full conversation, visit howiaiPod.com or find the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and other major platforms.