Downpay CEO Optimizes Design Workflow Using AI for UI Prototyping

Diana Birsan, the CEO of Downpay, exemplifies a pragmatic approach to incorporating artificial intelligence into product development—one focused on augmentation rather than pure automation. Downpay provides Shopify merchants with essential financing tools, enabling customers to make deposits and partial payments for high-value purchases.

Birsan’s journey highlights a key pattern in modern tech adoption: recognizing where AI genuinely saves time versus where it merely adds complexity. After initial attempts using chatbots—which proved unreliable and often embarrassing when handling sensitive customer support inquiries—she pared back the technology's role to focused, checked suggestion drafting. This cautious refinement is crucial for small enterprises.

Her current application of generative tools is more measured: leveraging platforms like Figma’s AI features and Claude for UI mock-ups and prototyping. Previously, building even a basic web design required painstaking, manual work in HTML and CSS—a process Birsan accurately describes as 'slow and painful.' Now, these AI tools drastically accelerate the initial drafting phase, allowing her to generate high-fidelity prototypes in under an hour. While she notes that AI models often gravitate toward uniform styles, the sheer time savings are substantial enough to free her bandwidth for critical strategic tasks: product growth and refinement.

This pattern speaks to a broader operational reality for growing Canadian startups. When resources are limited—wearing many hats, as Birsan does—efficiency in the design cycle is not a luxury; it is a necessity. It allows the company to maintain agility and accelerate iteration speed without expanding headcount immediately.