When you open Banani, it looks much like an AI chat tool.
I entered a fairly specific request:
“Design the home screen of a pet-boarding app. Put a search bar at the top, show nearby households that can board pets in the middle, and include a profile image, rating, and distance on each card. Add four tabs at the bottom: Home, Discover, Messages, and Profile.”
Within a few seconds, it produced an interface reasonably close to the description.
It did not create only the home screen.
Clicking a listing card opened a details page, and the basic relationships between pages had already been generated.
This is much more practical than simply generating a single UI image with AI.
No matter how attractive an image looks, it has limited value for discussing product flows if the buttons cannot be clicked and there are no relationships between pages.
Banani at least turns the result into a prototype.
I then tried changing the title.
I selected the relevant area and entered:
“Change the title to ‘Find a Reliable Pet Sitter’ and make the color warm orange.”
It adjusted only the relevant element, with no obvious changes to the rest of the layout.
This editing method is particularly suitable for people unfamiliar with Figma.
There is no need to locate a specific layer or study the properties panel. You only need to clearly describe the desired change.
However, the AI does not always interpret requirements consistently.
I later asked it to create a healthy-eating tracker, but one result clearly resembled an e-commerce interface. It returned to the intended direction only after I clarified: “This app records daily meals, calories, and nutritional data. It is not a shopping app.”
The more ambiguous the description is, the more likely the AI is to invent missing details.
This becomes even more apparent with complex business logic.
It is better at page structure than product-logic reasoning.
Common flows such as login, home, lists, and details are relatively easy to generate. Complex permissions, multiple roles and states, exception paths, and extensive conditional interactions still require human review.
Credits are another practical concern.
Generate several page variations on the free plan and then make more than ten consecutive revisions, and you will quickly approach the allowance limit.
For an initial test, write a more complete prompt and avoid unnecessary repeated generations.
Figma export is another consideration.
After producing a satisfactory result on the free plan, you may discover that transferring it directly into an existing design file requires a paid subscription.
If you are a product manager who only needs to share a link for discussion, this limitation may not matter very much.
For design teams, it is a different story.
Whether Banani can transfer smoothly into Figma largely determines whether it can become part of a formal workflow.
Pros
- Turns ideas into interfaces quickly: Even without design-software skills, you can create a first product prototype.
- Generates a prototype, not merely an image: Pages are clickable and suitable for discussing user flows.
- Direct text-based editing: Copy and common visual properties can be changed without repeatedly searching through layers.
- Can continue into Figma: Paid plans let the result enter a designer’s existing workflow.
- Useful for early exploration: Producing multiple directions is faster than starting from a blank canvas.
Cons
- Credits are consumed quickly: Multipage generation and repeated revisions can rapidly exhaust the allowance.
- The free version cannot export to Figma or code: This limits evaluation of the complete production workflow.
- Complex business logic may be misunderstood: The AI may invent pages or logic that do not exist.
- Generation is unpredictable: Running the same requirement several times can produce very different layouts.
- Limited precision design: The results still fall short of a final design completed by an experienced designer.
Best for / Not ideal for
Best for
- Product managers: Quickly turn requirements into interfaces ready for review.
- Entrepreneurs: Establish the product direction and core screens before hiring a designer.
- Independent developers: Rapidly create prototypes when a side project lacks design resources.
- Designers: Explore layouts during the early stages and refine useful directions in Figma.
- Teams conducting user testing: Produce low-cost clickable prototypes more quickly.
Not ideal for
- People who need pixel-perfect final designs: Banani is better suited to early prototypes and does not fully replace professional UI design.
- Products with highly complex interaction logic: Multiple states, roles, and exception flows still require manual design.
- People who need advanced motion: It focuses on pages and basic clicking rather than professional motion design.
- People completely dependent on a free Figma workflow: Exporting requires a paid plan.
- People who do not want to deal with unpredictable AI results: Some pages may require several rounds of rewritten instructions.
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