This June I joined the d.design team under Alibaba Design to work on new feature development for their design agent (叮叮). Collaborating closely with a UX design specialist and a PM, I helped build the plug-in feature experience from 0→1, while ensuring a consistent, accessible design throughout the platform.
Circling back to the product itself: d.design is an AI-powered design platform inside Alibaba, where canvas and conversation run in parallel.
In d.design, the generative agent leads on handling multiple design tasks. In 2025 the Alibaba Design team introduced "skills" into agents, letting users and creators steer the agent toward more varied outputs and styles. Like most AI skills, using one means going back into the conversation, tagging that specific skill, and changing the output from there.
Skills creation eases the agent's learning, but text-based prompts lose granular control for the creator. One use case: a creator might be unsure during the process of building a customized tool, and end up AI-led.
40% of d.design's users are beginners who talk through their thinking across repeated rounds of conversation, at significant token cost — without knowing the change they wanted was one small edit away.
"I wanted to change my package color to white so I could send a different version to my suppliers."
— Business owner
"I stayed late just to manually draft an infographic table that fits my presentation's vibe."
— Marketing team
Built the plug-in feature as an experience connecting canvas editing and AI with more visual operations — collecting the most frequent design requests into adjustable tools, avoiding re-prompting.
The PRD identified gaps in the user experience where the flow breaks down. One of the sharpest: users who lose their conversation also lose access to everything they'd generated in it. A dedicated Tasks view lets them find past outputs directly, without digging back through chat.
Plug-in features vary, so control panel components differ between them. I analyzed which official plug-ins needed new UI and designed those components from scratch. Controls were designed to align with what works best with d.design's agent, giving a seamless experience for milestone 1 testing.
So far I've prepared 10 official plug-ins for d.design, including shader effects, mockup tools, and multi-angle generators.
There's more to explore with d.design and the plug-in feature — sharing plug-ins, making profits from them. Stay tuned.