Is Gemini 3 a 10x designer? I Wanted Proof.

0:00Today we're going to test how good of a designer is Gemini 3.0 within Google AI Studio. So we're going to actually design a personal website. We're going to design a SaaS app. We're going to design a mobile app. And we're going to find out by the end of this episode, how awesome is it? Is it a six on 10? Is it an eight on 10? Is it a 10 on 10? And to be honest, the only exposure I had to using Gemini 3.0 and Google AI Studio was in the episode I did the other day with Logan Kilpatrick from the DeepMind team. It did a pretty good job at it. Actually, a very good job at it. And I wanted to go deeper and do an episode where we just kind of see, okay, you know, can this thing go the extra mile?

0:42So we're going to do it together and we're going to find out how good it is.

0:54So let's start off by designing a personal website. So I actually have a personal website. but I think it could be a lot more let's put it you know nicer I think it'd be a bit a bit nicer it's just quite basic so I'm going to go ahead and copy copy the screenshot I go to build over here and this is where you're going to go and design or build your idea so you can use this to vibe code or you can use this to be a vibe designing so you can see here that I've selected the Gemini 3 Pro model. And I'm going to say I have a personal webpage, but I think it's not that well designed or could be better.

1:50I've attached a screenshot of what it looks like, but I want you to design this with more color, more freshness,

2:09and just all around more interesting. Maybe you can make it a full experience somehow. I'm not giving it a lot of instructions. I kind of want to see what it does. I could maybe say, hey, I want it to be Microsoft XP designed or something like that. Actually, it's probably a good idea. Let's make it look like a 3D experience Microsoft XP. Actually, not 3D experience. Let's make it look like an experience in Microsoft XP. except it's a personal website. The website domain is gregisenberg.com if you want to grab content from there. Okay, so I've gone ahead and given it a prompt and now you can see Gemini 3 Pro Preview is running.

3:13This is cool that you'll see that it does, on AI Studio and Gemini 3, you kind of see it shows its work. so it'll say like you know what it's doing so you can see here it's actually creating the metadata.json the index.html and you can i think yeah hover over it and you can see what what is happening so it's using tailwind css react application entry point and by the way i have no affiliation with google i do think that they are absolutely crushing it lately. And I think in 2026, they will continue to crush it. So I am bullish on them. And that's why I really want to get to use their products more and more, because I'm just seeing them just do a great job at, you know, think about where they were 12 to 18 months ago, they were literally building Google Bard, you know, they went from Google Bard, lamest name to, you know, their cursor competitor is called Ultra Gravity.

4:19Way cooler, right? So you could just see that they're taking it a lot more seriously. And I think that it's really going to be, you know, it's Google AI versus Cloud versus ChatGPT. And I wouldn't be surprised if Google AI wins. So it's still creating the app. we can go ahead on just to look at what I currently have. It's just a pretty simple website. It does the job. It shows a link to subscribe to my newsletter. It gives different guides that people can download. It links to the Startup Ideas podcast on Spotify and YouTube. It shows here's all my portfolio companies and all the companies I'm working on.

5:09And that's basically it. there's a about me and there is a blog. So it's a very simple website. And I'm curious, you know, can Google AI, Gemini 3.0, actually build something that doesn't feel like a purple vibe-coded app that feels just a lot better? Something that I would like, you know, update this to. Sam Altman, the co-founder of OpenAI, just said that it is the era of the idea guy and he is not wrong. I think that right now is an incredible time to be building a startup. And if you listen to this podcast, chances are you think so too. Now, I think that you can look at trends to basically figure out what are the startup ideas you should be building.

5:55So that's exactly why I built ideabrowser.com. Every single day, you're gonna get a free startup idea in your inbox and it's all backed by high quality data trends. How we do it, people always ask. We use AI agents to go and search. What are people looking for? And what are they screaming for in terms of products that you should be building? And then we hand it on a silver platter for you to go check out. We do have a few paid plans that take it to the next level, give you more ideas, give you more AI agents and more almost like a chat GBT for ideas with it. but you can start for free ideabrowser.com and if you're listening to this i highly recommend it okay so stuff is happening so uh oh my god okay so here we are this is this is this is crazy so we're looking here it doesn't put uh windows right because it's probably a copyright thing but it looks like windows it looks like windows xp um it's the notepad is over here uh where it says like greg eisenberg the internet is my playground i kind of love that tagline um it's taken the um it's taken the copy from from my website already uh you can see it has the links over here and then it's gone and created some like different you know applications so there's the about Greg application, Greg's letter, which is my newsletter where I guess people can subscribe to.

7:33And then they have the different guides. So I just went ahead and clicked on guides. You can see like, look at this. This is a website. This is crazy. How does this even, there's no way this works on mobile, right? Yeah. Well, actually, actually works on mobile, surprisingly. uh so you know it has all my guides it shows pdf and blueprint the icons look really really good these guys it says details these guides are created based on real world real world experience building link checkout size very high value date modified today this is like i don't know about you But to me, this is like really, really awesome.

8:19I'm just going to say, let's just try to edit it a little bit. I noticed there are no icons for the applications like Idea Generator or Internet. Actually, it's not that there's no icons. it's just that the icons aren't hitting right the icons that you chose for the applications like about greg and greg's letter etc they don't feel like real windows or mac app icons please make them more real and let's see what happens and the reason i'm i i want to see like can this thing design well right like um you know can it take feedback well uh that was what one of the things that i was really impressed with in my chat with logan kilpatrick um and if you haven't seen that episode we'll include it in the show notes in the description is how well it was able to take feedback so let's just see uh if a non-googler like myself actually can get you know similar and good results.

9:35The other thing that I want to ask to change is I do find the white background to be, I don't know, boring. So I'm going to say I find the white background. Oh, actually, what's this? What happens if I click this? Right. So there's a button here that's annotation. So add annotations to visually iterate on your app. So it says draw and write on your app preview to instantly communicate your vision to Gemini. Yeah, so Logan was showing me this. You can highlight components, sketch new ideas, or add precise feedback right where it matters. Simply pass your visual prompts to Gemini and watch your app.

10:17Update live. So let's actually try to, we'll let this think and update this. And then after that, let's go and annotate the background. Try to get it to a place where it looks a little bit better. And then once we're done that, we will move on to can we design a SaaS app? I know a lot of people listening want to build a SaaS app, want to build a micro SaaS, love the idea of doing that. But when they use platforms like Lovable or other ones, Replit or any Vibe coding platform, They're just getting designs that are not what they want. Not what's in their head, really. That's what it comes down to.

11:06I will say that Replit now has Google Gemini 3.0 available on... I think it's available as of today. Let's check. Gemini 3.0. yeah design mode so they do have a new design mode to go from idea to a live website and that's also powered by gemini 3.0 so they've gone ahead and updated the icons this is what i'm talking about i don't know about you uh it did bug out here uh with popular guides but every other icon was done to perfection in my opinion this looks really really good we're going to do the annotation quickly and i'm gonna say oh wow it's like actually here add to you can see at the bottom once you click you can add a comment you can add an arrow a rectangle so i'm gonna go ahead and say um i'm gonna say uh this white background is boring and doesn't Give off Microsoft XP, the classic blue skies and green mountain.

12:32Please adjust.

12:40So I just said, add this to chat. I'm going to send that to Gemini. And now it has that context. It's such a simple idea, right? They basically just made an image editor within it, but it makes it so much more. This works best. All these platforms work best when you give it good references, images. So the better reference images, you generally get more out of it. So just FYI. so let's see um what what this does and uh it's just crazy like it's really what's blowing my mind what's going through my mind right now is it really is like if you have good ideas if you have ideas that are scroll stopping are interesting um you can stand out right like a personal website everyone has a you know a lot of people have personal websites like mine like just very simple about us, right?

13:46But they don't have, a lot of people don't have something like this. And if you can stand out, maybe that gets you the job you wanted. Maybe that gets you a client that you wouldn't have otherwise gotten. You never know what it's going to do. And we're all in this game of how do we increase our probability of success, right? How do we stack the chips in our favor? And good design really does that. Good design is viral. Good design is something that people talk about. Good design adds trust. So that's why you should want good design. So it's been thinking for about 110 seconds. seconds um let's uh let's give it a few more seconds and then move on to the sass app taking like a little longer than i'd like you it's kind of like surprising that uh you know the whole website was created in 111 seconds but the background is taken so far 136 seconds All right, so it broke the icons, but I do think having the background looks nicer.

15:12It didn't take my feedback around creating the mountain. I think what I should have done is I should have just Googled Microsoft XP background, posted it as a reference image, and it probably would have worked. So I don't have time for it right now, but overall, I don't know about you, but I'm pretty damn impressed. This exceeded my expectations on this personal website. Nine on 10 for me. I don't know about you, but I'm probably going to be redoing my personal website soon. Next, let's go see how it does on designing a SaaS app. So right before this, I went on Dribbble and I searched SaaS app and dashboard, SaaS dashboard, and this came up.

16:05And I thought it looked very clean. So what I want to do is I want to go back to the build section. Describe your idea. So I'm going to add the reference image. Let's go ahead and do that.

16:26Copy. I'm going to add it right here. And I'm going to say, this is a dashboard I really like. I'm building a software that is an analytics meets AI app for restaurants. I want it to be designed in a similar vibe. it's clean it's modern and I want the buttons to feel almost like real buttons in the real world so just like simple language there's like design terminology for this but I'm just keeping it simple for everyone knobs etc can you make this happen

17:25you know what I'm going to actually pull up a

17:33I really like this company Teenage.Engineering the designs are really nice I just like their products they do like audio and microphones and stuff like that I'm going to take a screenshot of this even though it's I mean this might just complicate things I also included a photo of a teenage engineering product that's physical that I imagine the buttons could be used on the SaaS app. So that's not even good English, but let's just see what happens and see what it comes up with. in the past you know what what the vibe coded sass app would look like it would look like the tailwind css like organize exactly how you think um some purple you know and uh you know i i i'm hoping that this is a little more elevated i'm hoping that this is a little more interesting I really didn't give it much data around what are the product features and stuff like that.

18:55Like you might have seen on the Logan Kilpatrick episode, you could use something like ideabrowser.com if you're looking for a startup idea and you can just take the startup idea and post it into the prompt. So you can go ahead and do that. Or if you have Idea Browser Pro, you can just grab the product requirements doc, which is also known as a PRD, and it gives you exactly what you would actually give a product manager, the whole prompt. And you can just copy this prompt, which is basically a product requirements doc, and just throw it into Google AI Studio. Or you can just build a product requirements doc on whatever it is you're working on.

19:44I think Lenny Ruchitsky has a PRD doc. Let's just see if he does. Yeah, my favorite product management templates.

19:57So he linked it here. I can include it in the show notes. But basically a PRD means what is the problem? What is the high-level approach? What is the narrative? What are the goals? Ideally, you're giving this data to Google AI Studio so that you get the best design product. And here we have it. So that looks really nice. That looks really nice. The buttons look really nice. They've got that teenage engineering vibe. Oh, come on. That is cool. That is teenage engineering. I'm not really able to move it, but it's created this AI analyst, ChefOS. Does this thing work? So it basically created an AI helper.

20:53OP restaurant is a fully operational and analyzing your data. Currently we observe healthy 14 active tables, average ticket. This is something that you might be able to sell to a restaurant. um i think this looks super super super good um nice little animations here um i like it i like it a lot um my only notes on here is this should be able to i should be able to move it oh i can you just have to click on it but i should be able to drag and drop and drag it just to make it easier. But look at that. That looks sweet. So overall, I would say I'm going to give this an 8.5. I don't know what you would give it, but I'm going to give it a quick 8.5.

21:43And this is one prompt. One prompt. Let's go ahead and write that down. 8.5 on 10. The last thing we're going to design is a mobile app. A lot of you are interested in mobile apps and building mobile apps. There's definitely a huge opportunity right now to build a mobile app with AI. Right now I'm going to be doing a bunch of episodes on that, so stay tuned. I want to get that out next week and the week after. But there's this app that my friend Yoni created. It's called BrainRot. And it's basically an app that helps you get off TikTok and Instagram and basically anything that gets you to get your brain rot.

22:32So it's created this little mascot and it shows you your brain rot in real time. Anyways, the point is, let's just say we wanted to copy brain rot. So let's go back to the build section. and we're going to go and we're going to say, we're going to copy here. Let's just copy this. So I've gone and just copied the App Store previews. And I don't know if Gemini 3.0 is good at designing mobile apps. So that's what we're going to find out today. I want to design a mobile app. I really like everything about this app called BrainRot. I'm even going to say it by my friend Yoni. The mascot, the gamification, everything about it feels to me like a blueprint for getting someone to do something.

23:35What if you designed the brain rot for getting people to work out? Can you do it in the style of brain rot? Mascot, warm colors, beautifully designed.

24:02and I'm going to say make sure you design this as an iOS app. I don't even know if it can do this. I don't know if this just does web apps. So we might be looking at a 0 and 10 here.

24:25But we like to try it. We like to push the limits here on the Startup Ideas podcast. there are other as i mentioned on the show before there are other apps that specifically focus on mobile so there's an app called work rork build native mobile apps fast there's an app called the vibe code app which is by my friend riley and then there's another one well yeah i think it's called create anything yeah create anything.com create anything.com um which has a lot of people recently are are saying a lot of good things about it um i need to spend more time playing with it and i'll be doing more episodes on mobile uh soon so it's still uh cooking it says this response generates a complete react application called gains a fitness gains is actually a killer name killer name it features a mascot that reacts to your workout habits oh let's get these gains are you kidding me this is it got the streak it's got the goal maintenance mode see if i click around here.

25:52Your activity, your gains calendar, your top contributors. That's really cool. Imagine it integrates with Apple Health. You can log it. It won't let me log it here. I click nothing happen, but I can imagine giving it more data around how it should log things. And there's no settings. But overall, from a design perspective like the mascot kind of kind of tough right it looks really good um it looks really really good and i would say this is an from a from a one prompt i'm going to give this an 8.3 on 10 i want to also mention that google has released something called anti-gravity antigravity is basically their cursor competitor you can design using gemini 3.0 um in in antigravity but the designs that you are going to get at least that i've tried i haven't been able to get as nice as designs out of it so uh you know maybe it's just me probably not I don't think so.

27:06But if you want to get the most out of Gemini 3.0 Pro, you're going to want to go to direct to Google AI Studio. There you have it, folks. Overall, like I'm impressed. You know, like we're we're getting scared. It's getting scary good. And if you just keep prompting it, I think you can get to places where you have an extremely well designed app without any designers. You are the designer, right? You have to have the taste. You have to have the reference images. But I think you can go and design something beautiful. And we've exited this era where Vibe Coding produced not the most beautiful websites, not the most beautiful apps.

27:51And we're getting to a point that with the right reference images, the right prompts, you can get to a place where you design something beautiful. So hope this got your creative juices flowing. stop listening to me and just get your hands dirty go play with one of these tools go play with gemini 3.0 and build something and come back to the comment section i read every single comment on youtube share this podcast like it so i know to keep doing these episodes otherwise i don't know i don't know what you like or what you don't like or if i should just not post at all So thanks so much for spending your time with me.

28:29We learned about how to become pretty proficient, I would say, at Google AI Studio Gemini 3.0 AI designer stuff. And until next time, have a creative day, my friends.