Use the new ​“Set variable mode” prototype action to change the variable mode of the current page. See the new section in the help article or try it out in an updated Advanced prototyping playground file.

Elliot Tu from Zeplin interviewed me for their Design-to-Dev community interview series last week. We chatted about working on Figmalion, my new role, collaborating with developers, the future of design-to-dev tools, and how I use AI in my work.

Handoff in your design tool costs your team a lot: in maintenance, rework, file bloat, and more. Try Zeplin instead — purpose-built to create harmony between design-to-dev, with powerful workflows that ensure their builds match your designs. Try for free →

Charlota K. Blunarova shares her observations and experience with using AI-generated assets in branding work. Those are truly beautiful projects, and I love her approach to using AI to expedite the execution phase so she can explore more ideas while dedicating more time to the strategic phase and project refinement.

A talk from Stripe’s Sessions 2024 conference on why well-crafted products are expressions of care and dedication — and how that correlates to business success. Head of Design Katie Dill kicks it off by talking about the value of quality and dispelling some of the myths and common-held beliefs about craft and beauty — that it is ​“in the eye of the beholder,” purely cosmetic, and at odds with growth. In Stripe’s experience, beauty is objective, functional, and support growth.

Later, she invites the cofounder and CEO of Linear, Karri Saarinen, and the CPO of Figma, Yuhki Yamashita, to share their thoughts on craft and beauty. I like Karri’s separation of these concepts — ​“craft is the mindset and activity you do, and the quality and beauty are the output.” You can also read the recap of this talk on the Figma blog.

Stripe puts their money where their mouth is. The new User Experience Assurance team is ​“focused on evaluating and improving user experiences across all of Stripe’s products. This team evaluates, measures, and tracks the experience quality of Stripe’s user journeys. You will work closely with product teams to ensure that Stripe products meet or exceed our high quality bar.”

Matthew Ström explores the concept of ​“polish” in design and its paradoxical nature by looking at a few examples. ​“The polish paradox is that the highest degrees of craft and quality are in the spaces we can’t see, the places we don’t necessarily look. Polish can’t be an afterthought. It must be an integral part of the process, a commitment to excellence from the beginning. The unseen effort to perfect every hidden aspect elevates products from good to great.”

Cameron Moll shares his thinking on delight and utility: ​“Utility is the value a user derives from interacting with your product. […] Delight is the satisfaction a user derives from interacting with your product. […] Design, Product, Engineering must work closely to put utility first. But each of these — Design in particular — must also advocate for delight to transform product value from ​“need to” to ​“want to.” Prioritizing delight is another form of slowing down to speed up.” See more of his thoughts on delight.

This ​“official” preset comes pre-installed on the Figma Creator Micro.

A useful Figma community file if you want to map out the layout before setting it up.

An older but very detailed video on setting up and configuring Creator Micro.

Marisa unpacks and shows how to set up the keypad.

After his original video of a futuristic speedometer with a smoke effect got a ton of traction, Alex Barashkov published the Figma file and recorded a detailed 33-minute-long step-by-step tutorial on making it.

A Figma and FigJam widget for documenting team decisions and the evolution of changes.

An AI-powered wireframe generator — describe your vision, and it will design it in a single click.

As someone who designed and coded a fair share of emails over the years, I’m curious to try this plugin when it becomes available. See the article ​“The Future of Email Design is Here: Streamline Your Workflow with Figma and Email Love” for the vision behind it.

LottieFiles: ​“We are thrilled to announce that we have received strategic investments from Figma Ventures and Webflow Ventures, marking a significant milestone in our journey to democratize motion design.”

Dylan Field, cofounder and CEO of Figma, discusses the company’s next phase of growth with Bloomberg’s Brody Ford at Bloomberg Tech in San Francisco.