The Glass effect is now generally available, and Miggi introduces a few updates: add Glass to any object, shape, or text; design Glass with non-uniform corners and precisely round each corner radius; use the Splay property to control how light bends around an object’s edges; and apply variables to Glass properties to easily connect to your design system.

Ridd shares his mental model for deciding which tools to reach for when coding with AI. Also available as a Dive Club video.

Nikolas Klein, PM at Figma: ​“Today, we’re introducing the ability to embed Figma Make prototypes into Figma Design, FigJam, and Figma Slides, along with new editing tools that help you build and share your best ideas.”

Joey Banks shares a simple way to get started with variables structure when he is not sure where to begin: ​“One very simple approach that’s worked well for me is separating variables into non-interactive and interactive buckets. […] Non-interactive variables describe the environment. Things like background surfaces, text, icons, and borders that don’t change based on input. Interactive variables describe behavior, such as actions, states, and feedback that do respond to input.”

Marcin Wichary, Design Architect at Figma, started a microblog about software craft and quality. His writing is always wonderful and insightful — instant subscribe.

Speaking of Tom, in this interview with Jay, he shows the DM he sent to Linear’s CEO to get an interview — and later the portfolio and case studies he used to land the job at Vercel.

Tom Johnson: ​“It’s literally faster for me to build a concept inside of the actual codebase than it is to work in Figma. But the amount of versions and breadth of the final result is not up to the quality bar that I usually hold. I’m loving the speed, but the output is sloppy at times. So I’ve got this weird flow of Code → Code → Figma → Code → Figma. Repeat, reorder, etc. The issue is that the transition from Figma → code with their MCP is solid. […] But code → Figma… is a terrible flow.”

I often spend more time recreating a particular screen in Figma than actually designing the change. I’ve been beating on the Code Connect drum for a while as it has huge potential for connecting design and code components. Even though it was built to translate components from Figma to code, I don’t see why it wouldn’t work in reverse. Code Connect was announced almost two years ago (way before LLMs and MCPs got powerful), but because it’s locked behind Organization and Enterprise plans, it’s rarely discussed in the community or considered by plugin and tool makers.

In this talk from Hatch Conference, Jenny Wen, Design Lead at Anthropic and former Director of Design at Figma, explains why the traditional design process is outdated and no longer works for today’s tools and tech: ​“With AI accelerating prototyping, smaller teams doing more, and craft becoming a key differentiator, rigid processes are failing designers. Jenny shares real examples from Figma and Anthropic that show how great work actually gets made today. Starting from solutions, caring deeply about details, building intuition, skipping steps, and designing for delight.”

Jenny’s talk really resonated with me. Quickly trying and discarding solutions, iterating on details, and relying on intuition is how I prefer to work. Still, without formal collateral such as personas or problem statements, it can feel like taking a shortcut. I went through a phase of producing these artifacts, but often found them more useful for justifying decisions than making them. It finally clicked when I read Alan Cooper’s interaction design bible, ​“About Face,” a decade ago: a lot of these processes came from design consultancies. They have to learn a client’s business, do product discovery, solve a problem, and sell it to stakeholders in a short time before moving to the next client. The longer you work on a product, explore the problem space, and listen to users, the stronger your intuition gets, which lets you fast-forward and compress discovery and design process.

“In this episode of In Good Company, Nicolai Tangen speaks with Dylan Field, founder and CEO of Figma, about the ideas behind one of the most influential design platforms in the world. Field shares lessons from founding Figma at 19, navigating years of iteration before launch, and scaling with a strong product culture. They discuss taste, craft, and community, how AI is changing the creative process, and what it means to lead with optimism in a rapidly evolving tech landscape.”

MDS recorded a Figma tutorial video dissecting why Anthropic’s Claude app icons feel so satisfying and explaining how to recreate these animated icon components in Figma using Smart Animate.

Another cool Figma Draw technique from Miggi that I wasn’t aware of. Until now, I was achieving this effect in an old-school way by flattening a copy of the object and then adding an outside stroke.

Luis took on a noble goal of making a reliable UI kit for React Aria. I enjoy following his process even while I don’t use the actual UI library.

Miggi shows how to use the Cut tool like a pro.

Dylan Field argues that AI will generate more of the short‑lived, simple artifacts in software and design, while humans will remain central for long‑lasting, high‑impact work where craft and intention matter most.

Ed Elson from First Time Founders discusses with Dylan Field the future of design in the age of AI, how his management style has changed over time, and what it was like to go public.

MDS pitches in: ​“There is something fundamentally different about freeform exploration versus direct end product manipulation. The same way there’s a big difference between drawing with a pencil on paper, moving objects around on a screen, or writing words in a journal versus typing words on a screen. And now we can have AI do some or all of that for us.”

“So I say let cookie cutter primitives happen. Every font uses the exact same alphabet. Every song uses the same 12 notes. Some people will always want to build something unique regardless of those primitives. […] The idea that everything may become cookie cutter is not an actual problem. It’s a theoretical problem. Meanwhile, there are real problems with real impact waiting to be solved.”

Tommy Geoco perfectly summarized the debate between Karri Saarinen from Linear and Ryo Lu from Cursor.

Designer Advocate Anthony DiSpezio is joined by Christine Vallaure for a walkthrough of best practices for designing responsive websites in Figma Sites. They cover how to design across breakpoints, tips for layout and structure, and other best practices.

Ridd highlights a few examples from his workflow of delivering production-ready code to his product. Love this part: ​“I explored this concept in Make and really liked where it landed. A couple years ago, I would’ve dropped a Cleanshot .gif on the canvas and asked my developer to recreate it as closely as possible. But I’m no longer making concept cars. This component is the design. Every detail is rooted in code and behaves exactly how I want it to in production.”

Luis made an incredibly useful widget to help check off requirements before the component gets to production — states, accessibility, documentation, tokens, etc. Checklists are an underrated tool for optimizing routine tasks, and I’m looking forward to trying this one. (Design Systems Checklist is another great resource worth checking out.)