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.
There doesn't seem to be a reliable React Aria UI kit for Figma, so I might start making one
— luis. (@disco_lu) January 5, 2026
Converting OKCLH and tinting to raw hex values is...fun. This might be better handled with a themer plugin, I'll see how I get on pic.twitter.com/pNxWihuAvn
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.
Thoughts:
— Dylan Field (@zoink) January 8, 2026
1. In the future, the probability something is generated entirely by AI will be inversely proportional to its intended lifespan.
2. For conceptually simple artifacts that are intended to have short lifespans, humans will still be involved just at a different level of… https://t.co/mhaDkGS7SV
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.
Kaari replies: “The “make your own things” from generic blocks idea is warm one, and I do appreciate it. Where it starts to lose me is when it tries to force a reality that doesn’t really exist, and it’s not what people do or look for. Look at any craft. The kitchen. The workshop. Purpose-built spaces filled with purpose-built tools, often shaped by centuries of tradition (also sometimes known as experience). Serious craftspeople don’t operate in primitives. A chef doesn’t stock “a knife”, “a pot”, “a carrot”. They have a specific knife, a specific size, a tradition they trust.”
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.”
Kaari clarifies his thoughts in an article: “I tend to think about design as a search, not a production pipeline. You start with a messy problem. Early on, you do not know the answer. This is why I never fully buy the idea that design is about output. I agree that design is useless without shipping, but the process of designing is not. The design process, and the suffering part of that process, are valuable. […] Use whatever tools you want, but be deliberate about what mode you are in. Protect exploration from premature constraint. Invite constraints when you are ready to learn from them. Use code as feedback, not as a cage.”
On constraints: “If you let constraints define the space too early, you do not just get a worse outcome. You lose outcomes that never get discovered.”
On unification: “The dream of a coherent universe is compelling. A world where ideas move from chaos to clarity without translation loss. Where designers can build and builders can design. I see the desire, and it can be good. But unification has a shadow side. It can turn into standardization. If everything is built from the same primitives, you get the same patterns repeated across teams. Tools raise the floor, but they can also lower the ceiling if they quietly define what is worth attempting. If the easiest path is always the most conventional path, convention becomes the product.”
Karri Saarinen reacts to the announcement of a visual editor in Cursor: “Whenever a designer becomes more of a builder, some idealism and creativity dies. Not because building is bad, but because you start out including constraints earlier in the process than they should. […] People forget that the creative process is not about tools. It’s about forming a vision, and then translating that vision into some form.”
Whenever a new design to code tool comes around, people get excited. It’s considered the holy grail of design. You can now design with code. This is the final evolution.
— Karri Saarinen (@karrisaarinen) December 12, 2025
But I don’t agree. It’s only the holy grail if you value output higher than the process of design.
Whenever…
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.)
Ana Boyer designs a web homepage, showcasing recently launched Figma Design and Draw features. “Learn how to create a text-inlay parallax hero using Remove background and Isolate object, apply Glass effects, expand an image within a grid, generate illustrations via AI prompts, and add Draw texture effects.”
In his talk at Converge 2025, Luis Ouriach makes a compelling argument that we create too many design tokens — particularly for colors.
Dylan Field shows several demos prepared with Gemini 3 Pro and highlights how this model stood out in one-shot generation and a wide range of visual aesthetics.
Molly suggests using separate color palettes for marketing and product design, as they have different goals and speed of iteration.
Noah Levin, VP of Design at Figma, shows how creative image prompting with the new Nano Banana Pro model can add serious value to your work across all of Figma’s products. I really liked the practicality of examples in this article, from updating a headshot to match the rest of the team to preparing a dark version of the illustration.
In the latest episode of Boz to the Future, Meta CTO Andrew “Boz” Bosworth sits down with Dylan Field: “Boz and Dylan dive deep into the intersection of technology and creativity, from the early days when designers were scarce to today’s collaborative, cloud-based workflows. They talk about the imminent paradigm shift in interfaces and what comes after text prompting. They discuss what stays evergreen despite rapid technological change, and why the pursuit of craft remains fundamentally human.”
Dylan Field was a guest on the Uncapped podcast with Jack Altman, where they discussed the slow build of Figma vs. the dizzying start of today’s AI startups, the role of AI and humans in design, the importance of staying connected to young people, and what it takes to be a strong and empathetic leader.
Great overflow from Jake on how developers and designers collaborate using Figma’s newest workflow updates and features. He covers design systems, Dev Mode, Code Connect, Code Syntax for variables, Annotations, AI, and code generation.