A retrospective on an issue with Make Designs from Noah Levin, a VP of Design at Figma. First, a reminder on how the feature works: “[…] Make Designs feature employs three parts: a model, some context, and a prompt. This feature currently uses a collection of off-the-shelf models like OpenAI’s GPT-4o and Amazon’s Titan model—the same generally available models that anyone can use—and we have not done any additional training or fine-tuning. To give the model enough freedom to compose designs from a wide variety of domains, we commissioned two extensive design systems (one for mobile and one for desktop) with hundreds of components, as well as examples of different ways these components can be assembled to guide the output.”

What went wrong: ​“We carefully reviewed the underlying design systems throughout the course of development and during a private beta. But in the week leading up to Config, new components and example screens were added that we simply didn’t vet carefully enough. A few of those assets were similar to aspects of real world applications, and appeared in the output of the feature with certain prompts.”

In this episode of the Designing with AI podcast, Mia Blume chatted with Noah Levin, VP of Product Design at Figma, about the emotional ups and downs of the recent acquisition announcement and how it impacted the team, explored the implications of artificial intelligence on creativity and curiosity, leading teams through times of change and learning, decision-making, democratized access to information, and even the concept of love.

The first segment of the opening talk of the second day, with Noah Levin and Diagram team discussing how AI will shape our future and work. Continue by watching Generative AI and Creative Arms Race by Ovetta Patrice Sampson from Google, AI and empowering creative careers by Scott Belsky and Brooke Hopper from Adobe, and wrap up with The crescendo of AI in our collective future by Kanjun Qiu and Reid Hoffman.

Noah Levin, VP of Design, unveils Figma’s vision for AI and shares that Figma has acquired Diagram. (It’s fun to look back at all Jordan’s experiments I shared in this newsletter, starting from 2020.) ​“In short, AI can help us do more — across every part of the product development process — faster. It’s not a feature, but a core capability; more than a product, it’s a platform that can up-level our work to the plane of problem solving — arguably the core pursuit of our craft, and the reason many of us got into design and product building in the first place.”

Noah Levin talks about Figma’s unique processes in hiring and culture on the Design To Be podcast.

The Chrome Cast podcast interviews Noah Levin, the Director of Design at Figma. Besides talking about Figma and FigJam, they discuss Google for Education’s partnership with Figma to bring the collaborative design platform to education Chromebooks across the US and how Figma is leaning into the education space.

The founder of Cron wondered about this question, and Figma’s Design Director Noah Levin came up with some great links in replies.

Figma’s Design Director Noah Levin introduces Product Designers and UX Writers who worked on new features. Great place to discover new talented people to follow!

Noah Levin came up with six quick automations in just a few hours.

Cool FigJam widgets made by Bersabel Tadesse and Noah Levin. Hope they’ll be published one day!

A peek behind the scenes of how Noah Levin created the first take on design system analytics (now available on Orgs plan) during one of the past Maker Weeks.

Noah Levin, Design Director at Figma, collected 20 of his favorite tips and tricks for whipping up something quickly.

Noah Levin built his first plugin for turning URLs into little cards. Great for organizing shopping inspiration and visually including relevant links to the project. Now waiting for their API to support links.

Noah Levin, Design Director at Figma, dives deep into their day-to-day operations — meeting cadences, rituals, and anything else that helps the design team stay connected and efficient.

Great Ask-Me-Anything at Designer News with Noah Levin, Design Director at Figma. He answers questions about sourcing new design hires, interview process at Figma, internal and external transparency, latest product announcements, and more.