Articles

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.”

Ridd noticed that designers who can code spend more time sketching their ideas and less time in Figma. This approach isn’t common because it still takes too long to code designs, but AI will change that. What if instead of generating polished mockups from text prompts we used AI to turn wireframes into frontend code, applied our design system, and tweaked the visual direction based on the provided mood board? (This is just one of the ideas explored in the new section of Dive.) 

Benji Taylor on creating guiding principles and designing interactions for the Family crypto wallet app: ​“This is not a technical post or tutorial. There are many good resources about how to craft smooth animations or design pixel perfect UI, by people much smarter than I am. This is about how we made something complex feel welcoming. It’s about what makes Family feel familiar.”

It’s Nice That talks to Damien Correll, Figma’s creative director, and Jessica Svendsen, its design manager, about designing the identity for this year’s Config and the response from the community. ​“The visual identity that goes alongside Config is a ten-month design project completed mainly internally, this year with help from Danish design team Relay on the motion front. Extending Figma’s core shape-based language with transforming glyphs, the branding is colourful, clean and much-hyped.”

See also Crafting the visual identity for Config 2024 at Figma blog.

I don’t use Affinity apps day-to-day, but I bought a license a while ago (a glorious one-time fee!) and use it whenever I need to do something for print, convert a tricky vector from EPS, or edit a photo. It won’t replace Figma for me, but it filled a void that Adobe Creative Cloud left. They were acquired by Canva earlier this year and currently run a promotion offering a six-month free trial and 50% off all perpetual licenses ($82.99 for all apps on all platforms). Worth giving a try!

Abdus Salam, Product Designer at Meta, writes at UX Collective: ​“The future belongs to designers who can master AI, not be mastered by it. Our value lies not just in our technical skills, but in our creativity, our empathy, and our ability to wield these tools in service of crafting experiences that resonate on a profoundly human level.” Also: ​“while AI can help us reach ​“good”, achieving ​“great” still requires human ingenuity and an unwavering commitment to quality.”

Mia Blume from Designing with AI with a controversial take: ​“In fact, I think Figma AI changes nothing for design. […] Besides the immediately useful feature of smart naming, Figma AI doesn’t alter the existing trajectory. This isn’t a dig on Figma, or its role in the future of tooling. It’s more that as a discipline, we were already ​“here”—some people just didn’t realize it.” If you’ve been paying attention to AI-related links in this newsletter, you would agree with her points.

Bingo: ​“The real weakness that jeopardizes our field has existed long before the invention of generative AI tools for creatives. If our value (even if it’s only perceived) lies solely in drawing boxes, then we will inevitably become obsolete. And if we remain focused on the wrong things, we will miss the moment in which we could do something about it.” In the end, she suggests three key areas that design leaders can focus on.

Jay Peters from The Verge spoke to Kris Rasmussen about the issue. ​“We’re doing a pass over the bespoke design system to ensure that it has sufficient variation and meets our quality standards. That’s the root cause of the issue. But we’re going to take additional precautions before we re-enable [Make Designs] to make sure that the entire feature meets our quality standards and is consistent with our values.”

David Hoang on three topics he is thinking a lot about after this year’s Config.

“As a tradeoff for pixel-level control and the familiarity of their favorite toolkit in Figma, designers have gone without basic slide functionalities like speaker notes and slide transitions. Figma Slides not only addresses those core features, but amplifies design functionality, making it easier for both designers and non-designers to co-create in the same space.”

Coming soon: ​“Moving forward, we’re working to make it easier for freelancers and agencies to collaborate with external clients, streamline project hand-off, and simplify billing.”

Figma has several features under development that are available to users in beta. In this article, find out which beta features are available, what they are, their beta types, and how to access each one.

“Bring order to your files while keeping your jams in one place with Pages in FigJam.”

“Find Apple iOS, Google Material Design 3, and Figma’s Simple Design System UI Kits directly in your assets panel. Each UI Kit includes component sets and example mockups, which allow you to start from full layouts. Just drag in an entire example screen as a starting point, and it’s fully editable with components from the library. Plus, each of these UI Kits is backed by Code Connect.”

“Experience your designs on any screen size with a new Prototype viewer experience that resizes responsively. With a new menu option for previewing or presenting prototypes, the viewer will respect constraints and Auto Layout properties as you resize the viewer window or select a different device frame.”

A guide to Dev Mode, updated with all new features and available for both the previous and new UI.

Code Connect is out of beta: ​“Today, we’re excited to make Code Connect generally available, alongside improvements like surfacing connected code snippets in the component playground, a new tool to streamline setup, and support for React, React Native, iOS, Android, and more to come.”

“Our new Ready for Dev View cuts down on the noise and helps developers, designers, and other stakeholders know exactly what’s needed to drive projects forward. And with Focus View and the ability to mark designs as dev complete, developers can stay in the flow while staying in sync with their collaborators.” See also a short reelof all the latest updates.

“We’ve updated Auto Layout to make it more predictable when you need it and easier to ignore when you don’t. Now, Figma can not only suggest when multiple frames of Auto Layout might be needed for a full design element, but also create those frames for you. This will save you time from having to apply it frame by frame within a design. Plus, you can hold Ctrl to ignore Auto Layout while dragging a design element into an Auto Layout frame to set an absolute position.” Try it out at the playground.

Use ​“Rewrite this…” to generate copy from scratch or tailor your copy’s tone according to your intended audience. Use ​“Shorten” to rewrite any text layers you need to be more concise. ​“Translate to…” can help you preview what your UX copy will look like in another language.

See also Replace text content with AI on using text context from the first element in a series of duplicated elements to populate content in the remaining elements.