A New Era for Creating on the Web
This year, I had the privilege of attending Config 2023, Figma's annual conference. Figma has been setting the agenda in digital product design for years.
I was completely surprised that it was NOT just a design conference, but one focused on Product, Technology, and Design. Figma is not only defining the future of digital product design but also playing a key role in the new era of product and content creation for the web.
The Event
More than 8,500 people attended the event in San Francisco live (and hundreds of thousands more virtually), with over 75 speakers from key roles in Figma, Netflix, Google, Meta, Duolingo, Adobe, among others, marking the first post-pandemic Config (the last was in 2020).
Figma + AI Will Dramatically Change How We Design
To begin with, it's good to understand how Figma believes AI will impact product design. Dylan, Figma's CEO, is convinced of two things:
- AI will enable designers and non-designers to create excellent sketches and first versions of a design. However, for it to become an excellent product design, top-notch designers must be involved (greater impact in the brainstorming and initial design stages).
- AI will enhance designers' skills by eliminating repetitive/operational tasks, allowing them to focus more on design strategy and problem-solving. It will also lower the barrier for non-designers to participate in the process, helping them translate their ideas into initial versions/sketches without needing to know how to design (this doesn’t mean they can design products on their own since, as mentioned earlier, excellent product design still requires designer expertise).
This is Dylan's vision. Personally, I believe he didn't mention a few points:
- A designer with good judgment but not great execution skills will have a powerful tool to level up to those who execute better.
- Increased participation from non-designers in the process could lead to confusion about the differences in what they can execute versus when a designer's expertise is needed. I foresee potential friction in the process.
Acquisition of Diagram (AI-focused Design Company)
To quickly advance AI integration in its products, Figma made a strategic acquisition of another company: Diagram.
Diagram was among the first companies to experiment with AI in design. Its founder & CEO began experimenting with plugins until Chat GPT-3 emerged, leading to significant developments. They launched several plugins/products over the years, including:
Initially, the technology automated tasks like:
- Creating a color palette
- Resizing a set of icons
- etc.
With AI advancements, they began applying intelligence to produce better products:
- UI-AI: Generates texts, images, layers, and icons
- Magician: Generates SVGs, names all layers and components, creates complex images and texts with a few clicks, like a magic wand
- Genius: A 360-degree assistant that does whatever you ask. It can create a design system, images, an entire screen with all its components, etc. You can invite it to your Figma file, and it leaves comments like a senior designer.
Genius is their most powerful version. Interaction is like chatting with Chat GPT, where you can bounce ideas, and it executes your requests.
Importantly, how did they design the UX for creating a screen from scratch with all its components? There's a drag-and-drop feature where you choose the structure, e.g., top navigation, a product feed below, and a footer at the bottom. You choose the structure, and Genius designs it.
What's crucial here is that all this already works and is now 100% owned by Figma. Integration of all these features will be launched soon. I strongly recommend checking out Diagram's website.
Increasing Support for Developers
Design and programming are clearly converging. One thing Figma has done well (besides its collaborative approach, which gave it an edge over Sketch and XD) is aligning design with front-end development. Auto-layout is a great example, allowing you to design using margins, paddings, and element positioning, mirroring the logic developers use for front-end development.
This year, they announced a dev-mode feature that lets developers view design files in a developer-optimized view. Additionally, variables and design tokens replicate CSS class logic used in programming. If design mirrors programming, how long before designing an interface directly converts to code?
Conversely, I like to use Webflow as an example, a pioneer in no-code. It's increasingly easier to implement designs without going through Figma. As Webflow enables more design capabilities and Figma allows more programming, how long until either platform offers an all-in-one solution?
Insights from Brian Chesky, CEO of Airbnb and the Only Designer CEO in Fortune 500 Companies
Brian Chesky, CEO of Airbnb, is the only designer CEO among Fortune 500 companies (a list of the 500 most important companies in the United States).
While I recommend watching the full talk, here are some interesting concepts he shared:
- The world's most important and promising companies have design as a fundamental pillar of their strategy (Apple, Tesla, SpaceX, Google, Airbnb, Mercado Libre, etc.).
- Few designers are CEOs because it's a more creative and less objective discipline. However, those who are good leaders and designers are C-levels, with a competitive edge due to their creativity, enabling innovation and disruption, and thinking in ways others do not.
- Design is not just graphic design or product design. As a CEO, he no longer does graphic design but designs the strategy, business model, teams, etc.
- Focus is crucial. They managed to keep the company afloat during the pandemic by focusing only on the essentials.
- Quality above all. They succeeded because they only launched features they could be proud of if they bore their name.
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