Figma's 2025 AI report: Perspectives From Designers and Developers | Figma Blog
Figma’s 2025 AI report, based on a survey of 2,500 users, shows that AI adoption is accelerating across product development. Agentic AI is growing especially quickly, while established practices such as prototyping, iteration, and collaboration remain essential. However, developers generally see greater quality benefits from AI than designers, and widespread adoption is still limited by concerns about reliability. ## Agentic AI Is Growing Fast - Text generation remains the most common AI product category. - Agentic AI is the fastest-growing category, with 51% of AI builders developing agents, up from 21% the previous year. - Agents perform multi-step tasks by interpreting inputs, reasoning, and taking action. - Building them requires decisions about: - When users should be asked for confirmation - How much information the system should reveal - Whether conversational interfaces or direct controls are more effective - Designers and developers need extensive testing and prototyping to make agent behavior intuitive and trustworthy. ## Human-Centered Best Practices Still Matter - 52% of AI builders say design is more important for AI products than for traditional products, while 95% consider it at least equally important. - Successful teams continue to rely on: - Rapid iteration - Prototyping - Exploring multiple technical and design approaches - Close collaboration between disciplines - 60% of successful AI teams explored multiple approaches, compared with 39% of unsuccessful teams. - AI product development differs from conventional software work because outputs and interactions can change unpredictably. - Human judgment remains critical for explaining AI behavior and keeping people involved in AI-assisted actions. ## Smaller Companies Are Investing More Aggressively - 61% of users at companies with 1–10 employees say AI is very or critically important to their market-share goals. - The number of small-company respondents calling AI essential to their products doubled from the previous year. - Smaller businesses may be moving faster because they have fewer organizational constraints and can experiment more easily. - They may also view AI as a way to accelerate growth and compete with larger companies. ## Developers and Designers Perceive AI Differently - Developers report higher satisfaction with AI tools: - 82% are satisfied with AI tools. - 68% say AI improves their work quality. - Designers report lower—but still substantial—levels: - 69% satisfaction. - 54% saying AI improves quality. - Developers use AI more directly in core responsibilities such as code generation; 59% do so, compared with 31% of designers using AI for core design work such as asset generation. - 68% of developers use prompts to generate code, and 82% are satisfied with the results. - The gap suggests that AI currently fits more naturally into developers’ daily workflows, while designers are still evaluating where it provides meaningful value. ## Efficiency Has Outpaced Trust - 78% of respondents agree that AI significantly improves work efficiency. - Only 32% say they can rely on AI output in their work. - This contrast highlights the difference between AI’s potential to speed up tasks and its ability to produce consistently dependable results. - Teams must therefore focus not only on adoption, but also on quality control, human oversight, and designing workflows that account for AI’s limitations. Figma’s findings point toward an AI-driven future, but successful adoption will depend on disciplined experimentation, thoughtful product design, and systems that keep humans informed and involved.
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