figmaDec 2, 2025

Double Click: What Does It Mean To Be A Designer In The Age Of AI? | Figma Blog (opens in new tab)

AI is blurring the boundaries between design, development, and product management, making traditional job titles less stable. Figma argues that titles still matter, however: they communicate expertise, shape expectations, support career development, and contribute to professional identity. As AI changes the tasks within jobs, people may increasingly identify as generalists or combinations of roles rather than occupying a single fixed profession. ## The rise of hybrid roles - Figma reports that **64% of product builders identify with two or more roles**. - AI is taking on increasingly specialized tasks, increasing the value of people who can connect ideas across disciplines. - Designers, developers, and product managers are increasingly working across traditional boundaries. - Jobs can be understood as “bundles of tasks” whose importance changes as technology and industry needs evolve. ## Why titles still matter - Titles provide shorthand for understanding someone’s expertise, responsibilities, and status. - They help establish expectations when people meet or collaborate for the first time. - Professional titles can support career ladders and communicate alignment with the values of an industry. - Research cited from Adam Grant found that allowing employees to choose their own titles improved psychological safety and reduced emotional exhaustion by up to 10% over five weeks. - Professional organizations and certifications reinforce the importance of titles in fields such as architecture, engineering, and medicine. ## Titles evolve with technology - The meaning of “designer” has changed from a focus on physical objects and print to digital products and software. - “Software engineer” emerged in the 1960s as the industry confronted the complexity of building software for increasingly powerful computers. - New technology continually creates, reshapes, and sometimes eliminates roles; “prompt engineer” is presented as a recent example. - During the dot-com era, some professionals combined responsibilities spanning product management, program management, development, and art. ## Roles shape expectations and identity - Titles influence how others perceive a person’s expertise and what work they are expected to perform. - Nikolas Klein describes himself as “a product designer in a PM trenchcoat,” showing how people may retain one identity while operating in another role. - Moving into product management made Klein’s strategic and service-design skills more visible and reduced assumptions that his work centered mainly on visual design. - Developer advocate Jake Albaugh views roles as potentially limiting because their definitions change as expertise grows. - At the same time, adopting the title “software engineer” after working as a web designer gave Albaugh a sense of confidence and recognition. Organizations and individuals will likely need to treat titles as flexible signals rather than rigid boundaries. The most durable professional identity may come from the value someone creates and the connections they make—not from a single fixed job label.

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figmaFeb 5, 2025

Double click: Human Takes on Agentic AI | Figma Blog (opens in new tab)

Agentic AI could fundamentally change UX by handling tasks across apps with minimal supervision, reducing the need for users to navigate complex interfaces. Supporters see agents as a new abstraction layer that lets people focus on goals rather than buttons, menus, and tabs. However, the shift also raises concerns about designing for machines at the expense of human creativity, agency, and meaningful interaction. ## The Promise of Agentic AI - Agents can take routine work off users’ plates, such as paying bills or completing multistep tasks. - Perplexity’s Henry Modisett argues that AI should be “how something works,” not necessarily what users directly interact with. - The ideal experience resembles starting a car: users specify where they want to go without needing to understand the machinery underneath. - Agentic systems may reduce the cognitive load associated with chatbots, personalities, and complicated interfaces. ## Agents as a New Web Abstraction - Agents could operate across platforms, creating a more interoperable web that works more like human workflows. - They may reduce the need to navigate menus, manage open tabs, or repeatedly switch between applications. - Rather than one all-purpose AI, the future may involve specialized agents collaborating like a team. - This could shift users’ attention from browsing and operating software toward creating, connecting, and pursuing goals. ## Designing Websites for Machines - Maintaining and optimizing websites for AI agents could become a distinct industry. - Websites may increasingly prioritize: - Clean APIs - Machine-readable content - Clear structure - Streamlined navigation - Visual polish, animations, and pixel-perfect layouts may matter less to agents than accessibility and functional interoperability. - Designers and developers must consider whether they are primarily building for humans, machines, or both. ## Preserving Human Creativity - Optimizing exclusively for AI could flatten the web and remove creativity, depth, and intentional visual experiences. - The growth of agentic systems arrives alongside renewed interest in: - Creative coding - Handcrafted websites - Experiences that move beyond templates - The industry has an opportunity to decide which tedious work to automate while preserving the aspects of the web that feel expressive and distinctly human. ## The Value of Friction and User Control - Traditional UX often treats friction as something to eliminate, but autonomous agents complicate that principle. - Users need deliberate moments to: - Review an agent’s proposed action - Approve consequential changes - Correct mistakes - Stay aware of what the system is doing - Carefully reintroduced friction can preserve agency and trust, even when the agent performs most of the work. - Good agentic design may therefore prioritize appropriate checkpoints over completely invisible automation. Agentic AI is still in its early stages, but it is likely to reshape both web infrastructure and interface design. The strongest approach is to automate complexity while preserving human oversight, creativity, and opportunities for meaningful participation.

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figmaJan 27, 2025

The Long and Short of It: Issue no.9 | Figma Blog (opens in new tab)

Issue no. 9 of Figma’s blog presents six “memos” about preserving craft, purpose, and creativity amid blurred roles, rapid product cycles, and emerging technology. The collection argues that digital creation should become more personal, emotionally resonant, adaptable, expressive, and inclusive. Rather than prescribing one method, the memos invite teams to question established approaches as they plan for 2025. ## Personalize the Web - Product Designer Chia Amisola argues that the internet has become increasingly standardized as it serves broader audiences. - She calls for a more personal and poetic web, inspired by the resurgence of small, handcrafted websites. - The accompanying essay, “Making space for a handmade web,” suggests that participating in this movement can begin simply by creating a site of your own. ## Build an Emotional Competitive Moat - Head of Insights Andrew Hogan argues that product differentiation cannot rely on features alone. - As software becomes more ubiquitous, emotional resonance can make an app feel distinctive and meaningful. - Teams should treat emotional response as part of product strategy and put “resonance on the roadmap.” ## Leave Room to Depart from the Roadmap - Director of Product Avantika Gomes challenges the idea that successful products must follow a fixed vision or predefined sequence of solutions. - Unexpected changes and discoveries can shape a product as much as its original roadmap. - Teams should avoid becoming overly attached to specific solutions and create room to pivot when circumstances or user needs change. ## Reclaim Creative Coding - Developer Jake Albaugh encourages developers to use the web’s expressive capabilities more fully. - He points to creative coding and the work of Henry Desroches as examples of how code can support experimentation and artistic expression, not just functional interfaces. ## The Value of Generalists - Content Strategist Carly Ayres revisits the discussion around generalists and hybrid roles. - As collaboration increasingly crosses design, development, writing, analysis, and product management, people who operate across disciplines may become especially valuable. ## Expand the Definition of Design - Another memo makes the case for greater inclusivity in design. - It suggests that the industry should reconsider narrow assumptions about who design serves and what design work includes. The collection’s practical message is to build with greater openness: make room for individuality, emotional connection, unexpected direction, creative experimentation, and broader participation. Teams planning new products should treat their process as adaptable rather than predetermined.

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figmaJan 8, 2025

Why Developers Should Embrace Creative Coding Again | Figma Blog (opens in new tab)

Creative coding once made websites distinctive, expressive, and technically ambitious, but templates and automation have made many sites predictable. The author argues that modern browsers now offer even more creative possibilities than before, yet designers and developers often remain constrained by outdated conventions. Reviving experimentation can help turn the web back into a medium for artistic expression rather than merely a container for information. ## From Handcrafted Websites to Templates - In the early 2010s, custom websites served as digital calling cards and demonstrated developers’ technical and creative skills. - Developers used emerging HTML5 capabilities such as: - Inline SVG - GSAP-powered animations - WebGL experiments - Complex CSS illustrations - Website builders and templates eventually made sophisticated features accessible to everyone. - This democratization was valuable, but it also encouraged predictable designs built around familiar patterns. ## The Browser’s Creative Evolution - Browsers now support capabilities that exceed those found in many design tools. - Important advances include: - Container queries - Advanced CSS scoping, inheritance, and responsive behavior - Dynamic units and sophisticated layouts - Improved typography, color handling, and animation - Adaptation to user preferences - Many newer designers and developers remain unaware of these features and continue working within older design paradigms. ## Modern Color and Design Possibilities - CSS supports color spaces beyond standard RGB, including: - HSL - OKLCH - These color spaces allow more vibrant and controlled gradients and transitions. - The author created a Figma plugin called **CSS color-mix()** to help connect modern CSS capabilities with design workflows. - As design and development converge, design tools can become places for experimentation rather than merely production and handoff. ## Creative Coders as Examples - Henry Desroches creates responsive websites with the precision and dimensionality of print design. - Sarah Drasner has demonstrated the expressive potential of SVG animation and illustration. - Tim Holman’s projects, including **Optical Toys** and **The Useless Web**, embrace playful experimentation. - Lynn Fisher treats viewport changes as part of the artwork, creating illustrations that transform with the browser’s width. - These creators show that templates can be starting points rather than limitations. The author encourages developers and designers to experiment with the browser’s full capabilities. By moving beyond templates and embracing creative coding, they can make websites that are more intentional, surprising, responsive, and expressive.

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figmaJan 8, 2025

Six Memos for the Future of Digital Creation | Figma Blog (opens in new tab)

The article presents six Figma “memos” about the future of digital creation in 2025. Drawing on the tradition of influential workplace memos, it argues that documenting observations, strong opinions, and emerging opportunities can stimulate dialogue and change. The themes range from creative coding and broader definitions of design to emotional differentiation, handmade websites, and generalist careers. ## The Memo as a Tool for Shaping the Future - Figma frames the memo as a concise way to communicate ideas, critique strategy, and encourage organizational change. - The article references influential examples, including Bill Gates’s advocacy for graphical interfaces and Stewart Butterfield’s “We don’t sell saddles here” memo for Slack. - Memos can be strategic, metaphorical, playful, or reflective documents that preserve how thinking develops over time. - Figma’s six contributors use the format to examine trends across design, development, product, writing, analysis, and community work. ## Developers Should Embrace Creative Coding Again - Modern browsers now support capabilities that often exceed those available in conventional design tools. - Developers are encouraged to move beyond templates and standardized production workflows. - The memo calls for renewed experimentation with the web as a creative medium. - Creative coding is presented as a way to explore the browser’s full expressive and interactive potential. ## Expanding the Definition of Design - The second memo argues for a broader understanding of what design encompasses. - Its inclusion reflects the article’s wider focus on how digital creation crosses traditional professional boundaries. ## When to Leave the Product Roadmap - The third memo examines when teams should move beyond planned roadmap work. - It suggests that product development may require responding to unexpected opportunities rather than following predetermined priorities exclusively. ## Emotion as a Competitive Advantage - The fourth memo identifies emotion as an emerging source of competitive differentiation. - As digital products become increasingly similar in function, how they make people feel may matter more to their success. ## Making Space for a Handmade Web - The fifth memo advocates preserving room for distinctive, human-made experiences on the web. - It contrasts this idea with increasingly standardized, templated, and automated digital production. ## The Rise of the Generalist - The final memo focuses on the growing importance of people who work across disciplines. - Its inclusion reinforces the article’s view that future digital creation will depend on collaboration between design, development, product, writing, and other fields. The article’s practical recommendation is implicit: observe emerging patterns, write down strong ideas, and share them. Memos can turn informal workplace thoughts into conversations that influence products, teams, and the broader direction of digital creation.

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figmaJul 31, 2023

John Maeda on Creativity, AI, and the Human Pursuit of Uphill Thinking | Figma Blog (opens in new tab)

John Maeda argues that AI will transform creative work without eliminating the need for human creativity. While AI excels at efficiency, repetition, and finding the shortest path to an answer, meaningful creative breakthroughs often require experimentation, difficulty, and unconventional thinking. Designers should use AI to remove tedious work while deliberately preserving the human ability to pursue “uphill” paths. ## AI’s Promise and Threat to Creative Work - AI offers creatives greater efficiency and new capabilities, but may also produce large volumes of repetitive, cookie-cutter design. - Designers are learning to “speak machine” by collaborating with AI, training language models, and refining outputs to match their creative intentions. - Any technique developed with AI can potentially be replicated without its original creator, raising concerns about creative ownership and job security. ## Creativity Through Openness and Code - Maeda compares today’s AI concerns with his own experience in the 1990s, when he created distinctive algorithmic artwork. - Rather than keeping his methods secret, he open-sourced them at MIT so others could build their own creative work. - His involvement with MIT Scratch and Processing reflects his belief that programming can be a creative practice accessible to children, artists, and designers. ## Letting Computers Handle the Mundane - Computers are well suited to repetitive tasks such as: - Producing endless slide variations - Generating mockups - Performing image retouching - Automating this work could give designers more time to address emerging problems and develop more original ideas. - Maeda cites artist Jessie Shefrin’s observation that “by the time you come to the perfect solution, the problem has already changed,” emphasizing the need to keep moving rather than over-optimize a fixed answer. ## The Limits of Efficiency - AI is designed to find the shortest and most efficient route through a problem. - It can evaluate thousands or millions of possible paths rapidly and select the most efficient option. - Efficiency does not necessarily produce the most creative, meaningful, or impactful result. - The article presents “uphill thinking”—choosing difficult, indirect, or exploratory paths—as an important human strength in an increasingly automated world. Designers should embrace AI as a tool for reducing tedious labor, while continuing to protect the slower, less efficient processes that generate originality, insight, and meaningful creative work.

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figmaJul 28, 2019

Behind the Plugins: Matt DesLauriers, Generative Artist & Creative Coder | Figma Blog (opens in new tab)

Matt DesLauriers combines programming and visual art to create generative systems that produce evolving, often unexpected imagery. He sees code as a creative tool that collaborates with the artist, expanding what humans can imagine and execute. His Figma plugins aim to make generative art and creative coding more accessible while encouraging designers and developers to cross traditional boundaries. ## Discovering Generative Art - DesLauriers developed an interest in both art and programming during childhood, often modifying and redesigning games instead of simply playing them. - In 2014, he began creating JavaScript demos in the browser. - These demos generated images that changed over time, introducing him to emergence—the idea that complex artwork can arise from simple rules and parameters. ## Building Interactive Works - One of his proudest projects is **LUMOS**, an interactive light sculpture created with Jean-Michel Gariepy and Steven Mengin. - The sculpture was displayed in Toronto during Ontario Place Park’s 2018 Winter Light Exhibition. - The project reflects his interest in combining code, physical environments, and public art. ## Code as a Creative Medium - DesLauriers compares code to a brush or pen: a tool for communicating ideas to a machine. - Computers can execute instructions and repeat processes millions of times without tiring. - This collaboration can overcome human limitations and produce surprising results, including unexpected ideas caused by coding errors. - His workshops and writing help others explore the connection between artistic expression and programming. ## Figma Plugins for Creative Exploration - DesLauriers is developing plugins for animation, image palette generation, and parametric design. - He hopes the tools will help designers experiment with code and developers explore design. - His broader goal is to make creative coding and generative art approachable for both programmers and non-programmers. - He particularly appreciates small usability features in Figma, such as evaluating mathematical expressions like `25 / 2` directly in numeric fields. ## A More Open Design Industry - DesLauriers advocates for tools that are open, hackable, and experimental. - He believes the boundaries between designers, coders, artists, and other creative professionals should become less rigid. - His plugins represent that philosophy by bringing computational experimentation into a familiar design environment. His work suggests that creative tools should encourage experimentation rather than separate design from technology. By making generative techniques easier to use, plugins can help more people treat code as a medium for visual expression.

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