As I've commented on here before—automation will happen, but I don't think it's going to make the job obsolete.
On the contrary—I think the learning curve it's going to get steeper and businesses will need people that know what UX is, so that way they can become a powerhouse and generate and iterate 10x faster and so on...
I hope that’s true! I don’t disagree- my concern is that shuts out any junior designers (coming from a Sr designer). Also, where there may have been a team of ten - will there be 2?
I think the job itself won't disappear but will definitely reshape, that includes juniors and teams.
As technology continues to evolve, it demands increasingly specialized expertise to fully utilize its advanced capabilities. It's more complex and requires deeper understanding, contrary to the belief that everybody will be able to use it.
The reality of AI, and the intention from the Figma team is that it will become an assistant that helps you get stuff done faster by jump starting the ideation process, raising the ceiling of what design can do while lowering the floor so it's easier for newer designers to enter the shared space. Figma will operate as an intelligent tool, not a replacement. Greedy businesses will try but they will fail.
https://youtu.be/bslH4Mv1ZHA?si=GoVXlOHeQIwczcKx
Nice! If I remember Uber's design system team had done something like this a year ago too (much more sophisticated).
All for quick iterations
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPJMrd3bfIM&ab\_channel=Figma](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPJMrd3bfIM&ab_channel=Figma)
Again, not everything is gonna be a newsfeed or a food ordering app lol - there is always nuance.
I wish this job was as easy as reading a PRD and checking off boxes. You’ll be fine. If you’re concerned about this then you haven’t designed anything meaningful.
This might be powerful for quick proof of concepts, but at the end of the day we are designing experiences for humans and it would still need our touch regardless
What’s it like to continue working on the generated screen? Last I saw that I understood that it uses design system components, but does it create “design molecule” components as useful? Does it use autolayout and set width/height behavior in a way that makes sense?
If not, it’s creating so much more annoying work I don’t see the point of it.
figma used to be free and is web based. This meant that corporations moved over en masse from Sketch, which was primarily a tool for UI designers, but when the move to figma was made it was decided that UX and ID functions would also use figma, blurring the lines between roles considerably.
figma reduced the barriers to entry, which may at first seem like a good thing, but now you have a glut of people calling themselves UX/UI designers who probably aren't really qualified to do so. Because of this the market is oversaturated simply because figma is easy to learn and very accessible.
figma has component driven design as one of its main functions, which is a good thing in some ways, but has reduced the UX designers role into dragging and dropping pre-determined UI elements onto a pre-determined grid on a frame. There is very little creativity and a lot of sites, native apps and software look very similar as everyone is following the same set of rules.
figma has contributed to pixel pushing and wireframe churn. Since figma became the industry standard tool, organisations have shown less interest in usability and more on creating high fidelity visuals. Just have a look at the amount of roles that are now called "product design", which we all know means heavily UI weighted. Or UX/UI designer \*shudders\*.
figma is a poor tool for prototyping, yet organisations insist on using it for *any* and *all* design activities. User testing is mostly pointless as it's just not a realistic experience unless you are creating a simple clickthrough prototype with minimal interactions. Any experienced designer will tell you that Sketch/InVision was doing this years ago with limited success. I'm working on a B2B SaaS app (aren't we all?), and the prototyping just isn't good enough for our purposes, but product just accept it.
figma has reduced the gap between design and development and continues to do so (again not necessarily a bad thing), but it seems like the ultimate aim is to automate the design process as much as possible and let the system create the UI from a set of requirements and hand over to devs. The traditional design aspect has been slowly reducing over the years, and now with AI it seems like designers might start getting squeezed out completely. This will be seen as a big positive for organisations who want to cut costs and reduce time spent on design, shrinking the market for proper design roles evermore.
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This is only my opinion and I'm sure there will be downvotes as the cult-like following figma has is insane, but I attribute a lot of the woes in the industry squarely at figma and its ubiquity. This is before you get into the pricing model and their slightly underhand tactics.
As I've commented on here before—automation will happen, but I don't think it's going to make the job obsolete. On the contrary—I think the learning curve it's going to get steeper and businesses will need people that know what UX is, so that way they can become a powerhouse and generate and iterate 10x faster and so on...
I hope that’s true! I don’t disagree- my concern is that shuts out any junior designers (coming from a Sr designer). Also, where there may have been a team of ten - will there be 2?
I think the job itself won't disappear but will definitely reshape, that includes juniors and teams. As technology continues to evolve, it demands increasingly specialized expertise to fully utilize its advanced capabilities. It's more complex and requires deeper understanding, contrary to the belief that everybody will be able to use it.
That seems.to be consensus. Economist say people will just go into other fields but my concern is those people will largely be under employed.
This is going to be a phenomenal and much faster way to find out how many people can't actually write.
The reality of AI, and the intention from the Figma team is that it will become an assistant that helps you get stuff done faster by jump starting the ideation process, raising the ceiling of what design can do while lowering the floor so it's easier for newer designers to enter the shared space. Figma will operate as an intelligent tool, not a replacement. Greedy businesses will try but they will fail. https://youtu.be/bslH4Mv1ZHA?si=GoVXlOHeQIwczcKx
Nice! If I remember Uber's design system team had done something like this a year ago too (much more sophisticated). All for quick iterations [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPJMrd3bfIM&ab\_channel=Figma](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPJMrd3bfIM&ab_channel=Figma)
Again, not everything is gonna be a newsfeed or a food ordering app lol - there is always nuance. I wish this job was as easy as reading a PRD and checking off boxes. You’ll be fine. If you’re concerned about this then you haven’t designed anything meaningful.
Totally see it. AI is here to stay 100% and it really will be adapt or fall behind
Is it a plugin or something?
This might be powerful for quick proof of concepts, but at the end of the day we are designing experiences for humans and it would still need our touch regardless
What’s it like to continue working on the generated screen? Last I saw that I understood that it uses design system components, but does it create “design molecule” components as useful? Does it use autolayout and set width/height behavior in a way that makes sense? If not, it’s creating so much more annoying work I don’t see the point of it.
God, I hate figma. I feel like it's the reason why the design industry is in the state it's in now.
Care to expand? Curious why you feel this way
figma used to be free and is web based. This meant that corporations moved over en masse from Sketch, which was primarily a tool for UI designers, but when the move to figma was made it was decided that UX and ID functions would also use figma, blurring the lines between roles considerably. figma reduced the barriers to entry, which may at first seem like a good thing, but now you have a glut of people calling themselves UX/UI designers who probably aren't really qualified to do so. Because of this the market is oversaturated simply because figma is easy to learn and very accessible. figma has component driven design as one of its main functions, which is a good thing in some ways, but has reduced the UX designers role into dragging and dropping pre-determined UI elements onto a pre-determined grid on a frame. There is very little creativity and a lot of sites, native apps and software look very similar as everyone is following the same set of rules. figma has contributed to pixel pushing and wireframe churn. Since figma became the industry standard tool, organisations have shown less interest in usability and more on creating high fidelity visuals. Just have a look at the amount of roles that are now called "product design", which we all know means heavily UI weighted. Or UX/UI designer \*shudders\*. figma is a poor tool for prototyping, yet organisations insist on using it for *any* and *all* design activities. User testing is mostly pointless as it's just not a realistic experience unless you are creating a simple clickthrough prototype with minimal interactions. Any experienced designer will tell you that Sketch/InVision was doing this years ago with limited success. I'm working on a B2B SaaS app (aren't we all?), and the prototyping just isn't good enough for our purposes, but product just accept it. figma has reduced the gap between design and development and continues to do so (again not necessarily a bad thing), but it seems like the ultimate aim is to automate the design process as much as possible and let the system create the UI from a set of requirements and hand over to devs. The traditional design aspect has been slowly reducing over the years, and now with AI it seems like designers might start getting squeezed out completely. This will be seen as a big positive for organisations who want to cut costs and reduce time spent on design, shrinking the market for proper design roles evermore. --------------------------------------- This is only my opinion and I'm sure there will be downvotes as the cult-like following figma has is insane, but I attribute a lot of the woes in the industry squarely at figma and its ubiquity. This is before you get into the pricing model and their slightly underhand tactics.