4 ms·

Makes you wonder what’s going to replace Figma.

by danielvaughn 3y ago

getlawgdon 3y ago
ms paint
- danielvaughn 3y ago
  reject modernity, return to tradition
diegof79 3y ago
I think things evolve in a spiral, where old ideas are recycled with a twist that makes them more appealing. The tools before the mobile era, the canceled Adobe Thermo (aka Flash Catalyst), Microsoft Expression Blend, and recently Framer (which now is a website creation tool like Webflow), tried to fill the gap between design, prototyping, and implementation. But, they failed because web frameworks move fast, and nobody wants a vendor lock-in of unmaintainable code. Maybe the Figma killer finally finds a way to solve it in a way that makes designers and developers happy.
rroose 3y ago
I think (or hope) it's some combination between using real code (such as Storybook) in combination with a GUI. This has the following benefits: - There is only source of truth and it's the code - People who can't code (most designers) can still build prototypes with available components - No (manual) synchronization between code a drawing tool (Figma, Penpot) needed At the moment it looks like UXPin is going in this direction.
- danielvaughn 3y ago
  Yep, I agree. And I agree that designers can't "code", but to be more specific, it's more that they shouldn't be implementing functionality. So if a designer is designing a calculator, and the calculator returns 1+1=3, then the designer is not liable for fixing it. On the other hand, if by "writing code" we mean the literal act of writing something that both a human and a computer can understand, then that's a different question. Designers need to express nuance, and GUI tools are limited in their ability to handle complexity. There's a reason visual programming tools haven't overtaken code. What I'm getting at is that there very well could be a "language" specifically tailored for UI/UX designers, that allows them to specify their design decisions for the presentational layer of the application. If you had such a language, you could create a toolchain on top of it, which produces real code for developers to consume however they wish. I'm (slowly but steadily) working on this exact thing: https://matry.design https://matry.design
- joelanman 3y ago
  Penpot is too https://youtu.be/r-USvt_p46g https://youtu.be/r-USvt_p46g

Makes you wonder what’s going to replace Figma.

getlawgdon 3y ago

ms paint

danielvaughn 3y ago
reject modernity, return to tradition

diegof79 3y ago

I think things evolve in a spiral, where old ideas are recycled with a twist that makes them more appealing. The tools before the mobile era, the canceled Adobe Thermo (aka Flash Catalyst), Microsoft Expression Blend, and recently Framer (which now is a website creation tool like Webflow), tried to fill the gap between design, prototyping, and implementation. But, they failed because web frameworks move fast, and nobody wants a vendor lock-in of unmaintainable code. Maybe the Figma killer finally finds a way to solve it in a way that makes designers and developers happy.

rroose 3y ago

I think (or hope) it's some combination between using real code (such as Storybook) in combination with a GUI. This has the following benefits: - There is only source of truth and it's the code - People who can't code (most designers) can still build prototypes with available components - No (manual) synchronization between code a drawing tool (Figma, Penpot) needed At the moment it looks like UXPin is going in this direction.

danielvaughn 3y ago
Yep, I agree. And I agree that designers can't "code", but to be more specific, it's more that they shouldn't be implementing functionality. So if a designer is designing a calculator, and the calculator returns 1+1=3, then the designer is not liable for fixing it. On the other hand, if by "writing code" we mean the literal act of writing something that both a human and a computer can understand, then that's a different question. Designers need to express nuance, and GUI tools are limited in their ability to handle complexity. There's a reason visual programming tools haven't overtaken code. What I'm getting at is that there very well could be a "language" specifically tailored for UI/UX designers, that allows them to specify their design decisions for the presentational layer of the application. If you had such a language, you could create a toolchain on top of it, which produces real code for developers to consume however they wish. I'm (slowly but steadily) working on this exact thing: https://matry.design https://matry.design
joelanman 3y ago
Penpot is too https://youtu.be/r-USvt_p46g https://youtu.be/r-USvt_p46g