4 ms·

So Long, Figma. Thanks for Everything

71 points by thm 1y ago

artursapek 1y ago
Cool! I’ve had a similar feeling about code the last few weeks: I am no long “pushing code around” by hand. AI is letting me move way faster than I could ever manage when I had to type every character of every line of code myself. I can spend more time thinking about the big picture and dictate that to Cursor/Claude Code and get pretty damn good results. I guess this is a dev’s version of liberation from “pixel pushing”.
- eastbound 1y ago
  I always wonder whether those comments are generated by marketing teams or real. Such wonderful product reviews, then I try said AIs, and man it is so clumsy even when given a precise set of instructions. There is no way the product is the same. Tried Cursor, Windsurf and IntelliJ Junie and they’re all incapable of, for example, reducing the XML of a file until a JUnit stops failing.
  - artursapek 1y ago
    I wrote the comment by hand lol. Maybe your problem is you're working with XML and Java LOL
net01 1y ago
i've stopped using Figma after Penpot arrived, a FOSS alternative
varun_chopra 1y ago
The writing is really strange. I'm not sure if this is AI or not. So many words, and so little has been conveyed... Example from the comments... > Great question. I haven’t found a perfect tool. A combination of Figma and Storybook and Zeroheight do a good job pulling it all together. But the real magic is the designer-developer relationship that stay in lock step. Those relationships are what it takes to be in tight sync. _But the real magic is the designer-developer relationship that stay in lock step. Those relationships are what it takes to be in tight sync._ Who writes like this?
- stavros 1y ago
  LinkedIn lunatics.
  - nathanaldensr 1y ago
    Hahaha, that was my exact feeling, as well!
- bryanrasmussen 1y ago
  bots or corporate drones I would normally think. I mean there is a good reason to think it might be AI, but just as much reason to think the person who wrote isn't that good a writer but needs to write some stuff because engagement or whatever and then this is what comes out. That said I wrote something I was pretty proud of where the narrator was depressed and burnt out, in a very small bit of a much longer and complicated narrative, and somebody assumed it was written by AI because the writing seemed emotionally detached - so I personally dislike casting accusations of AI at writing just because it doesn't match my taste.
- thomassmith65 1y ago
  Who writes like this? Whichever generation it is that uses the phrase 'you got this!' I can't remember if that's Millenials, Gen Y or Zoomers. Every new generation comes up with novel methods to sound annoying.
  - cko 1y ago
    Every generation uses this. I had a 60-year old coworker who said this to me when she was training me years ago.
    - thomassmith65 1y ago
      Yes and no. Mainly no: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=you+got+this&year_start=1800&year_end=2022&corpus=en&smoothing=3 https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=you+got+this&y... No doubt there are older people who use the phrase today, but that's still more annoying; they are the older people who are very proud of inserting 'cray cray' and 'yeet' into conversations.
csomar 1y ago
> production-ready code using our design system This is key and the title/introduction makes it seem like AI is capable of crafting UIs. It is not. AI is capable of laying out your components on top of each other. I used to "craft" most of my app UI[1] and am using Carbon Design System[2]. There are a bunch of open design systems available. If you haven't used a full Design System before, then you should try that now: https://storybook.js.org/showcase/projects https://storybook.js.org/showcase/projects For any given system, there will be a bit of a learning curve and setup cost; but the payoff is incredible comparing to most of tailwind offerings out there. Bonus: Most of design systems are free! Tailwind frameworks made by amateurs, small companies, etc... can serve a small niche but if you need a bit more of components and people who care about accessibility and usability, then you are much better using a design system supported by a major corporation with infinite resources. So, the secret sauce is the design system, not the AI. The design system saves you immeasurable time and also standardize the process opening the gate for GenAI to create interfaces. I've tried multiple times with Sonnet 3.7 to craft custom components (for Carbon) and it failed miserably even when I hand-held it constantly. == 1: https://codeinput.com https://codeinput.com 2: https://carbondesignsystem.com/ https://carbondesignsystem.com/
- dotancohen 1y ago
  Carbon looked good, but then I got to this: > This package uses IBM Telemetry to collect de-identified and anonymized metrics data. By installing this package as a dependency you are agreeing to telemetry collection.
  - csomar 1y ago
    You can opt-out: https://carbondesignsystem.com/help/faq/#when-is-data-collected https://carbondesignsystem.com/help/faq/#when-is-data-collec... From my understanding, this about IBM usage itself (inside their organization) not your own usage and certainly not your user's usage.
locallost 1y ago
Here are designers hoping AI will replace developers, so they get a working app faster with less jumping through hoops and communication. All valid reasons. In reality once (if) AI can replace developers completely it will also replace designers completely.
- paxys 1y ago
  This is really the fallacy with the AI economy that everyone is dreaming up. “A powerful magic AI will make all other roles redundant and I will be left on top capturing all the surplus”. Why will you be on top? What reason does anyone have to purchase software from you when they have access to the exact same AI?
  - KaoruAoiShiho 1y ago
    Seems like a strawman... I don't know anyone who thinks they "will be on top" and beat the AI, it's more of a let's just make as much money as we can for now before AGI ruins us all.
xixixao 1y ago
> By lunch, it was in a test environment, and I was working with the developers to hook up the data to the back end This isn’t really ambitious. Tools like Chef[0] can already one shot full stack apps with db and API integrations. So the question is what the “limit” will be. [0] https://chef.convex.dev/ https://chef.convex.dev/
- bandoti 1y ago
  I’d be worried about a lawsuit naming any tech product Chef. ;) The problem, however, is these tools can maybe help build the initial prototype but that’s a far-cry from building and maintaining a product over the years. I would like to see these companies demonstrate how their little-magic-tools can perform long-term, because people can already start with a Laravel template and have a full backend with Auth to boot.
fidotron 1y ago
One of the massive lessons of the AI hype is users hate much of the self indulgent output of the tech industry in the prior decade. The two major areas are writing and design, where way too much blog style tech writing injects so many side comments that it conceals any substance, and design has become about the expression of the designer as opposed to connecting users to what they are trying to achieve. The emergence of these chat interfaces side steps both, although unfortunately the writing style of LLMs tends to ape many of the worst aspects of human writing it can at least be told to filter it out. I once worked with a product team that wrote a user story "The system should establish the user intention and then do it" and they're dangerously close to getting something resembling what they asked for, but it will get rid of our current work divisions of product/dev/design in the process, along with the associated tooling.
AnonymousPlanet 1y ago
Does that generated UI code include dark patterns like that annoying popup that covers the post while you're reading and scrolling? Do you have to ask for them to be included? Is the AI going to refuse their inclusion? Or will a future version of that AI service include them every time without asking, and you have to either scrape the code out by hand or move to the extra premium tier?
nomilk 1y ago
Main points: > This morning, I designed an entire enterprise dashboard without opening Figma. I sketched the core flow on paper, annotated it with handwritten notes, dropped them into my generative AI tool. Within a few seconds, my hand-drawn flows and page layouts were turned into, production-ready code using our design system. > The future didn’t start with “AI”. It started with getting organized with our materials. Most notably, a mature design system. Our design system stopped being a rigid set of components and instead became system infrastructure. Tokens, foundational elements, assembly components, patterns, and templates became the full suite of options to build with. > When tools like UIzard and UX Pilot hit the market, most people didn’t find them very impressive. But when they finally hit their stride, it felt like cheating. We’d sketch a few screens on paper, a tablet, or whiteboard, add a few annotations, and the generative AI would churn out a few working UI options. Soon, these systems merged with products like Builder.io and Cursor. And then mind-blowing magic started to happen. This sounds great, but I don't understand what their 'design system' actually is - is it a set of files (e.g. like .cursorrules but stating colour, spacing, and design preferences etc), or a collection of files, or something more nebulous like the existing patterns in an app, or something else entirely?
- troyvit 1y ago
  > This sounds great, but I don't understand what their 'design system' actually is [...] I agree. There's a link to another article[1] where they describe their design system, but it doesn't provide much extra insight for me. They have a good diagram, but they don't define the pieces of it well enough for me to understand the whole system (that said I've never built one). From the page I mention: > Effective design systems rely on strong foundations through at least three core pieces: principles, styling infrastructure (design tokens), and basic elements. Cool but what does that look like? I think it's key because they do say that a well-built design system is what makes it possible for AIs to build out interfaces for you, and given what I know of LLMs that does make the most sense. The more certainty you provide the system the better it does at accomplishing your goals. [1] https://medium.com/paychex-ux/your-design-system-isnt-a-component-library-9466d02dfb83 https://medium.com/paychex-ux/your-design-system-isnt-a-comp...
- exiguus 1y ago
at0mic22 1y ago
AI is great for hit'n'go, but in the long run it brought us more trouble than help. It gets very inconsistent, does not track the context (especially if it is a common-sense context), brings in some weird architectural patterns by default, avoids updating current components preferring to write new almost exactly the same ones alongside with similar existing ones, e.t.c, e.t.c. It's definitely a great tool to quickly bootstrap something, but I find myself thinking "I should have better done that myself" more and more.
dana321 1y ago
maybe stop using medium as well
VoodooJuJu 1y ago
[dead]
joduplessis 1y ago
Leveraging bespoke design systems is hopefully next. Design systems (and accompanying component libraries) are hard to build, but they have a huge payoff in terms of ROI in dev resources. Right now the models are too open/generalized - basically only being able to churn out Tailwind/shadcn/etc.
bogrollben 1y ago
This entire article reads like a cleverly-camouflaged ad. I keep trying to find the product they're pushing. UIzard/UX Pilot maybe? I guess there IS no ad, but the whole thing is just ... weird.
danielvaughn 1y ago
Just want to point out that nowhere in this article (nor in others like it) is the actual thing that was created. I’m not a skeptic, I know that AI is super powerful, because I use it every day. But I also have been trying to get it to produce quality UI for a long time, and have never succeeded. So, I’m gonna need to see some proof.

71 points by thm 1y ago

Cool! I’ve had a similar feeling about code the last few weeks: I am no long “pushing code around” by hand. AI is letting me move way faster than I could ever manage when I had to type every character of every line of code myself. I can spend more time thinking about the big picture and dictate that to Cursor/Claude Code and get pretty damn good results. I guess this is a dev’s version of liberation from “pixel pushing”.

eastbound 1y ago
I always wonder whether those comments are generated by marketing teams or real. Such wonderful product reviews, then I try said AIs, and man it is so clumsy even when given a precise set of instructions. There is no way the product is the same. Tried Cursor, Windsurf and IntelliJ Junie and they’re all incapable of, for example, reducing the XML of a file until a JUnit stops failing.
- artursapek 1y ago
  I wrote the comment by hand lol. Maybe your problem is you're working with XML and Java LOL

net01 1y ago

i've stopped using Figma after Penpot arrived, a FOSS alternative

varun_chopra 1y ago

The writing is really strange. I'm not sure if this is AI or not. So many words, and so little has been conveyed... Example from the comments... > Great question. I haven’t found a perfect tool. A combination of Figma and Storybook and Zeroheight do a good job pulling it all together. But the real magic is the designer-developer relationship that stay in lock step. Those relationships are what it takes to be in tight sync. _But the real magic is the designer-developer relationship that stay in lock step. Those relationships are what it takes to be in tight sync._ Who writes like this?

stavros 1y ago
LinkedIn lunatics.
- nathanaldensr 1y ago
  Hahaha, that was my exact feeling, as well!
bryanrasmussen 1y ago
bots or corporate drones I would normally think. I mean there is a good reason to think it might be AI, but just as much reason to think the person who wrote isn't that good a writer but needs to write some stuff because engagement or whatever and then this is what comes out. That said I wrote something I was pretty proud of where the narrator was depressed and burnt out, in a very small bit of a much longer and complicated narrative, and somebody assumed it was written by AI because the writing seemed emotionally detached - so I personally dislike casting accusations of AI at writing just because it doesn't match my taste.
thomassmith65 1y ago
Who writes like this? Whichever generation it is that uses the phrase 'you got this!' I can't remember if that's Millenials, Gen Y or Zoomers. Every new generation comes up with novel methods to sound annoying.
- cko 1y ago
  Every generation uses this. I had a 60-year old coworker who said this to me when she was training me years ago.
  - thomassmith65 1y ago
    Yes and no. Mainly no: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=you+got+this&year_start=1800&year_end=2022&corpus=en&smoothing=3 https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=you+got+this&y... No doubt there are older people who use the phrase today, but that's still more annoying; they are the older people who are very proud of inserting 'cray cray' and 'yeet' into conversations.

csomar 1y ago

> production-ready code using our design system This is key and the title/introduction makes it seem like AI is capable of crafting UIs. It is not. AI is capable of laying out your components on top of each other. I used to "craft" most of my app UI[1] and am using Carbon Design System[2]. There are a bunch of open design systems available. If you haven't used a full Design System before, then you should try that now: https://storybook.js.org/showcase/projects https://storybook.js.org/showcase/projects For any given system, there will be a bit of a learning curve and setup cost; but the payoff is incredible comparing to most of tailwind offerings out there. Bonus: Most of design systems are free! Tailwind frameworks made by amateurs, small companies, etc... can serve a small niche but if you need a bit more of components and people who care about accessibility and usability, then you are much better using a design system supported by a major corporation with infinite resources. So, the secret sauce is the design system, not the AI. The design system saves you immeasurable time and also standardize the process opening the gate for GenAI to create interfaces. I've tried multiple times with Sonnet 3.7 to craft custom components (for Carbon) and it failed miserably even when I hand-held it constantly. == 1: https://codeinput.com https://codeinput.com 2: https://carbondesignsystem.com/ https://carbondesignsystem.com/

dotancohen 1y ago
Carbon looked good, but then I got to this: > This package uses IBM Telemetry to collect de-identified and anonymized metrics data. By installing this package as a dependency you are agreeing to telemetry collection.
- csomar 1y ago
  You can opt-out: https://carbondesignsystem.com/help/faq/#when-is-data-collected https://carbondesignsystem.com/help/faq/#when-is-data-collec... From my understanding, this about IBM usage itself (inside their organization) not your own usage and certainly not your user's usage.

locallost 1y ago

Here are designers hoping AI will replace developers, so they get a working app faster with less jumping through hoops and communication. All valid reasons. In reality once (if) AI can replace developers completely it will also replace designers completely.

paxys 1y ago
This is really the fallacy with the AI economy that everyone is dreaming up. “A powerful magic AI will make all other roles redundant and I will be left on top capturing all the surplus”. Why will you be on top? What reason does anyone have to purchase software from you when they have access to the exact same AI?
- KaoruAoiShiho 1y ago
  Seems like a strawman... I don't know anyone who thinks they "will be on top" and beat the AI, it's more of a let's just make as much money as we can for now before AGI ruins us all.

xixixao 1y ago

> By lunch, it was in a test environment, and I was working with the developers to hook up the data to the back end This isn’t really ambitious. Tools like Chef[0] can already one shot full stack apps with db and API integrations. So the question is what the “limit” will be. [0] https://chef.convex.dev/ https://chef.convex.dev/

bandoti 1y ago
I’d be worried about a lawsuit naming any tech product Chef. ;) The problem, however, is these tools can maybe help build the initial prototype but that’s a far-cry from building and maintaining a product over the years. I would like to see these companies demonstrate how their little-magic-tools can perform long-term, because people can already start with a Laravel template and have a full backend with Auth to boot.

fidotron 1y ago

One of the massive lessons of the AI hype is users hate much of the self indulgent output of the tech industry in the prior decade. The two major areas are writing and design, where way too much blog style tech writing injects so many side comments that it conceals any substance, and design has become about the expression of the designer as opposed to connecting users to what they are trying to achieve. The emergence of these chat interfaces side steps both, although unfortunately the writing style of LLMs tends to ape many of the worst aspects of human writing it can at least be told to filter it out. I once worked with a product team that wrote a user story "The system should establish the user intention and then do it" and they're dangerously close to getting something resembling what they asked for, but it will get rid of our current work divisions of product/dev/design in the process, along with the associated tooling.

AnonymousPlanet 1y ago

Does that generated UI code include dark patterns like that annoying popup that covers the post while you're reading and scrolling? Do you have to ask for them to be included? Is the AI going to refuse their inclusion? Or will a future version of that AI service include them every time without asking, and you have to either scrape the code out by hand or move to the extra premium tier?

nomilk 1y ago

Main points: > This morning, I designed an entire enterprise dashboard without opening Figma. I sketched the core flow on paper, annotated it with handwritten notes, dropped them into my generative AI tool. Within a few seconds, my hand-drawn flows and page layouts were turned into, production-ready code using our design system. > The future didn’t start with “AI”. It started with getting organized with our materials. Most notably, a mature design system. Our design system stopped being a rigid set of components and instead became system infrastructure. Tokens, foundational elements, assembly components, patterns, and templates became the full suite of options to build with. > When tools like UIzard and UX Pilot hit the market, most people didn’t find them very impressive. But when they finally hit their stride, it felt like cheating. We’d sketch a few screens on paper, a tablet, or whiteboard, add a few annotations, and the generative AI would churn out a few working UI options. Soon, these systems merged with products like Builder.io and Cursor. And then mind-blowing magic started to happen. This sounds great, but I don't understand what their 'design system' actually is - is it a set of files (e.g. like .cursorrules but stating colour, spacing, and design preferences etc), or a collection of files, or something more nebulous like the existing patterns in an app, or something else entirely?

troyvit 1y ago
> This sounds great, but I don't understand what their 'design system' actually is [...] I agree. There's a link to another article[1] where they describe their design system, but it doesn't provide much extra insight for me. They have a good diagram, but they don't define the pieces of it well enough for me to understand the whole system (that said I've never built one). From the page I mention: > Effective design systems rely on strong foundations through at least three core pieces: principles, styling infrastructure (design tokens), and basic elements. Cool but what does that look like? I think it's key because they do say that a well-built design system is what makes it possible for AIs to build out interfaces for you, and given what I know of LLMs that does make the most sense. The more certainty you provide the system the better it does at accomplishing your goals. [1] https://medium.com/paychex-ux/your-design-system-isnt-a-component-library-9466d02dfb83 https://medium.com/paychex-ux/your-design-system-isnt-a-comp...
exiguus 1y ago

at0mic22 1y ago

AI is great for hit'n'go, but in the long run it brought us more trouble than help. It gets very inconsistent, does not track the context (especially if it is a common-sense context), brings in some weird architectural patterns by default, avoids updating current components preferring to write new almost exactly the same ones alongside with similar existing ones, e.t.c, e.t.c. It's definitely a great tool to quickly bootstrap something, but I find myself thinking "I should have better done that myself" more and more.

dana321 1y ago

maybe stop using medium as well

VoodooJuJu 1y ago

[dead]

joduplessis 1y ago

Leveraging bespoke design systems is hopefully next. Design systems (and accompanying component libraries) are hard to build, but they have a huge payoff in terms of ROI in dev resources. Right now the models are too open/generalized - basically only being able to churn out Tailwind/shadcn/etc.

bogrollben 1y ago

This entire article reads like a cleverly-camouflaged ad. I keep trying to find the product they're pushing. UIzard/UX Pilot maybe? I guess there IS no ad, but the whole thing is just ... weird.

danielvaughn 1y ago

Just want to point out that nowhere in this article (nor in others like it) is the actual thing that was created. I’m not a skeptic, I know that AI is super powerful, because I use it every day. But I also have been trying to get it to produce quality UI for a long time, and have never succeeded. So, I’m gonna need to see some proof.