4 ms·

Congratulations to everyone who made this company go. That said, this company's growth seems threatened by AI adoption rather than boosted by it.

reactordev 1y ago
They’re adopting AI so that designers within figma can create. I don’t know whether this is good or bad (I don’t design) but if the tool everyone uses to mock things up gains coding abilities, we’re cooked. You’ll be able to go from figma to production in weeks.
- echelon 1y ago
  It won't just be figma. The market is already filling up with lots of players in this space. There may be no moats. Just distribution winners.
  - reactordev 1y ago
    Never underestimate the power of market share. Adobe has had a bunch of competitors but still dominates design.
    - tonyhart7 1y ago
      adobe moat is complex desktop software Figma is a whole lot easier to replace actually you can now actually with a self host OSS that came up with and bring your own api key from antrophic or open ai
      - reactordev 1y ago
        While technically, Figma is just a web app tool. Replacing it would be hard. It has a ton of features, it’s well designed, it exports working wireframe mock ups you can use to demonstrate functionality. It’s good software.
        tonyhart7 1y ago
        Yeah but a lot less complex than adobe suite
        wltr 1y ago
        Which complexity in general is not a feature, but a mere bug.
        tonyhart7 1y ago
        You only says this because you are web(only) dev *acting like web world is not broken half the time
        wltr 1y ago
        I say that as someone who knows Photoshop/Illustrator for ~20 years, and Adobe did very little to improve it for almost two decades. It loses to any modern counterpart. Figma, Affinity Suite, Pixelmator Pro, they are much better. So, for me, the complexity of Adobe’s software is rather their sheer incompetence and lack of will to do things better. They think they’re too big to fail, but I hope they’ll just go bankrupt quickly. They deserve it.
      - esafak 1y ago
        What kind of a moat is that? Who says "I want complex desktop software!" ?
        tonyhart7 1y ago
        entire design industry???? like are you sure that there are people out there works using photoshops,premier,illustrator etc that want more complex tool set??? are you sure that these people don't exist??? talk about arrogant
        esafak 1y ago
        Not a single person wants more complex tools. They want more capable tools maybe but never ever a more complex on. What is the benefit of increasing complexity except to show off? Are you in design? How does increasing complexity benefit you personally?
        tonyhart7 1y ago
        Yes because their job need it, same reason why all javascript library rewrite themselves into Go,Rust,Zig etc what else do you think they do that ???? and Yes I do design, not only just operate but learn money with it professionally
        esafak 1y ago
        Nobody rewrites software to increase the complexity, but to decrease it. You are either confused, or you don't know the meanings of the words you are using.
        tonyhart7 1y ago
        now because you don't have strong argument, you just nitpicking and pedantic I know you just ragebaiting
    - echelon 1y ago
      Speaking of Adobe! Adobe is going to get absolutely trounced by GenAI. They've got so many competitors coming at them from all angles. Also, innovation capital (engineers at startups) experience outsized rewards at startups when disruption happens. The better engineers will flock to more nimble outfits and reap the benefits. Adobe is a dinosaur.
      - reactordev 1y ago
        Adobe has SOOO much money though that it will take a giant force to unseat them. Not to say we shouldn’t keep trying (I love Krita) but they have made sure they’re on the top of the totem pole. Complete with spyware on every designers computer.
        ptero 1y ago
        This. I heard "gimp is free and will kill Adobe within a year or two" from 1997 or so. As much as I hate Adobe's methods it still wins hands down in UX for image editing. So, as a hobbyist, I have no plans to cancel my subscription. I wish for some real competition in this space, but it will take a LOT of effort to dethrone Adobe. My 2c.
        echelon 1y ago
        Gimp is an awful app with terrible UX. Adobe has RunwayML, Midjourney, and a hundred other startups chasing after them. The number of things you can do without Adobe is increasing every day.
        ptero 1y ago
        > Gimp is an awful app with terrible UX. Yes, and it's not clear that those startups will fare better than gimp. Adobe spends inordinate amount of effort to understand the problems that users are solving and make UX that users love. As the result Adobe has tons of money to improve the product. Users curse its business practices, white an occasional "goodbye Adobe" or "FU" messages but keep buying subscriptions. The moat around this should not be underestimated. My 2c.
  - voidfunc 1y ago
    > It won't just be figma. The market is already filling up with lots of players in this space. MongoDB wants a word.. another "this will never amount to anything" HN special.
- Incipient 1y ago
  And we'll have 10x of the Tea app incidents. AI tools are still just that tools - they're not abstraction layers from "intent" to "production product".
- tonyhart7 1y ago
  "but if the tool everyone uses to mock things up gains coding abilities" adobe tried this 10 years ago (Adobe dream weaver) and failed I literally can drag and drop design photos from drawing board to claude or open ai chat and they recreate it themselves instead of needing figma not sure where you know that "we are cooked" its for them not us
  - reactordev 1y ago
    Figma is what all the designers are using. If they turn that into a Claude for design and add the ability to complete the wireframes with AI generated code. There’s no need for engineers until after acquisition. Just maintenance. The difference here is - Adobe tried using a proprietary stack. Figma can spit React. Everyone knows React - even if you use something else. It’s perfect timing with AI coding agents and every, single, UX team using it.
    - tonyhart7 1y ago
      "Figma is what all the designers are using. If they turn that into a Claude for design and add the ability to complete the wireframes with AI generated code" You can literally do this NOW without needing figma
      - deleted 1y ago
        [deleted]
      - baubino 1y ago
        Yeah, but I think the point is that designers are already using figma. There’s no mass exodus of designers from figma looking for an AI solution to replace it. So figma has a large paying base to which it can introduce AI generated code (which it has done to some degree already anyway).
        tonyhart7 1y ago
        like I said earlier, I don't think you need that feature since the only drowback you screenshoot the figma design paste it chatbox and it works like literally require minimal effort, like do you think this designer so "technology" ill ??? so they need the chatbox and preview page directly into the same page?
- qoez 1y ago
  It'll depend on other vendors to make the models who will eat up all the margins
- Cthulhu_ 1y ago
  There's also code snippets so that developers can provide the HTML or React or whatever code to implement a component or set thereof. And that stuff feeds into an MCP server, so that in theory an AI / code assistant can implement a design in whichever framework you build in, but within some limits if you provide the right code.
bko 1y ago
One thing I thought would have been incredibly useful for me is to go from HTML -> Figma There is a ton of focus on going from Figma to something you could presumably dump into react or html. But I found nothing in the reverse. Realistically, for a lot of applications, there are more things in production than in Figma. It's just not practical to spec everything out when you're moving fast. But when you do want someone to look at it or tinker, it's a huge lift to migrate your current production to Figma. I wish they would use some AI for that. Just take a webpage, and build the Figma design docs. Doesn't even have to be perfect, just good enough to get help from designers
- didgeoridoo 1y ago
  Check out html.to.design
- edoceo 1y ago
  Take your current project, then run `figma-cli-ai --fix` and have a modern design.
  - jjani 1y ago
    I guess I'm missing the joke as this doesn't seem to be a thing?
- berkes 1y ago
  Ah yes Dreamweaver. Look how well that turned out. Turs out people don't want "quick dump as HTML" but rather "maintainable, understandable, performant HTML". I don't see how that has changed with AI.
  - cluckindan 1y ago
    Dreamweaver was a widely used tool back in the day and definitely started a trend in web design tools.
    - berkes 1y ago
esafak 1y ago
I want to be able to refactor designs, and not entirely from the command line. I do not see why Figma should not be able to do this. Coding comes later.

reactordev 1y ago

They’re adopting AI so that designers within figma can create. I don’t know whether this is good or bad (I don’t design) but if the tool everyone uses to mock things up gains coding abilities, we’re cooked. You’ll be able to go from figma to production in weeks.

echelon 1y ago
It won't just be figma. The market is already filling up with lots of players in this space. There may be no moats. Just distribution winners.
- reactordev 1y ago
  Never underestimate the power of market share. Adobe has had a bunch of competitors but still dominates design.
  - tonyhart7 1y ago
    adobe moat is complex desktop software Figma is a whole lot easier to replace actually you can now actually with a self host OSS that came up with and bring your own api key from antrophic or open ai
    - reactordev 1y ago
      While technically, Figma is just a web app tool. Replacing it would be hard. It has a ton of features, it’s well designed, it exports working wireframe mock ups you can use to demonstrate functionality. It’s good software.
      - tonyhart7 1y ago
        Yeah but a lot less complex than adobe suite
        wltr 1y ago
        Which complexity in general is not a feature, but a mere bug.
        tonyhart7 1y ago
        You only says this because you are web(only) dev *acting like web world is not broken half the time
        wltr 1y ago
        I say that as someone who knows Photoshop/Illustrator for ~20 years, and Adobe did very little to improve it for almost two decades. It loses to any modern counterpart. Figma, Affinity Suite, Pixelmator Pro, they are much better. So, for me, the complexity of Adobe’s software is rather their sheer incompetence and lack of will to do things better. They think they’re too big to fail, but I hope they’ll just go bankrupt quickly. They deserve it.
    - esafak 1y ago
      What kind of a moat is that? Who says "I want complex desktop software!" ?
      - tonyhart7 1y ago
        entire design industry???? like are you sure that there are people out there works using photoshops,premier,illustrator etc that want more complex tool set??? are you sure that these people don't exist??? talk about arrogant
        esafak 1y ago
        Not a single person wants more complex tools. They want more capable tools maybe but never ever a more complex on. What is the benefit of increasing complexity except to show off? Are you in design? How does increasing complexity benefit you personally?
        tonyhart7 1y ago
        Yes because their job need it, same reason why all javascript library rewrite themselves into Go,Rust,Zig etc what else do you think they do that ???? and Yes I do design, not only just operate but learn money with it professionally
        esafak 1y ago
        Nobody rewrites software to increase the complexity, but to decrease it. You are either confused, or you don't know the meanings of the words you are using.
        tonyhart7 1y ago
        now because you don't have strong argument, you just nitpicking and pedantic I know you just ragebaiting
  - echelon 1y ago
    Speaking of Adobe! Adobe is going to get absolutely trounced by GenAI. They've got so many competitors coming at them from all angles. Also, innovation capital (engineers at startups) experience outsized rewards at startups when disruption happens. The better engineers will flock to more nimble outfits and reap the benefits. Adobe is a dinosaur.
    - reactordev 1y ago
      Adobe has SOOO much money though that it will take a giant force to unseat them. Not to say we shouldn’t keep trying (I love Krita) but they have made sure they’re on the top of the totem pole. Complete with spyware on every designers computer.
      - ptero 1y ago
        This. I heard "gimp is free and will kill Adobe within a year or two" from 1997 or so. As much as I hate Adobe's methods it still wins hands down in UX for image editing. So, as a hobbyist, I have no plans to cancel my subscription. I wish for some real competition in this space, but it will take a LOT of effort to dethrone Adobe. My 2c.
        echelon 1y ago
        Gimp is an awful app with terrible UX. Adobe has RunwayML, Midjourney, and a hundred other startups chasing after them. The number of things you can do without Adobe is increasing every day.
        ptero 1y ago
        > Gimp is an awful app with terrible UX. Yes, and it's not clear that those startups will fare better than gimp. Adobe spends inordinate amount of effort to understand the problems that users are solving and make UX that users love. As the result Adobe has tons of money to improve the product. Users curse its business practices, white an occasional "goodbye Adobe" or "FU" messages but keep buying subscriptions. The moat around this should not be underestimated. My 2c.
- voidfunc 1y ago
  > It won't just be figma. The market is already filling up with lots of players in this space. MongoDB wants a word.. another "this will never amount to anything" HN special.
Incipient 1y ago
And we'll have 10x of the Tea app incidents. AI tools are still just that tools - they're not abstraction layers from "intent" to "production product".
tonyhart7 1y ago
"but if the tool everyone uses to mock things up gains coding abilities" adobe tried this 10 years ago (Adobe dream weaver) and failed I literally can drag and drop design photos from drawing board to claude or open ai chat and they recreate it themselves instead of needing figma not sure where you know that "we are cooked" its for them not us
- reactordev 1y ago
  Figma is what all the designers are using. If they turn that into a Claude for design and add the ability to complete the wireframes with AI generated code. There’s no need for engineers until after acquisition. Just maintenance. The difference here is - Adobe tried using a proprietary stack. Figma can spit React. Everyone knows React - even if you use something else. It’s perfect timing with AI coding agents and every, single, UX team using it.
  - tonyhart7 1y ago
    "Figma is what all the designers are using. If they turn that into a Claude for design and add the ability to complete the wireframes with AI generated code" You can literally do this NOW without needing figma
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
    - baubino 1y ago
      Yeah, but I think the point is that designers are already using figma. There’s no mass exodus of designers from figma looking for an AI solution to replace it. So figma has a large paying base to which it can introduce AI generated code (which it has done to some degree already anyway).
      - tonyhart7 1y ago
        like I said earlier, I don't think you need that feature since the only drowback you screenshoot the figma design paste it chatbox and it works like literally require minimal effort, like do you think this designer so "technology" ill ??? so they need the chatbox and preview page directly into the same page?
qoez 1y ago
It'll depend on other vendors to make the models who will eat up all the margins
Cthulhu_ 1y ago
There's also code snippets so that developers can provide the HTML or React or whatever code to implement a component or set thereof. And that stuff feeds into an MCP server, so that in theory an AI / code assistant can implement a design in whichever framework you build in, but within some limits if you provide the right code.

bko 1y ago

One thing I thought would have been incredibly useful for me is to go from HTML -> Figma There is a ton of focus on going from Figma to something you could presumably dump into react or html. But I found nothing in the reverse. Realistically, for a lot of applications, there are more things in production than in Figma. It's just not practical to spec everything out when you're moving fast. But when you do want someone to look at it or tinker, it's a huge lift to migrate your current production to Figma. I wish they would use some AI for that. Just take a webpage, and build the Figma design docs. Doesn't even have to be perfect, just good enough to get help from designers

didgeoridoo 1y ago
Check out html.to.design
edoceo 1y ago
Take your current project, then run `figma-cli-ai --fix` and have a modern design.
- jjani 1y ago
  I guess I'm missing the joke as this doesn't seem to be a thing?
berkes 1y ago
Ah yes Dreamweaver. Look how well that turned out. Turs out people don't want "quick dump as HTML" but rather "maintainable, understandable, performant HTML". I don't see how that has changed with AI.
- cluckindan 1y ago
  Dreamweaver was a widely used tool back in the day and definitely started a trend in web design tools.
  - berkes 1y ago

esafak 1y ago

I want to be able to refactor designs, and not entirely from the command line. I do not see why Figma should not be able to do this. Coding comes later.