Fredrik Thomassen’s Post

Last week, Figma relaunched their AI-powered design feature with a fresh new name: First Draft. I'm pumped about this for for two reasons: the thoughtful name change and the exciting future it reveals for design. A NAME THAT SAYS IT ALL Figma's choice of name is genius. "Make Designs" implied a finished product, but "First Draft" is all about getting started. It's about empowering designers to move from idea to action with minimal friction. DESIGNING WITH AI, NOT BY AI First Draft and similar tools are able to help designers where they need it most – in their workflow, surrounded by the tools to bring their ideas to life. This isn't about AI taking over; it's about giving designers a head start and more time where they need it. Instead of manually assembling a design from scratch or pulling existing components to capture an idea as is the case today, First Draft offers a future where we can move from idea to cohesive starting point with a simple sentence and get moving. THE FUTURE IS YOUR BRAND Right now, First Draft generates designs based on generic components. But what's really exciting is Figma's vision for what's next: training the AI on your organisation's Design System. Imagine rapidly creating starting points for new ideas, features, and projects with the added context and guidance of a mature design system. MAKING AI-GENERATED STARTING POINTS VALUABLE For these tools to truly support the design process and not just make noise, the design systems used to train the AI model must be holistic. They need to include information about customer interactions, documentation on patterns, and experience principles. I recently discussed this on a fun episode of Knapsack's Design Systems Podcast with Chris Strahl, the idea that designers can work both from the control room, influencing and training a model and on the front-line of the detailed decisions. A FUTURE WHERE AI AND HUMAN CREATIVITY UNITE We’re quickly finding ourselves in a future where designers expect to have an AI sidekick that understands their brand's voice, aesthetics, vision and mission enabling it to provide informed suggestions not generic responses. This means more time to explore new ideas and refine designs. I’m excited to embrace this moment and harness the power of AI as our trusted sidekick, with designers empowered to be in the control room more than ever. Any opportunity to combine human creativity and AI and unlock new possibilities is a worthy one – let's take an active role in shaping the tools that help us get there.

🎨 Big news in design! 🎨 😍 What's new in Figma's toolbox? Figma's new AI tools are revolutionizing design. Discover how AI is transforming design processes and creativity. 🌟 Key Innovations: 1️⃣ AI-Powered Design Suggestions: Enhancing creative processes with intelligent recommendations. 2️⃣ Real-Time Collaboration: Simultaneous editing and feedback for seamless teamwork. 3️⃣ Design Systems Integration: Streamlining design consistency across projects. 4️⃣ Accessibility Enhancements: Tools to create inclusive digital experiences. 5️⃣ Version History: Easily track and revert design changes for better control. Dive in here: https://lnkd.in/e3QmvTwT 🤝 Follow Geekflare for more tools and resources like this. #Figma #Design #AI #CreativeTools #TechInnovation #Collaboration

🚀 Revolution in Design? How Figma’s AI Features Transform Your Workflow Artificial intelligence is reshaping the design world, and Figma is leading the charge. In recent updates, the platform added a range of AI-powered tools to save time and boost creativity. But how exactly can these features enhance your process? In a recent Techly our designer Marine Kochorashvili explained to our team the opportunities that come with Figma's new AI Features. Here’s a glimpse of what’s inside our latest blog post based on Marines presentation: ✨ Generate Ideas Faster: With First Draft, create mockups from a simple prompt and jumpstart your design process in minutes. 🤝 Seamless Prototyping: AI automates screen linking and animations, simplifying user flows and saving hours on transitions. 🖼️ Custom Visuals: Generate unique images directly in Figma for rapid prototyping—perfect for brainstorming and visual exploration. 🧹 Effortless Image Editing: Remove backgrounds in a click and refine visuals without breaking your creative flow. 🖋️ Smarter Text Tools: Rewrite, translate, or shorten copy instantly, keeping your content clear and consistent across projects. 📚 Asset Discovery Made Easy: Use Visual Search to find matching components and maintain design cohesion effortlessly. Of course, these tools come with their own pros and cons—like occasional manual tweaks or limits to customization—but the potential to transform your workflow is undeniable. Ready to see how AI can elevate your design process? Dive into the full article for all the details and examples: https://lnkd.in/eGVzFmzf #Design #AI #Figma #Productivity #Innovation

Figma's Major Update: Redesigned Interface with AI-Powered Features Figma, a popular design tool, has released a significant update to its user interface, marking the first major change in nearly five years. As indicated by Noah Levin, Figma's VP of Design, this redesign aims to simplify and enhance the platform's features. The updated version accommodates designers of all skill levels, improving the tool's ease of use and features. A highlight of the updated layout is the incorporation of AI to support new users. Figma's latest AI technology allows users to create interfaces with AI-generated suggestions, providing solid foundations that can be tailored to specific needs. This approach does not aim to fully automate UI design, but rather to help users quickly and efficiently begin their work. The latest version offers a new look with rounded corners, an improved toolbar, and 200 new icons. The most recent update now includes Figma Slides, a new capability for producing presentations. Overall, the redesign of Figma's interface caters to different users, prioritizes user content, and incorporates AI technologies to keep the platform useful and user-friendly for designers of all skill levels.

The first designer at Adobe and Figma's early days, Andrei Herasimchuk reveals his bold vision for the future of design tools and how AI will reshape the industry. In an insightful article, Andrei outlines the evolution of design tooling, from pixels to layers to components, and predicts that the next phase will focus on making components more flexible and AI-driven. He also discusses how AI will shift design paradigms and create new designer roles, including "design engineers" who will build the components that power future design systems The future of design tools isn't just about prettier components—it's about creating an environment where AI can fully integrate with the design process, enabling new, more dynamic ways to work and think. As AI becomes more deeply integrated, the role of designers will evolve, with a greater emphasis on technical skills and building the infrastructure for future design systems, as Andrei describes in the article. What are your thoughts on the future of AI in design? How do you see these changes impacting the way we work as designers? Shoutout to Dive Club for the article, which can be viewed here: https://lnkd.in/g9hpx5su #DesignTools #AIinDesign #FutureOfDesign

⚡ Exploration inspired by Brett Walsh's post(added in comments below) about the backlash Figma received for their latest “Make Design” AI feature. The generated designs are generic and similar for users. Brett shared a concept, showing a score for the uniqueness of the generated design and the websites it has referred to come up with the design. I wanted to explore the concept further and wondered what a designer would think and act like, after seeing such 'uniqueness score'. There are numerous ways to prompt an #AI, at the most basic level, we are all just trying to communicate to it, about what we want it to do. Communicating our craft. When a designer is creating visuals for an experience, in most cases, they already have some market research, product requirements, low-fidelity wireframes, a design system to consume, and some meetings they were a part of. The list could be longer. But you get the idea. This primary knowledge base that the designer has, needs to be of utmost importance if Figma, Relume(an ai first design tool) and similar tools want to integrate features like 'Make Design' into our workflow. Some questions I had after seeing the concept shared by Brett: 1. How can I fine-tune this? 2. Can this be based on some wireframes I have explored? 3. Can I upload sketches from my phone? 4. Can I link a product requirement document/specification? 5. With the system knowing what the tech stack is, make designs efficient? 6. Can it understand all the meetings I attended for context? For now 'Make Design' is a great mood board generator and a helper to create low-fidelity concepts. I can only think of this as an exciting starting point for what's to come. What do you think? 😊 Would love to know what AI-first design tools like Relume are doing to allow fine-tuning. cc: Dan Anisse It's interesting to understand what design leadership thinks about this. I showed this to Udhaya and couldn't agree with his take more. "AI will end up making a designer's role into more of an instructor and the workflows will become tedious in terms of clicking and selecting choices from a never ending stack of variables that help in converting the ask into a prompt for the tool to spit out 'layouts'." - Udhaya Kumar Padmanabhan (UKP)

From Mia Blume's latest "What Figma AI Means for design" newsletter: "The actual risk is one that many design leaders have been working on for decades, trying to shift the narrative and perceived value of design to include more than craft. And we’ve made progress, but clearly not enough. In a world where anyone can easily create things that look like our work product, the question arises: what is the role of designers? ...I still believe Generative AI can help us build more quickly and efficiently, leaving us more time to hone in on the right ideas, direction, vision, and strategy.Every designer would have their own team of “AI Interns” ready to produce, enabling the designer to focus on the most important challenges and tasks. And if we’re not wrangling changes across a thousand artboards or documents, we could finally become the strategy partner we’ve wanted to be." I love this aspiration for design as a discipline. As an experienced early stage startup designer, shaping strategy is one of my favorite, engaging aspects of my role. Figma and any other design tools are there to simply help me execute or experiment; with the trajectory of AI-powered design tools, this would only help me explore, strengthen, and experiment with strategy more quickly and with more options. If this is the way designers would like to grow, I would say AI helps raise our voices in the war room. In terms of figuring out what we can do to help junior designers make the leap— I imagine that inter-disciplinary collaboration and exposure is more important than ever. Exposing designers to all aspects of the business to encourage a more holistic approach in design thinking would only serve to increase our value to the team. Forcing new designers to think literally outside of making literal ‘boxes’: redesign the experience of a restaurant. Redesign the experience of reading a book. Of scheduling chores. Redesign the checkin process at your latest (horrible) Airbnb. If you’re able to gather the constraints, contexts, and render obvious the assumed limitations— the assessment is ripe for creativity. AI isn’t going to replace the discovery and creativity of how to innovate on an existing / fragmented workflow, precisely because it has no personal preferences or experiences to relate to where the usual processes can improve or not. So how do we teach the next generation of designers to shift their focus from just workflows and aesthetics to deep learning and continually questioning the status quo? 

Meet Figma: Empowering designers with intelligent tools Figma introduces a suite of AI-powered features aimed at enhancing the design process by overcoming creative blocks and streamlining tasks. These features include Visual Search and AI-enhanced Asset Search, enabling designers to find components and inspiration efficiently. AI tools like text rewriting, realistic content generation, image editing, and quick-click prototyping are designed to save time and keep designers in their creative flow. Figma AI is currently in limited beta, free for all users through 2024, with potential usage limits based on cost and feedback. To ensure privacy, Figma employs encryption, access controls, and optional content training settings, with all AI training respecting user data and privacy policies. The goal is to empower designers and product teams with intelligent, intuitive tools that enhance creativity and productivity while maintaining data security and privacy. Read more here: https://lnkd.in/gtcHG9XU #FigmaAI #Figma #AI #DesignTools #ArtificialIntelligence #VisualSearch #ContentGeneration #CreativeDesign #PrivacyProtection #BetaTesting #DesignEfficiency #InnovationInDesign

RIP product designers? Figma just dropped a groundbreaking new AI update today. The 10 most amazing new Figma AI features: — Make an Image:  Generate a unique image from a text prompt and import it directly into your design mock. Like magic. https://lnkd.in/gzYYHGWq — Make Designs:  Generate first drafts in seconds: Start with a prompt to produce different stylings and layouts for your design ideas. — The AI Details: Intelligently rewrite text, auto-name your layers, and easily find the assets you need. — Make Prototype:  Quickly wire static mocks into an interactive prototype. — Rename Layers:  Contextually rename and organize all the layers in your file. — Remove Background:  Remove image backgrounds in just a click to isolate your subject. Say goodbye to manually lassoing and erasing. — Replace Text Content:  Generate and populate realistic text into your design mocks. Less lorem ipsum, more true-to-life designs. — Generate, sort, summarize FigJam AI helps you instantly visualize complex ideas into simple diagrams, sort feedback, and automate tedious tasks. — Shorten, Rewrite and Translate Text:  Shorten, rewrite, or translate selected text to a different language (10 languages currently supported). — Visual Search:  Search for similar or exact designs across your organization with a frame, image or screenshot.  — btw, I built a free course on how to use AI to grow & monetize a social media audience: • Grow on X/LinkedIn • Go viral on command • Automate content systems I used these exact systems to scale to 150K followers & $500K+ in 1 year. Get it 100% free: b.aiaudienceactivator.com

Figma just released it's crazy new AI features that could change design forever 🤯 Here's all that you need to know. First up, design generation from text prompts. With the new Make Designs feature, you can now generate entire UI layouts and component options just by typing in a prompt. So no more spending hours on those layouts, iterating on wireframes, you can just let Figma AI do the tedious work. Next up is quick click prototyping. This feature turns static designs into interactive prototypes. It's not quite one click yet, but it's close. Basically, Figma's AI suggests connections between your frames, taking a lot of the grunt work out of prototyping. Now finally, Figma has also rolled out some other cool AI features like visual search, AI -powered text tools, and even AI image generation for your mockups. For the full rundown, you can check out Figma's website. But is this the future of design?