how not to freak out about what figma releases🍵
#58 designer personas, landscape and gaps for AI vibe coding tools.
when it comes to AI design tools, most of the designers I have chatted with fall into the following camps.
- one, they have been hearing the rumbling of AI tools, “vibe-ing” with “just do it” slogans on their digital backyard, but have largely left it as a future problem.
- two, they have lightly experimented with a few AI tools to create prototypes and have not been too impressed.
- and a third one…
with the figma’s annual conference config this week, this is how most of the design community is feeling.
for me personally, I made my way through these two camps and now am in the third, with the folks who have been quietly (or loudly) fidgeting and pushing these AI tools to their limits, to really understand what they are and how should we prepare for them.
it’s been a classic example of the more you know, the more you realize how little you know. so even writing this feels a little like - do I really know what I am talking about??
but I am going to give it a shot - hoping you learn something, or that you help me learn something.
here’s what we are gonna talk about today -
potential designer personas that AI “vibe tools” will target
what the current landscape & adoption of these tools look like
what could the oncoming era look like
figma config predictions!
why you as a designer shouldn’t freak out.
1. potential designer personas that AI vibe coding tools will target
I am sure the product teams of Figma and Lovable have much more refined designer personas but broadly I would currently put designers into three buckets based on their usage of vibe coding tools.
hobbyists or seasonal/full-time indie-hackers
designers building out apps for their niche use cases because they are missing an app that matches their “taste” or as a side-hustle
this is a group of designers with high-agency and often with technical background, looking to translate their craft skills from Figma into a functional iOS app or web app.
designers looking to build their portfolio or micro-websites
a lot of designers build things (digital goods, pottery, 3D printed stuff, stickers, furniture you name it) and look to build out micro-sites
almost all designers on the market are looking for a way to build their portfolio website.
generalist/ start-up designers
they have always been doing full-stack.
time to learn and how to build is often limited for designers and is usually competing with their full time 9-5 jobs/ weekends/ vacation breaks. I am sure there is a lot of nuance I am missing but these are my working assumptions for rest of this writeup!
2. how does the current landscape & adoption look like for AI vibe coding tools
first let’s just break down the product development cycle in phases. please don’t get stuck in details and focus more on the vibes.
if we were to take a standard product designer in the tech industry right now[1] - here are the tools they are using in their process currently.
🔎 discovery
designers spend a lot of time in this phase depending on the size of the project.
in this phase, designers have the most adoption of AI tools like chatGPT/ Claude as a “design thought partner”.
this is also because text based prompting has the highest adoption so far when it comes to AI tools (help me refine the jobs to be done, suggest IA based on .., reframe the product requirement, create as summary of user insights)
Figma also targeted this phase with their “help me summarize” AI feature in their last drop.
✏️ concepting
designers heavily rely on wireframe libraries or digital/pen paper sketching. there are some experimental tools but not a clear winner atm.
designers/product managers who are early adopters or are playing with AI have started using these to create prototypes and go from 0 → 0.5 and use them to drive early discussions.
market is flooded atm with tools that you can prompt and generate prototypes.
product managers are being more bullish with this — if you see recent demand of free tools package by lenny, you will need no further proof!
📐 refinement
for majority of designers, this phase is mostly in Figma. and then there are designers who are also building using Principle/Webflow/ Framer.
early adopters have also moved to V0 to refine or skip Figma altogether if they are acting as designers + developers or are working very closely with developers.
💻 development
currently super hard for non-technical designers as choosing the right IDE, framework, scaffolding acts as a major barrier and where most people give up.
tools & market is still in favour of designers with technical background and a basic grasp of CI/CD is a must.
📝 CI/CD
most of designers who have tried coding, including me, have used Github and can do basic commits, merges and PRs
🌐 hosting
as we approach the end of the pipeline, it all starts feeling too complex for a designer and most designers tend to go for tools like Webflow, Framer to rescue them out of this conundrum.
3. what could the oncoming era for vibe coding/ designing look like
personally I feel this era brings in so many possibilities for design community and makes me most excited (and petrified for tech industry!)
🔎✏️ 📐 discovery → concepting → refining - MAJOR GAP
this is the space that still feels up for grabs and my guess is where Figma has a clear opportunity - being the fastest tool to explore and narrow down on winning variations (more on this in next section)
just targeting the later half of the funnel with ability of building & deploying designs (auto-prototyping, once click code generation and hosting) seems unlikely.
however they could target both? 👀
💻 development
AI-assisted IDEs like Cursor, Windsurf have been a game changer for vibe-coders. Just yesterday, armed with ChatGPT and Cursor, I was able to set up a running a React app and start committing to my Github repo in record time.
This to me feels like the next next level for designers once they are bored or start feeling limited by tools like Lovable/Bolt and want to have more control on the outcome.
This is also where many designers are likely gonna start building knowledge of react framework, etc.
📝 CI/CD
Figma has built in basic principles of forking/ version control for most designers - so I feel like this will not be a big learning jump for designers (nor a differentiating factor to choose from between tools).
🌐 hosting
as designers get more adept at being able to build whats in their head, they will rely on tools that got them to the stage of refined prototype with code (like Lovable, Bolt, v0 or who knows even Figma) to also get them over the hosting.
if I am not wrong, Lovable or Figma right now do not have that and will have to move fast to build it themselves or rely on partnerships (unlike Bolt or v0!)
4. figma config predictions 👀
if I were a PM in Figma, I would lean towards doing a big splashy release this time around - clear value prop for Figma with a catchy tagline (along the lines of just do it).
since it’s just me and my tiny newsletter out here, am going to list a few things that feels exciting to me.
using your company’s design system to generate UI variants with one click
create UI variants with different copy options based on your brand ToV (different styles, languages, etc)
could be cool to also to add LLMs to have more sensitivity to ongoing pop trends
one-click creation brand guidelines & artefacts based on prompts/ market positioning
give tools like canva a stiff competition?
creating/exporting code blocks & file scaffolding from the prototype
major update in flides (yes I am team
on naming) - idk what but something cool? one click generate, prompt based generation etc.
this seems ambitious as my first rodeo of predicting config drops. I am curious to see where I land. what do you think?
5. why you as a designer shouldn’t freak out.
the pace of AI tools has been insane, and I just want to hold space if reading this or following the online discourse makes you feel behind. I hope to write longer, more comprehensive ways to explore and catch up on AI as a designer, but meanwhile here are my takeaways for you.
more I have learned, the more I find it empowering as a designer so far. like
wrote, we all will have to expand our talent as the stack collapses.internet is a gold mine of learning resources, folks are super generous. you can pretty much learn anything you set your mind to!
a huge shoutout feat further recommended reading list.
(this was in drafts when I read this and his writing helped clear up my thoughts)📝 Extremely online report by in (helping me find the above article + lots of gems)
📝 The second archetype by all time Substack fav in
also [1] on most used tools by designers - I could be a little off here - there is one by lenny on what is used by product managers, but couldn’t find an equivalent for design.
here’s my WIP drafts for the next few weeks
🍵 a very cute edition of all the tea you cannot miss - april edition (wanted to send it this week but config was time sensitive lol)
🍵 roadmap to start learning AI (design) tools from scratch (this one is messy notes)
🍵 ways I have been using AI in my design workflow
🍵 experiments to run as a designer to keep up with AI
🍵 how to keep up/ find joy in routine while working a 9-5! (makes me question writing all the above AI stuff.
look forward to your thoughts/predictions in comments. let’s talk more after config.🤍
chhavi x