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I watched even less of it this year. What I saw of the IRL event looked like a fun design rave.
Figma doubled its features. Shareholder value is increasing, theoretical user value too, bloat is creeping. Once again, big co entropy is happening.
Most new features are understandable extensions (to not say copycats) of known tools. Sites is Figma's version of Webflow, Buzz is Canva, Draw is Illustrator… and "Make" is yet another one of these genAI things. I’m reminded of how Adobe has been selling the idea of the one design tool. Figma is closer to that than Adobe ever will but I doubt the relevance, viability, and longevity of all these in the long term. Few of last year's features have been as popular as basic Figma design. Like Code Connect, I never used it or heard of a noteworthy implementation. Same for slides, I tried then reverted. All the new features have some merit but half of it is feature repackaging.
As a web designer (who actually still codes stuff), I’m most bothered by Figma Sites. I get it. Shipping in a Click without coding is enticing. Figma’s canvas as a base visual editor is neat, fast, and visual. But there’s real value in clean, semantic HTML and a few design constraints to avoid some basic bad habits. This is baked in tech debt. Not to mention a clean freaking DOM: if you care about accessibility, SEO, or even LLMs (AI Search), structure matters. Treat yourself to: One right click > inspect on the demos and get ready for a deluge of <div>. To see a major player blindly ignore best practices, I foresee some regression in the web design world… at best, we the builders, and peons, will have to painstakingly create guardrails and education to fix this.
That said – Kudos to the staff, I’m genuinely impressed by the demonstration. I can only imagine the sheer toil that such features and event have required. With or without Adobe, Figma is big, and good software.
My issue with this whole fuss hasn’t much to do with specs or features. It’s the utility in the broader context of humanity. I cannot argue that Figma is not good at what it promises. But who and for what purposes is where my reasoning doesn’t meet the optimism bar. Tool sophistication and outcome curves are diverging. How many more crypto apps or fitness tracking apps do we need when our society is getting poorer and unhealthy? Figma’s specular growth is one of many proofs that capital creation is not pegged to "true" value for humanity. More is more. However, less and less of the new stuff is actually good.
Similar to programming languages, the increased abstraction, leads to more accessible coding while having been a major contribution the challenges of our time. The quality of life improvements code and design tools have enabled are not worth it - whatever "it" means to you. I understand optimism is a spectrum. The human and natural resources I witnessed consumed by the tech industry in the last decade amount is colossal.
Yet I spend the best part of my day in Figma. As an armchair critic, I’m a part of the problem. It's probably my last year watching – I'll stick to the recap moving forward.
← Index Published on 2025-05-12