Based on personal experience, I absolutely agree with this:
Figma’s not a design tool — it’s a Rube Goldberg machine for avoiding code
Discussion
Ahhh, now i understand what was happening when i tried to work with it😂
except it usually doesn't end up with zero code at the end of the day.
it usually ends up with some designer making pixel-perfect desktop designs and then a sad programmer having to reverse engineer it into mobile-first layout.
This has a mirror point of view: many developers have a way of working that excessively focuses on abstract details (refactoring, optimization, obscure edge cases, niche features) which in the end often simply means staying in their own really technical comfort zone, procrastinating the shipping of a truly functional product.
I think the solution is simply integrating competencies, investing 80% of your time on the core skills and spending 20% on collateral ones. Improve the variety of your skills and put yourself in others' shoes. This 20% permits overlapping others' core skills, creating a valuable collaboration.
And finally, don't forget to listen to the end users.
Plug for http://www.reweb.so . Did a project the other month and had the designer just design in there, took Figma straight out of the loop, so much better.
There's also #Penpot which is #opensource and supports importing projects from #figma.
Nice, yeah. These are the way.
Well, the idea is not to replace designers with AI, but to improve collaboration between humans.
Otherwise designer will also start to use AI without any dev to ship their products. In both case we will have mediocre products.
By the way, AI is a great tool for learning and strengthening collaboration, see my other comment here:
Ah, goodness, when we used Reweb there was no AI. Just a way to layout on the web itself and generate immediate code.
This AI they must have added in the past couple of months.
Yup, I do too.
There's a very big reason why I switched to building a design package, and this is part of it :Check:
Still use Figma though. But only to hand off to myself :winkwithtongue:
Thanks for the feedback, I was waiting your comment ;)
Of course, I also use Figma and other visual tools, but only to brainstorm and to communicate the general idea, not to instruct the developer at the px level.
While I agree with the overall sentiment, what about mobile native development? That is a much higher bar than web development to expect from a designer
The idea here is not to be necessarily able to code in every tech stack, but to understand the finality and so the limits of the design session. There is a point where a designer should stop because any extra-articulated creation would be just self-referential. If he cannot code, he can spend his time communicating with the developers, explaining the philosophy of the design he is pushing; understading in the meantime the technical constrains that the developer explains.
I can assure you that a developer who understands the proposed design works better and is happier than one who simply tries to emulate pixel perfection from an ultra detailed mockup. And the final product reflects this quality.