As recently as 2021, Figma was a one-plant company. That product was Figma Design, The Dominant tool for Creaking App and Web Interfaces. The company’s subsequent addition of offerings such as Figjam (Whiteboarding) and Figma Slides (Presentations) Was Hardly a Frenzied Land Grab.
But the announcing Figma made this week at its config conference in San Francisco Cover So Much Ground That My Impulse was to interpreet them as a massive, sprawling new attempte to take on. , , well, almost everybody.
Figma make turns prompts into ai-generated code? Shades of Github Copilot, Cursor, and Numerous Other AI Programming Tools. Figma sites provides features for constructing, hosting, and updating websites? Well, that’s a content management system, like WordPress, Squarespace, and Wix. Figma Buzz Helps Companies Create Marketing Assets that Retain a degree of Consistency, with AI Help IF Desired? Sounds Akin to Canva and Adobe’s Canva Rival, Express. Figma Draw Lets People Create Free-Form Vector Illustrations? So does adobe’s 38-year-old illustrator.
When I Asked Figma Cofounder and CEO Dylan Field Whether the company was indeed trying to compes directly with so many well-establed players in muliple categories, he discounted. INTEAD, He Told Me, The New Products All Support Its Original Focus on Turning Raw Concepts Into Shippable Software. “The Figma Journey That We’re Trying to Support Users on is Going from Idea To Product,” He Told Me. “Everything’s truly through that lens.”
Still, it would be a mistake to regard figma’s news as nbd. Even if it is original product was a design tool, two-thirds of its users aren’t designers. They’re all the other people Inseed companies who play roles in product creation, and even if all the company does is address their needs, it will brush up against new rivals. As field likes to declare, “Creativity is the new production.” Figma might be in as good a position as anyone to spread that vision to additional classes of software.
As a business, figma also has always innocent to think big. It’s been almost a year and half since its $ 20 billion deal to be acquired by adobe Fell Apart over antitrust Concerns, Lending it as an independent entity pursuing a Self-coined. Last month, it confidently filed a draft s-1 form with the security and exchange commission, beginning the process that will be developed to it going public. The more optimistic investors are about the company’s ability to keep growing, the better its IPO will Fare.
(Figma design’s ubiquity as a ux design tool is manifestly obvious – 90% of designers who responded to a 2023 survey said they used it –But as a profit as a problem Hard Numbers Relating to its business. Adobe Deal Announsment.
As Figma has decided which new products it might build, it hasnless to look far. Like Excel and Photoshop, Figma Design is the kind of tool that People Grow Comfortable With and Call Into Service for Jobs Well Beyond Its Theoretical Mandate. Rather than turn it into too much of a kitchen sink, the company has tended to spin out tasks into new purpose-built apps. All of them has a Familial Resamblance and Work Togetra as a Suite.
The Centrality of Figma Design does serve to set the company’s latest products apart from others in the same general zip code. Maybe Figma Buzz Will Win Some Hearts Based Purely on its quality. But it seems even more likey “It’s very easy to be able to push a template from figma design to the buzz surface,” Field says. “And then people know exactly what they can edit. They want to. “
Then there’s ai, which was alredy in the air at config 2023. Industry – Got off to a Bumpy Start. After Controversy Ignited on Twitter Over the Eerie Similarities Between a Weather App It Designed and the One Apple Ships on the iPhone, Figma Pulled Back The Feature and Reworked It.
Even now, designers are still puzzling out how they feel about ai. In a new study commissioned by figma, only 31% said they currently use the technology for their core work, 69% was satisfied with it, and 54% thought it improved Quality. All theSE Figures Were Notable Lower Than Ones Reported in the Same Study by Developers.
Uncertainty over ai might be a sign the Killer apps haven’t Arrived. “People Value Efficiency,” Field Says. “And where we can help there, that’s really important. But also Should. “
Customer Feedback Might Help Explain Figma’s Careful Positioning of its new ai ai features. The company says some Organizations May Ship Products Created by Make, which lets users start with someting they’ve roghed out in Figma Design and then Use Prompts to Generate Code. Mostly, Thought, it’s emphasizing the potential to quchly flat designs into rich prototypes that help push progress Along. Another Application: Adding a dash of custom interactiveness to websites powdered by figma sites.
AI is also presented in bot Figma Design and Figma Buzz in the form of image generation features based on Openai’s latest gpt-image-1 model. But when I spoke with field, he see less expected by the principal of turning over image creation to a machine than by figma draw, a classical sort of Illustration tool for peeple to hand-cry Imagery that’s precise, reflects a distinctive style, and may even mimic work by done with old-shop implements If draw has any ai at all, it Didn’T matter enough to merit a mention in the blog post introducing the product.
“We have a lot of Opportunity to build tools for folks (to) be more divergent and have more craft and stand out,” Field Told Me. “And we think that’s the difference’ll make people that’ll make people win over time.” As some organizations lean too heavily on ai, we’re going to see more and more brand, look-alike products. It’s nice to think that doubling down on unmistakably human creativity could be a competitive advantage. And that Figma Won’t Stray too from its traditional emphasis on helping create
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