If you design for a living—especially if you’re earlier in your career—you should not be happy about any of these AI features in Figma

→ Generating anything from scratch? Bad → Augmenting existing work or content? Actually maybe good It’s a fine line and no one has gotten it right yet because it requires restraint

Figma has been part of the problem of reducing what design actually is to just being able to put some fancy UI together. We designers are responsible for the diminishing perception of our value.

The CEO of Figma started out as more of an engineer than a designer, right? I feel like that explains some things lol I don't think we're 100% responsible but I agree that we get in our own way..

What does college have to do with being a designer or engineer?

Nothing, but the Thiel Fellow program notably funds kids out of high school. You can extrapolate that into very little technical specialization if you’re going straight into starting companies.

But! I was wrong and apparently he went to Brown for CS! I’ll own my mistake :’)

Ah all good. I didn’t know that about the Thiel fellow program. Honestly all I know is he’s a POS. Makes sense now why you’d include that.

I'll add that the only reason I brought up his background is a "design founder" would theoretically have a different approach.. But then again, maybe not, because we do love to get in our own way when it comes to proving our "worth" lol

I've been revisiting this article lately and this quote seems forever relevant: "You can’t prove your value to someone whose business model relies on not seeing it."

Hey designers, they’re gaslighting you.

“Prove your value.” “Justify your presence.” “Demonstrate impact.” Too many organizations have convinced designers that they’re the…

medium.com

Totally agree with both points.

This also seems to get into dangerous "anyone can be a designer" territory, by which I don't mean in the gatekeeping way but when non-designers act like we don't really do anything of value and therefore anyone can do our jobs /d