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

Hey designers, they’re gaslighting you.

The problem is not today, it’s tomorrow. 

Designers are also not the target market for this regardless of what they say, it’s PMs and engineers where basic or generic is good enough.

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

Part of why I say this is the ideal version of how designers and other creatives would demonstrate value is at odds with how capitalistic society works and I genuinely don't know how we can "fix" that

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

I’ve been thinking about this and learning a lot about how the current system of things works. It’s quite depressing. Capitalism is an interesting concept, but it was killed at Bretton Woods. It’s now a simulation by a handful of humans.

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..

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

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

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."

It's interesting you mention that because I have a visceral memory of someone pointing that out on Twitter and he replied to them in a way where it was obvious he took it *very* personally lol 

That's basically my #1 memory of him, it just felt very.. immature

Right now the stuff generated from scratch is* too basic and/or generic to be of much use. *Probably, based off Framer’s AI start from scratch generative features.

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

Oh, I always thought he was a designer. Perhaps, that explains things. Figma changed the perception of design from what happens in the real world to what happens in a design tool.

→ 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

I missed this part of the keynote but based on a screenshot from an article, the "Make designs" prompt (?) makes me itchy.. So much of being a designer is understanding why something works and why it doesn't (c)

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.

Granted that was sometime ago.. Now that there is going to be more (warranted) criticism hopefully there is a more reasonable response to peoples' concerns

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.

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.

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