Highlights from Figma Config 2024

Since its first public release in 2016, Figma has fostered a growing wave of brand loyalty from its users—with designers eagerly anticipating each update, big or small. And this year was no different. While the big buzz at the conference was Figma’s take on AI, the introduction of Figma Slides signaled it’s building a proper suite of interconnected products. Figma’s emphasis on the collaborative nature of its product design process gave the audience a true sense of inclusion and pride to be part of this community.  

“I can’t tell you how scary it is designing a new UI for Figma for designers.”

 

With nervous excitement, the first thing CEO Dylan Field showed off was Figma’s redesigned UI, which he said was designed to reduce complexity and enhance user experience. Sporting a new floating bottom toolbar and resizable panels inspired by FigJam, it became evident that Figma is training its users on consistent patterns to create cohesion and familiarity across its growing suite of products. This new UI design not only simplifies the interface but also makes it easier to switch between Figma Design, FigJam, Dev Mode, and Figma Slides—thereby improving workflow and productivity. And that was just the beginning.  

For the first time, Figma brought UI kits from Apple Design Resources, Google Material Design, and Figma Design systems into the assets tab. This means designers can start designing without needing to build a design system. One North got early access to a new Suggest Auto Layout feature, which lets designers intuitively convert static layouts into fluid designs with a single click. Developers weren’t left out either. Improvements to Dev Mode bring design and code closer together with git-like workflows, linking developed code snippets to component variables, and responsive prototype viewing. It was a whirlwind introduction, but just a glimpse of what’s to come. 

Laying the foundation for Figma’s future 

The reveal of Figma’s AI features started small, focusing on a new sparkle-shaped icon on the toolbar. Designers struggling to find that one screen or icon from many libraries will find relief in Visual Search, as it can use a static image or chicken scratch as search inputs. Designers who live that chaotic lifestyle of not naming their layers can now do the rest of their peers a favor before handing off a file with automatic layer naming. But the big moment came when Dylan demonstrated Make Designs, a text prompt UI allowing users to describe the design they want, and AI will spin up a first draft—with completely editable layers. Not stopping there, designers can add more useful content placeholders by using the text prompt to create copy and images appropriate to the project. To cap it off, AI can then prototype all their screens in one click. A colleague beside me jokingly riffed, “My job is gone now; bye.” Almost as if he’d heard her, Dylan stressed to the crowd that the new AI features would allow novices to test ideas more efficiently and allow experts to iterate more quickly. Shortly after launching Make Designs in limited beta, Figma learned that sometimes the feature spun up mocks resembling existing apps and has rolled back the feature to retool it. AI is the Wild West; a lot is still left to learn, and the potential is exciting.

Everyone is a storyteller. 

Following the AI reveal, Dylan lost his speaking notes and stopped the keynote to call for help off-stage. Up came Mihika Kapoor, a product manager at Figma, with what became apparent as a rehearsed bit that teased their final announcement. She then said that losing speaker notes is just one issue—crafting presentations is universally frustrating.

According to Figma, users created about 3.5M presentations in the last year alone on Figma because they felt it was better than any other option. According to Visme, 45 percent of presenters found designing creative layouts for their presentations challenging, and 41 percent found it difficult to find and use great visuals. Enter Figma Slides, a user-friendly tool aiming to set a new standard for visual storytelling for designers and the teams they collaborate with. Mihika demonstrated how easy it was to create a few slides with pre-made templates or custom slides that matched your team’s library. She stressed that everyone who has ever made a deck can use Figma Slides, empowering the audience with a powerful new tool.

While the UI looked just like Figma and FigJam, Figma Slides was made primarily for non-designers and, in a mirror to Dev Mode, has a toggle for Design Mode that unlocks additional features for creating and editing visuals. Balancing slide content is often challenging for presenters, so Figma Slides leverages AI to dial tone and brevity with a clever control that looks like a 6×6 matrix. The image generation feature demoed earlier is also available to create the perfect slide visual. If getting started is an issue, AI will also take an outline made in FigJam and create an entire deck in a click. Not happy with that sequence? Presenters can also view slides in grid mode and move things around quickly. Have you ever lobbed a question to the audience and heard crickets in response? Presenters can make their decks interactive with anonymous polls and interactive prototypes.

Craft and taste are the differentiators. 

While attendees were reckoning with the AI of it all, it’s important to note that Dylan started the keynote by celebrating designers and saying, “It is your craft that will separate great products from the obvious solutions.” Other speakers like Jesper Kouthoofd from Teenage Engineering also echoed this sentiment. In his interview with Dylan, Jesper says that design is not styling—it is born from personal experience, good problem-solving, or sound engineering. In another session, Karla Mickens Cole and Nashilu Mouen Makoua of the Browser Company discussed how they prioritized user needs and looked beyond technology when designing Arc, their AI-powered browser. Given the rollback of the Make Design feature, it’s become clear AI offers a starting point, and only designers can craft a meaningful experience from that first draft.

The intent of Figma’s new UI was to emphasize the work done on the canvas and to make it easier to switch between Figma Design, FigJam, Dev Mode, and Figma Slides. Even though the UI is packed with features, the company is going out of its way to make all of that disappear—all in the name of craft. This starkly contrasts Adobe’s creative suite, where each program feels isolated and requires a steep learning curve for each tool. 

The opening sizzle reel in the keynote started with a voiceover from Stanford Research Institute saying, “If in your office, you as an intellectual worker were supplied with a computer display that was instantly responsive, how much value could you derive from that?” The video then proceeds to morph the blinking text cursor as a panoramic visual into the fast-moving eras of computing. Similarly, in the 1980s, Apple ran an ad in the Scientific American highlighting that, although humans weren’t proficient runners compared to other species, humans on bicycles were faster than them all. Personal computers were “bicycles for the mind,” taking us far beyond our inherent abilities. To bring it full circle to those with taste and a love for their craft, it’s exciting to think how far they can go in what is essentially a bicycle for the creative mind.