Ok, my thoughts on Figma AI and design + AI overall.

So far I’ve used Midjourney to generate graphics for some of my websites and Framer's Start with AI feature for web layouts and now looking at these Figma AI demos. AI text prompts will be a major loss for precision, craft, and attention to detail. In the same way that one click filters made photo editors more lazy, a lot of designers will look for shortcuts and to speed through designs, clicking the generate button until it’s good enough. You can look at this as efficiency and great for business but having developed my skills before AI or UI kits, I believe there are many benefits to the slow and manual techniques that everyone is now rushing to automate. We’re already in an epidemic of shortened attention spans and inability to focus.

Wait, it kinda makes sense. Looking across apps you can quickly spot common patterns. A lot of web apps have some variation of top bar, side panels, and a content column. Mobile apps have a top bar, bottom bar, and navigation stacks. Most content exists in some variation of a grid or list view. Of course, these are just the practical structural patterns that make things usable. The rest of the work is what I call the hot sauce. It’s the photos, the story, the micro interactions, the human feeling that you leave your users with. On a positive note. More designers will shift towards being makers with an emphasis real working products in the real world.