Figma is not what it used to be and that is fine

I remember when Figma was a vector editor in the browser and we all said it would never replace Sketch. Now Figma is practically the operating system of digital design and AI is changing what it means to open that program every morning.

I am not talking about the hype or the demos you see on Twitter. I am talking about what happens when you sit down to work on a real project with a real deadline and you start to notice that your workflow in Figma no longer looks like it did a year ago.

What changed in my daily work

My process used to be wireframe, visual design, prototyping, handoff. Linear, predictable, controlled. Now there is a new step that slipped in between all the others and that is the step of generating with AI and then curating with designer judgment.

I use AI plugins inside Figma to generate layout variations that I would not have come up with on my own. Not because I am a bad designer but because my brain has visual biases formed over ten years of designing for banking and fintech. AI does not have those biases and sometimes that is exactly what a project needs.

I also use AI to generate microcopy directly in the frames. I used to put lorem ipsum and then fight with the content team to get real copy. Now I generate text with Claude that is good enough to prototype and test before the final copy exists.

Figma as orchestrator not canvas

The most interesting thing that has happened to me is that I stopped seeing Figma as the place where I design and started seeing it as the place where I assemble. I think through components in Figma, generate images in Midjourney, iterate copy with Claude, explore animations in AI prototypes. Figma became the hub where all of that comes together and makes sense within a system.

And that does not take value away from Figma. On the contrary. It gives it a more important role than ever because now Figma is where the design truth lives, where final decisions are made, where the design system maintains the coherence that AI alone cannot maintain.

What concerns me

I worry that many designers are learning Figma as if AI did not exist. I worry that academies are still teaching a 2020 workflow when we are in 2026. And I worry that designers who do not experiment with AI inside Figma will be stuck with a process that will be increasingly slow compared to those who do.

Figma changed. Design changed. The designer who does not change with them will feel increasingly lost opening a program they no longer recognize.

Adapting is not betraying the craft. It is respecting it enough to evolve with it.