- Figma Make, a prompt-to-code AI workflow
- Figma Sites, a no-code web builder
- Figma Buzz, a social content creation hub
- Figma Draw, a reimagined vector design experience
- Grid, a long-awaited upgrade to Auto Layout
It all looked bold and exciting. But one question lingered throughout the keynote: Is this what we really needed?
I’ve used Figma as my primary design tool for over five years. I’ve built design systems in it, designed thousands of user flows, collaborated with developers, led workshops, and spent thousands of hours inside its clean, multiplayer canvas. Figma was a breakthrough, not just because it moved design to the browser, but because it redefined what a modern, collaborative design tool should feel like. It wasn’t just good software. It was visionary. It was what the future looked like. But this year, something felt… off.
Instead of doubling down on the things that made it essential, like usability of the tool, UX coherence, product design foundations, and a dev handoff experience, Figma seems to be tilting toward investor-friendly innovation. It’s launching new product lines at high speed. It’s repackaging trendy ideas before they’re truly usable. It’s betting hard on AI, no-code publishing, and brand asset creation, verticals far outside the needs of its original power users.
I don’t want to sound cynical. Many of the new features are objectively exciting. But I can’t help feeling that Figma, once a trendsetter, is now showing signs of feature-driven FOMO, chasing markets, not leading them. Instead of staying the rabbit being chased, it’s becoming one of the greyhounds in the race.
And maybe that’s the plan. Maybe Figma looked at the path Adobe took and thought: why follow when we can outgrow them? But here’s the risk, when you try to be the tool for everyone, you risk becoming essential to no one. Especially when users start to notice that long-requested bugs are still unresolved, the newly launched auto-layout grid system is clunky, and many other issues remain buried in the backlog. Meanwhile, product teams, who pay for full enterprise seats (and pay more every year, by the way), are still waiting.
Yes, innovation is sexy. It makes headlines. It gives investors something to clap for. But foundational trust, the kind you earn by listening, fixing, and evolving with your core audience, is what made Figma great in the first place. Figma seems to be losing sight of the very audience that built its success: product teams.
From Focus to Fragmentation
On the surface, Figma’s evolution appears to be an effort to expand its capabilities and embrace new creative workflows. However, from the perspective of seasoned UX, UI, and product designers working on complex systems (e.g., SaaS, enterprise software, ecommerce platforms), these changes signal something more concerning: a shift in product strategy from deep focus to broad expansion.
While it’s understandable that Figma wants to keep pace with disruptive shifts (notably, AI and no-code/low-code trends), it has begun addressing the problems of potential new audiences rather than its existing users. Features like parallax effects and quick site deployment may impress in conference demos and open new markets, but they don’t tackle the very real friction points design teams face every day: performance issues, versioning gaps, missing automation, and the lack of design-to-code fidelity at scale. I’ll elaborate on these in the next chapter.
“One Design Tool to Rule Them All?” At What Cost?
Do we need Figma Sites when we already have Webflow and Framer, tools that are years ahead in responsive behavior, CMS integration, and deployment reliability? (Though I’m not a huge fan of these tools either, they have their own set of issues, but that’s not the focus of this article.) Do we need another drawing tool (Figma Draw) when the space is already dominated by Adobe and Procreate? Is this driven by user need or investor pressure? Product design is no longer Figma’s center of gravity, and that shift comes at a cost.
Figma still lacks foundational robustness in several key areas that deeply affect product teams:
- Version Control Deficiency
Teams struggle to track changes in screens and components over time. While Git-like branching exists, it remains limited in providing granular control and rollback features. For teams managing large-scale design systems, this is a critical issue. - Weak Integration with Development and Lack of Framework Agnosticism
While tools like Code Connect acknowledge the need for bridging design and code, they fall short of supporting real-world developer workflows, especially outside of React ecosystems. Vue, Angular, native mobile? Not supported. - No True Automation for Design Systems
Creating and maintaining a scalable design system in Figma remains a labor-intensive, manual effort. There are no built-in rulesets, no smart automation for validating typographic scales, colors, spacing, or accessibility standards. As a result, designers must manually enforce consistency across components, increasing the risk of human error and inefficiency. This lack of automation significantly hampers the scalability of design systems, making it difficult for teams to maintain consistency and quality across large, complex projects. - Performance at Scale
Large design files become sluggish. Component-heavy design systems lag. Real-time collaboration breaks down into sync issues. Figma is fast, until it isn’t. As design systems grow in complexity, these performance bottlenecks worsen, causing delays in workflows and frustrating teams. The lack of optimization for large-scale projects often leads to a disruptive experience, affecting productivity and collaboration across teams. - Lack of Native Usability Testing Tools
One significant gap in Figma’s capabilities is its inability to fully support usability testing. Designers can’t easily test forms, capture user input, or simulate real data flows. Interactive prototyping is limited to basic click-through demos, which doesn’t reflect the complexities of real-world user interactions.
This limitation is especially problematic when it comes to testing designs that require user input, such as forms or interactive elements that involve dynamic data. It’s a well-known challenge for designers: prototyping is great for showcasing static flows, but we need to test actual user behavior, which means allowing users to interact with the design as they would with the final product.
While tools like UXPin and others have offered this feature for years, Figma has yet to address this fundamental need for more advanced usability testing within its platform. The hope lies in Figma Make, maybe this tool will evolve to fill this gap, offering the kind of testing that’s critical to ensuring the functionality of the product. After all, prototyping everything, including real user input, should be a standard, not a luxury.
Rather than chasing new creative segments, Figma could solidify its dominance by focusing on what no other tool has done well yet. This isn’t a strategic viewpoint. It’s the perspective of a product designer who relies on Figma daily and was genuinely hoping these new features would make my work on client projects more convenient and automated.
Investor Optimism vs. User Pragmatism
It’s no secret that innovation makes investors pay attention. New product lines, expanded verticals, bigger TAM (Total Addressable Market), these are the metrics that shine in pitch decks. Fixing long-standing bugs? Not so much.
Figma was once proudly “by designers, for designers.” But its recent trajectory feels more like “by strategists, for shareholders.” The shift in tone is noticeable. With what appears to be increasing pressure to justify valuation, possibly in preparation for an IPO, Figma seems focused on growth at all costs, even if it means drifting from the power users who fueled its rise.
The dilemma is understandable. To maintain momentum, it must expand. But the risk is real: in trying to become the platform for everyone, Figma may erode the trust of the very users who made it indispensable in the first place.
Conclusion: Focus Is the New Innovation
Figma remains a brilliant tool. Its role in shaping the design industry is undeniable. But in trying to be “one tool to rule them all,” it risks becoming a tool that doesn’t serve any group exceptionally well.
There’s no shame in expanding thoughtfully, but depth must come before breadth. Product designers, the group that helped Figma rise, are not just pixel pushers. They’re system thinkers, workflow builders, and problem solvers. They don’t need “toys.” They need tools that scale with complexity and support their craft. Innovation isn’t about launching what’s trendy. It’s about solving hard, unsexy problems that actually move teams forward. Figma can still lead the product design industry. But to do so, it must stop trying to catch up with trends, and start setting them again.
