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A shift in how we work, together
Yesterday was Config, and it will surprise no one that the theme was AI. Afterward I went looking at what other designers were saying, and the responses split about how you'd expect. Visual designers and motion designers were thrilled. Product designers, less so.
That second group is where one comment stuck with me, a product designer who said that up until now, Figma had always been built for them, and they expected Figma to lean further into the product, UX and vibe coding. Instead they felt Figma went the other way, toward the visual and graphic side, and left product design behind.
The longer I sat with it that thought, the more I landed somewhere different. I don't think these updates are about picking a type of designer. I think they're about pulling every type of designer into the same room, encourage us to expand our skillsets and changing the way we work and build systems as a designer but most importantly as a team.
We've seen Figma do this before
Here's what keeps coming to mind. Figma has had a moment like this once already. When they introduced real-time collaboration, it completely changed the way we worked. Multiplayer became the baseline that every other tool copied.
I think this is that again, but bigger.
For a long time our industry has been bucketed. Product designers over here, visual designers over there, motion designers in their own corner, developers in another. Each group had its own tools, its own files, its own little universe. And one of the real pain points of working on a team has been managing all of that, the research living in one place, the meeting notes in another, the brand assets somewhere else, the motion work in a tool half the team can't open.
What Figma did this year is bring the work and the context into the same canvas. They did this by:
Bringing motion, code and generative image and video onto the canvas.
Added customizable generative tools
Gave the Figma agents connectors that reach into the tools you already use, like Slack, Notion, Granola meeting notes, and GitHub, and pull that context right into your file.
So the canvas isn't only where your design lives anymore. It's where the whole process around it can come together.
And that's better for the end product. When everyone is working in one spot, the brand stays consistent, feedback happens where the work actually is, and things don't go off the rails because half the project is being managed somewhere you can't see. Even if you're not the motion designer on a project, you can be on a team where someone else is doing that work and still leave your input right there in the file.
This is your invitation to expand
For those who think Figma leaned into the wrong path with these features are missing the most valuable part.
Figma didn't just make us faster. They gave us room to grow, and they did it by putting all of these new abilities:
Generative plugins let you describe the tool you need and have the agent build it, no code or setup required.
Motion, shaders, and code now live right on the canvas. You don't have to learn the full Adobe suite to make something visual, or climb the learning curve of a complex animation tool to bring something to life.
Maybe this is the thing that finally gives a product designer room to try visual work, or a UX designer room to learn motion design, because you're exploring something new in a place that already feels like home.
And I think that was smart of Figma. The future of designers isn't to silo, and it isn't about chasing the mythical unicorn who somehow does everything perfectly. It's about expanding, becoming more of a generalist, the kind of designer who can move between worlds because the walls between those worlds are coming down.
Figma just made that possible under one roof, instead of sending us off to collect a dozen separate tools.
Dylan Field said it in the keynote, and it's the line I keep coming back to:
"AI has lowered the floor, it has not raised the ceiling. Designers, creatives, builders: You will raise the ceiling."
The tools just got more capable. What we do with them is still on us.
What they actually shipped (and where to learn it)
If you want to go past the discourse and actually try this stuff, here's the rundown with the official sources so you can dig in.
Figma Motion: A real timeline on the canvas, with keyframes and presets, so you can animate without leaving Figma. Motion becomes part of your design system, so you animate a component once and it travels across every screen. Figma's announcement and a walkthrough video.
Generative plugins: Describe the tool you need and the agent builds it for you, no code required. Figma's writeup and a walkthrough video.
Code layers: Turn any design layer into an interactive code layer with a click or a prompt, then move back to design layers when you want. Rolling out starting in July. Read more.
Shader fills and effects: Describe what you want or hand it a reference image, and the agent builds a shader you can shape with controls right on the canvas. Read more.
Figma Weave tools: A node-based way to build generative visual workflows, now living alongside your Figma frames. Read more.
Figma agents, with skills and connectors: Skills package up your workflows into reusable instructions. Connectors plug into Slack, Notion, Granola, GitHub, and more. Read more.
The full Config recap covers all of it in one place.
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