“…The benefit of Figma in the past was that it was the fastest way to get an idea realized. And that's no longer the case.”
Design System Office Hours · User Experience · September 2026
Onori has been arguing that designers who direct an agent are not really working in code, and that the field now has three tools to choose from rather than two. The line is his diagnosis of Figma's problem: its advantage was speed to a realized idea, and he thinks that advantage is gone and starting to erode the tool's value. He says he would not want to be in their position.
Transcript
…an agent to produce code. And I think those are different things. I think there's you yourself designing in Figma, you yourself designing in code, and then you using an agent to design in code, which I think is a completely different thing altogether. But I'm curious to hear your take on that.
…working. I found that I'm spending less time in Figma, but I'm also, I think that's also the nature of my role now. I'm supporting more design language, tokens, theming, that sort of thing. I'm not designing components. So I think that does take me, gives me the opportunity to go further into code.
…and describe what the intent is. But there's also a lot of learning that happens as you are directly working on the thing. The cliche happy accidents or, oh, I didn't even consider this thing. Just trying to solve, work through a problem is really important, understanding the constraints. So it's almost like we have three tools now to choose from. Each has their own strengths and weaknesses. The benefit of Figma in the past was that it was the fastest way to get an idea realized. And that's no longer the case. And it starts to erode the value. Of it. And so, if I was Figma, I'd be trying to figure out how to get back to the path of least resistance to getting idea ready to review. Not an easy problem to solve, but I think something that they're going to have to figure out quickly.
Yeah, the early findings, like when we've, I, and I'm just using this as like a third-person assessment. I haven't gotten a chance to test like the code layers or like the local make, but I think that's very early days. Uh, code layers is more or less like just an iframe that pipes in your…
Yeah, I think it's going to be an interesting place for Figma to try to figure out. I don't, I wouldn't want to be in their position, is what I'm saying. Because while I think that there are three separate tools and that a lot of designers aren't working in code, they're working with the agents. I…
Oh, like I've been playing this. This is a tangent. So I've been getting into cozy gaming. Have you heard of that term? No. I just found out about this. It's like Stardew Valley, games that are very long, very calming. That's what we're doing, where we're watching our avatar NPC code and we're…