Paul Graham, co-founder of Y Combinator and a renowned venture capitalist, recently said he encountered a CEO of a "moderately big tech company" who replaced the design tool Figma with Replit, an AI code companion tool.
"Replit is so good at generating apps that they just go straight to prototype now," Graham said as he recalled what the CEO told him. "This surprised me because I don't even think of them as being in the same business," he added.
Multiple developers have resonated with the sentiment. Kenny Totten, founder and COO of AllFly, a travel tech company, said on X that Replit and Claude have considerably affected their startup.
"Not sure we will continue with Figma. Replit is actually a little easier to prototype and design in," he said. He also highlighted another effect, where the feedback loop from customer to product to engineering will now be five to ten times faster.
Of course, it isn't just Replit but many other AI-powered coding tools that have displayed a similar impact. Cory House, a web developer, said on X, "My team is doing the same thing but with [Vercel's] v0 instead of Replit. Rapid prototyping is replacing Figma."
He added that designers will continue to build a design system - a set of guidelines and templates to build a product - but will need to build the actual design using tools like these instead of Figma.
AIM got in touch with Viba Mohan, a product designer based out of California, for a realistic observation. Like many, she is a proponent of this change and said she's using code to polish concepts more often than Figma. "I also see this being reflected in the industry with much smaller teams," she said, indicating that it accelerates the process "so much faster".
"I believe larger companies will be much slower to adapt to this change and that it will hurt them," Mohan added.
But, is it fair to objectively conclude Figma's fate - like the CEO who met Graham did?
AIM also spoke to Chandra, a Bengaluru-based UX designer with over five years of experience. "In my opinion, there's a fundamental misunderstanding happening here that's worth unpacking," he added.
Chandra said that design isn't just about making things look pretty or creating mockups but about forming hypotheses about how users will interact with a product to achieve specific goals. "Development isn't just about writing code; it's about implementing these hypotheses in a way that is technically feasible, maintainable, and scalable," he said.
It is important to understand that Replit and Figma aren't competing approaches but tools that can complement each other. "We can quickly iterate on different approaches [in Figma] without getting bogged down in implementation details," he said, emphasising that Figma is an entire design system and a collaboration platform.
It helps teams align on a shared vision, think through user flows and journeys inside a product, and test assumptions before allocating resources towards the building process.
Replit, along with other AI tools, has its own role.
"It's fantastic for quick prototypes that prove a technical concept or demonstrate a specific interaction," he said, indicating that it might replace certain workflows for companies "obsessed" with rapid validation and proof of concepts.
However, not entirely. "Claiming Replit replaces Figma entirely reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of a design's role," he said.
This raises a question about the level of product development the CEO, who interacted with Graham, was working on. "The fact that a CEO sees them as interchangeable suggests they're operating at a surface level of product development," Chandra opined. "It's analogous to saying you've replaced your architecture firm with a construction company because they can put up buildings faster."
All things considered, it is still fair to say that Figma is lagging behind in terms of AI features. "It is also possible that Figma adapts to this change because they're a powerful team," Mohan said.
But what is Figma doing?
Figma is ubiquitously used in the design ecosystem; is the company just relying on its monopoly? Many feel the tool needs to improve.
Alex Kehr, CEO of Superlocal Maps, said on X that tools like Cursor and v0 could lead to Figma userbase's collapse if the company doesn't react quickly.
"Beyond collaboration features, designing in Figma is starting to feel like it makes no sense when functional prototypes can be generated so quickly," he added.
However, Figma hasn't shied away from the AI game. The company announced a host of AI-enabled features on its platform. For instance, Figma offers a feature to generate UI concepts with a single prompt.
It does give users a headstart by quickly generating an interface with a design system. However, the features weren't up to the mark.
A review from a popular UX/UI blog, DesignerUp, highlighted issues with creating more than a single screen.
"After trying multiple prompts to generate more than one screen, it failed on all accounts. This, to me, is one of the biggest limitations and drawbacks right now - its inability to generate full flows or add additional screens," read the review. Figma also isn't capable of producing multiple screens with consistent styles and elements.
Another user on X said that Figma's AI rewrite tool, a feature that improves copy, feels like it uses an older version of OpenAI's GPT-2. "It gets simplest things wrong and occasionally does the job."
