Figma announced many innovations at the Config conference that will attract the attention of its users. These innovations include a comprehensive new user interface (UI) design, productive artificial intelligence (AI) tools that make projects easier to do, and integrated slideshow functionality. The details of these innovations and the advantages they will provide to users are remarkable.
The new user interface design was developed to lay the foundation for the next decade. As stated in the company’s blog post, there are innovations in the new design that will make users more of a focal point. These innovations include a new toolbar, rounded corners and 200 new icons. With this design change, Figma aims to make the user interface less distracting and more useful. This aims to provide a more accessible experience for both new users and Figma experts.
Easy project start with Figma’s new generative AI tools
Aside from design innovations, Figma’s generative AI tools are also quite remarkable. These tools are designed to help users get a quick start on their projects. Yuhki Yamashita, Figma’s chief product officer, offered an example of how the new tools work. With a short text query entered for a restaurant application, an application draft was created in a few seconds. This draft included menu listings, a tab bar, and buttons for delivery partners like Uber Eats. Users can start editing immediately from this draft.
In another example, Yamashita gave Figma AI an instruction to design a chocolate chip cookie recipe page. Artificial intelligence created a recipe page and cookie image in line with this instruction. While the creation of such simple visuals by AI is quite impressive, it provides a great advantage for users to speed up their work.
Figma’s AI tools also support many functions, such as the ability for users to create a prototype app by linking design pages, asset search, and automatic text generation. While these tools make it easier to test design ideas, especially for new users, they also enable experienced users to iterate faster.
Figma Slides: Integrated solution for presentations
Another important innovation introduced by Figma is Figma Slides. This feature integrates Google Slides-like functionality into Figma. Yamashita noted that users were already using Figma to create presentations, so it made sense to add an official presentation tool. With Figma Slides, users can edit their designs directly within presentations and easily share their presentations. Additionally, functions such as being able to show an application prototype directly from the presentation are also offered.
Figma also takes a transparent approach to how it trains its AI models. The company’s CTO, Kris Rasmussen, noted that the AI models are trained using third-party, out-of-the-box AI models and are not trained on custom Figma files or customer data. This prevents users from having to worry about the security of their data. Figma does not learn from user content in AI training and leaves the control in this regard to the users.
Figma aims to increase user experience and speed up design processes with the innovations it introduced at the Config conference. Innovations such as the new UI design, productive AI tools, and Figma Slides offer great advantages for both new and experienced users.