The Future Of Design With Figma's Dylan Field

**Dylan Field** (0:00)
As software gets easier to build, design becomes more important. And there's going to be more designers hired, because at the time, it felt like this tiny market. I think that so far, AI is very much in the tool category. We talked a lot about lowering the floor, raising the ceiling, making it so that more people can participate in the design process, but also raising the ceiling of what you can do. The more time has gone on, the more that I'm confident in the designer's role, and believe that that's going to be one of the critical roles in building software in the future.

**Garry Tan** (0:36)
Today, we have a real treat. We have Dylan Field, the co-founder and CEO of Figma, which millions of people in the world use for collaborative design. Dylan, thanks for joining us.

**Dylan Field** (0:47)
Thanks for having me, Garry.

**Garry Tan** (0:48)
So we're in the middle of this crazy AI revolution, and design itself is also changing quite a lot. How do you view AI changing the face of design right now?

**Dylan Field** (1:00)
It's definitely an incredible time that we're living through. Ever since we started Figma, the exponential curve we've been on is that there's just more software being created than there were before, but it's kind of looked like this before, and now it seems to be going vertical.

**Garry Tan** (1:15)
Yeah, which is exciting.

**Dylan Field** (1:16)
I think it's super exciting. And my point of view is that design has the opportunity to differentiate software in this age of AI, where we'll see whole new workflows emerge, where designers, engineers, product will work together in different ways than maybe they're doing today, or at least different cadences. And it's been pretty neat to have a front row seat to that, and with our platform, figure out how we can empower everyone to use Figma to be able to be on that journey of design. You know, if I think back to just even the earliest days of Figma, some metrics that have held constant, one is that we've always had this really strong international base of users. So even from the start, over 80% of our weekly active users were outside the United States. The second one is, from the start, it's been like one third designers consistently. And the other two thirds are non-designers. All coming to the platform end, making things, viewing things, giving feedback. I'm quite excited about how we can activate those users more, make it so they're able to make more contributions to the product process.

**Garry Tan** (2:21)
That sounds right. But does the capability go up? And are you doing more? Or will AI take these things over? What's your view so far?

**Dylan Field** (2:29)
Oh, I think that so far, AI is very much in the tool category.

**Garry Tan** (2:33)
Totally.

**Dylan Field** (2:33)
And whether it's designers, developers, others, people are using AI to just do more and to explore more. So the way that I see it is that, we talk a lot about lowering the floor, raising the ceiling, making it so that more people can participate in the design process, but also raising the ceiling of what you can do. And I always had this image in my head of like the idea maze you go down, all these different branching paths that you explore as you design and ideate your way through that product journey. My point of view is to get more breadth now in terms of the things that you can try, but it still requires a lot of depth to fully explore it.

**Garry Tan** (3:13)
We're sort of in this uncanny valley still where you can do prompt app, but prompt app doesn't give you an app that is well designed yet. So, given that, how do you see this playing out?

**Dylan Field** (3:25)
It's kind of interesting to look at the language people use around this stuff. People talk about like, you're locked in or I'm cooking or they're cooking.
And vibe coding, exactly. And for a while, I was like, whatever, it's new language. And at some point, I realized that maybe the reason people are using this language in particular is that's kind of the feeling you get as you're developing something really fast. Like there's always this call and response you have with tools, as you're trying to get thoughts out of your head onto a screen and you're iterating quickly. And the faster you make that feedback loop, I think the more you can get into that flow state. And also the more fun you can have actually. And for Figma, one of our values as a company is play. We're always trying to make it so that whether it's as a culture or as a product, Figma is fun to use and is a tool that just lets you creatively express. I think that the opportunity here is how do you create even more of that feeling, even if you're not an expert at Figma and have that rapid ideation loop going at all times. But to the point you made, it's like you also want to give people a way to not just get started and prototype rapidly, but also get to the finish line. And I think that's where the disconnect is. And I think that that disconnect is not just for design, but also for code. Like you can go and get locked in for three hours and make something cool. Will it be the design you want? Probably not. But also, it will take some time to untangle the spaghetti mess of your code base, as it currently stands when you're going from start to prototype and then get to something that's extensible and you can build off of.