When Figma first launched, it didn’t win users with a flood of features. It won with clarity.
It wasn’t just cloud-based or collaborative, it was clean, responsive, and felt like it was designed for you. It quietly redefined the designer’s workflow, unchained teams from files and folders, and set a new bar for product design tools.
But in the race to keep up with enterprise demands, design systems, developer handoffs, plugins, tokens, and AI integrations, Figma has become bloated. Today, for many, it feels more like a design operating system than a creative playground.
So, what’s next?
The answer isn’t “more features.”
It’s less. Done better and powered by AI.
The Problem: Feature Fatigue
Figma remains the industry standard, but for many designers, especially new ones, it now feels like Photoshop with a nicer UI. There’s a growing divide between the speed of thought and the speed of the tool.
We’ve seen this before:
- Photoshop became too slow for web designers.
- Sketch lost momentum when it failed to move fast enough.
- Figma rose by doing less, more elegantly.
And now? The door is open again.
The Opportunity: Simplicity + AI
What replaces Figma isn’t just another canvas. It’s a tool that re-embraces:
- Simplicity in interface and interaction
- Speed in getting ideas out of your head and into motion
- Smart defaults powered by real-time AI, not just for copy, but for layout, structure, accessibility, and responsiveness
Imagine this:
- You type: “Design a health app dashboard for a diabetic patient”
- The tool generates a modular layout, pulls in relevant UX patterns, and offers customizable content blocks.
- You tweak the hierarchy, tone, and visual weight, all while staying focused on the user.
This isn’t science fiction. It’s rapidly becoming viable.
Designing With Intelligence, Not Just Intention
An AI-first design tool can:
- Suggest color contrast fixes in real-time
- Auto-generate responsive layouts with accessible patterns
- Simplify copy based on tone and audience
- Recommend UI elements based on user journey context
It’s not replacing creativity. It’s removing friction so creativity flows again.
What This Tool Needs to Win
- A radically simplified interface: minimal distractions, maximum clarity
- Prompt-based creation: natural language as a design superpower
- Tight code integration: production-ready, not just “developer handoff”
- Design systems as starting points, not walls: editable, contextual, and intelligent
- A focus on people, not files: project views, user journeys, and product outcomes, not nested folders
Back to the Future of Design
The next “Figma” won’t look like Figma at all.
It’ll look like a space where creativity is intuitive again, where AI helps, but doesn’t intrude. Where your tools get out of the way and let you think, sketch, iterate, and test at the speed of product.
And most importantly: it’ll feel like it was built for you, not the design operations checklist.
Because the best design tools don’t add complexity, they remove it.
And that’s what we loved about Figma in the first place.