Dylan Field: Figma's design agent launch, 46% revenue growth, and why design becomes the battleground as code commoditizes

returns. They're basically just be collectors

and of course they're printing.

Yes, they are printing. Well, uh, we have a very special guest joining us today, the CEO, the founder of Bigma, Dylan Field in the waiting room. Let's bring him into the TV. Dylan, great to see you.

Hey, great to see you. Thanks for having me back.

Too long. Great to see you.

First question, are you alive or are you dead?

Ah, very alive. Are too

It is such a white pill. Why? What? I I I mean, how have you processed all this? I guess I I we can go into the business and the product and the financials, but I'm more interested in just like the mindset, the emotional journey, like how do you stay sane? Is it an advantage to have been building this business for so long that you can draw on other experiences? Like what what has the process of going through all of this been like for you?

I mean, what's the quote when uh in the age of AI, those who stay sane win?

Oh, I like that. Uh, I think that that's pretty accurate and um, uh, yeah,

you should you should you should own that.

Yeah, I think I'm going to attribute that to you.

We're going to attribute that, not mine. Uh, but but but really I think it's super important. You have to uh have a even mind about it. And you know, I I know that you guys know this, but social media not reality.

It is. It is not reality. We see this all the time.

Yeah.

All the time. Uh, but

uh Yeah. And the the the the thing that I've been thinking about this week is how AI generated design is seemingly becoming as easy to clock as the

as AI text.

It's not this, it's that

this then that, right? Uh I feel like people kind of

like uh right now I mean the entire market is just going through like rolling stages of AI psychosis and everyone's having it in different ways, right? So like if you do like equity research, you're obviously going to go through a period of AI psychosis because you can just like type in a few words and get like what what looks like you know uh days, weeks of of you know really really great work. uh and sometimes it is great work and if you're a designer web designer and you can do type in a few words and get what looks like a great website instantly you're also going to go through that period and and you can just see these sort of like pockets of of AI psychosis all around the industry broadly uh but it does sort of like fade at some point and then uh if you're able to stay sane you know through those periods and not let yourself succumb to it you can get exced excited about the potential and benefit from it but not uh lose your mind in the process. And I think like we were seeing that with you know early on with chatbt and like writing right before it was super obvious to clock and then we were seeing that with uh design specifically where uh yeah when you can just go and just generate uh uh stuff design that looks like good design. I'm not saying it is good design and um and I think we're kind of coming out of that now where you can just instantly clock when something was was generated and sometimes for a specific type of asset or use case it's totally the right move to just generate something quickly. Uh but I think we're already in a period right now where I if I go to a startup's website and it's clear that it was just like a oneshot uh you know uh prompt like that says something about the company could be good could be bad we don't know

Jordy I think uh you're absolutely right but seriously I I mean it's just the the balance Oh thank you uh I I think it's the balance we had a strike with the Figma's design assistant design agent launch today. Um, and what we tried to do was make it so that we can really help you bring the context from your file uh into the agents uh context window and with that uh do things that maybe are what will be most helpful for the designer in the moment. uh spawn agents to do explorations variations uh do the sort of wrote tasks that um are more boring. So things like design system maintenance for example, how do we make it so that you're able to do that way faster with Thigma's design agent than you would if you're just manually clicking on all these variable names uh or or manually changing a bunch of components uh or text translation or uh any number of things. And so, you know, it's been really fun to kind of explore how does the design agent work and where can we make it better because there's so much more we can do to handle more of these tasks that, you know, designers are able to elevate themselves and work at a greater level to actually push aesthetic past AI slop to actually push past um, you know, the cliches and get to real innovation, solve real UX problems for users rather than making it so that uh you just have to go do this boring these boring tasks to just get through uh and unblock people uh or unblock your team. And I think that the design agent will really help there and bring more of it into the canvas where then you can share and collaborate with your team or with other agents. So, I'm excited for where it goes and uh I think today's really big and kudos to the team because they've been working really hard making it so that we're able to take uh all the advances with models and LMS uh and apply them to design. You know, getting these models to speak design well has been non-trivial and very cool.

That's awesome. Uh I feel like a lot of uh a lot of software engineers who are interacting with coding agents are experiencing like incredible amounts of like bloat in the code and there's questions about like are you introducing are are are you like laying really shoddy foundation that will come back to bite you later and a lot of people say the answer to slop is just more slop. In the design context, are you feeling pain from Figma users where design systems or are you at least designing the agentic design tool in a way that

is aware of that potential pitfall in advance because there is a world where you know, oh the drudgery is is taking my website and uh and you know uh uh doing design iterations for every single possible viewport or device and uh if that gets out of sync that can be very complex. Uh at the same time uh if you wind up you know instantiating all that and then it doesn't tie together you could wind up with some sort of you know misalignment and like it could be very difficult to manage in the long term and you could wind up with like bloat.

Yeah. I mean, look, I think that um uh it's different context for sure when you're in a a sort of codebase and you're using cloud and it's over claiming and making stuff up.

Uh or you're using, you know, open AI's chatbt models. 5.5 is amazing, but like

definitely over complexifies things. Uh and

you know, these these teams will deal with uh the sort of problems that are being identified and they'll fix them and figure them out. But um uh overall I think it's a different sort of class of problem than like when you're in a design file and really part of your mode is exploration. if we can help you with that exploration that can be useful for the user. And in terms of semantics, I mean the way that you represent a a component or you know the way you apply auto layout even um these are all examples of things that we've had to get more rigorous around how do we build evals for this

um to make sure that we're doing things in a way that is both clear and opinionated but also doesn't get in the way of the user. Mhm.

And I think the worthy year for us has been evalu side that, you know, we have to always be improving on. And part of the feedback that we'll get from this beta will be towards where have we missed the mark and what do we need to do better and I think there's lots of room to grow there. also to say that I think that um when you look at products like weave um there's so much potential to not have um necessarily this pylon effect but rather to explore more with AI. the outputs of the models are like clay you can mold

and um you know it's like how do you take stuff that might be a oneshot slop that's generated but then actually apply it across multiple models in a pipeline in order to actually figure out a way to make it into what you want and sometimes the best way to do that is to get on a canvas and use your hands sometimes best way to do that is through a workflow you define other times it's by going back and forth with an agent and I think you have to very smart about what you do when and it's our responsibility as a tool creator to give you all the options.

Jordan,

what are you excited about uh in terms of using AI to help uh augment the creative process? Because when I think of uh part of what I think is exciting about this moment is like I don't uh right now right now it's hard like a human still has to have like the fundamental kind of idea right uh in and and you we know that because you have to like type it into a box right uh you need to you need to do the typing still so we we we're still uh we're still necessary there um but when I think about like iconic like startup brands I think of uh linear. I think of some of what like cursor has done over the last couple years. I think of like Figma's brand where there's so much work that went into just like coming up with that coming up with like the concept and and the look and feel of the brand and then like way way way more work in terms of like instantiating that brand across every possible surface area. And part of what I think is exciting about this moment is like we're potentially entering into a world where you can spend more time just doing that like heavy creative work, coming up with like a concept that can stand out. And then once you create a system, then you can like much more rapidly scale it across again all these different surface areas, whether it's like digital products, web, you know, email, ads, etc. Um, how are you thinking about like augmenting uh and giving creative superpowers on that on that like brand building process when you're kind of coming up with coming up with like the idea?

Yeah, I think there's so much we can explore and do there and uh using design systems effectively is hard. We certainly have not perfectly nailed that. I think we've done much more on the maintenance side and we have a lot more coming on the execution side of how do you put the design system you've created together so you can fully productionize that uh and it's one of the things that you know we are looking at from so many angles and uh it is critical context to be able to figure out across code across design how do you use this effectively um but brand I think is something where uh on the weave side we see even more exploration with these workflows and people being able to define workflows that are more canonical and then branch out from them. And I think we'll see the same with assistant uh and with uh Figma's design agent as well. And the I I I also think that um this idea bank content bank can be established and added to over time and by more people. And what we're seeing with the last quarter results that we announced is that more people are starting to use Pigma in the organization. Thank you.

There are fantastic results.

Thank you. Uh but the breadth I think of um the usage expanding is a huge part of that. And the more that you can get it to the point where people can come in with their ideas, contribute to the conversation on a canvas, collaborate with others to refine um doesn't mean that you know these like sort of non-designers who don't know uh all the conversations are being had about the UX or the brand are going to be the ones that are bringing the idea that's the idea they're going to ship uh to the table right away. But I do think that bringing more voices into that conversation, more viewpoints only helps. How do you think about the concept of uh galman amnesia in like the in the context of like sa staying sane in the age of AI like uh because there's probably non-designers who use a genai tool and are like oh wow like designers are cooked and then there's real designers who use a genai tool and say oh there's you know yes it's maybe 99% of the way there but the battle is to get to 99.999 maybe 100% of what you can do and it feels like staying sane all all outputs, right? If you ask if you ask AI to generate you something around a topic you know really really well

it's a different feeling than a topic that you're just learning about.

Yeah.

Yeah. I mean I think that basically uh folks are in a place where they learn by comparative cases and

the more that they see great examples next to sort of output that's not as good and they can learn why that's ultimately where you see folks uh then push further and um you know they can then take it on to to do more in an area uh and evolve their skills and their judgment and their their sort of taste or not. But I I do think it's really important to have those conversational loops going and also get your arms around as a design leader what is happening in your organization because what we're seeing is more people prototype things and then uh you know there's like this laden fear of oh no what are we going to ship? Um, and is it the thing that is uh uh sort of like a random exploration that someone thought was real or is it something that uh is like gone through our cycle and is ready to go and is like very well thought out. And in general, the other thing that I'd mention is

it feels like there's a lot of tunnel vision right now. Um you know I I think that there's certain models that kind of went oh let's learn from 40 and um you know are sort of synopantic uh and doing that in especially for engineers and uh get very latched on to an idea and then it's kind of like the AI psychosis sets in and you're like this is the best idea ever and you're fully tunnel vision towards creating it

and you can show massive progress but like are you going the right direction?

Yeah. And I think it's really important to steer and to actually uh be building what you need to build and to think, not just wear a thinking cap. So, uh that is something that I think is critical right now.

Yeah. And I completely agree. Uh yeah, there's been a bunch of great takes about that. uh help me uh if I meet someone and they and they have the next great app idea and uh help me pitch them starting with Figma as the front door to the experience if they're a non-designer but they're also non-technical and they're hearing about codeex and cloud code and those like codegen tools versus starting with a design starting and having the design be the place where the idea person sort instantiates their their app or their product and then yes there are agents and they might use different tools for you know spinning up backends and doing other things. Why should Figma be the front door to building?

Yeah, I think that um as you're exploring an idea, part of it is thinking it through

and actually understanding what is it that I want to build

and you should not just start in a Figma, you should go talk to users. you should go think about like what is it that I'm trying to build? What are my goals and the problems I'm trying to solve?

Yeah.

Uh so that might look like starting a sketchbook or a doc or in live conversation.

I think there's a lot of people that have not asked that question to the LLMs and jump straight to I spend seven nights staying up all night. I'm cutting this thing and

forward. It's fun. It's box effect of like will it right this time or not? And uh that's

variable reward. Yeah, very overward spinners box. And so,

but then I think going from there to being intentional about okay, I know what problems I'm trying to solve. Let me think through the solution. Figma provides an excellent spot to do that with in conjunction with um you know, brainstorming tools like Fig Jam or you know, document editing uh spec editing and uh from there I think when you've got your direction, you know what you want to build,

um it's a great time to use our MCP, go bring into code or go bring into make.

Yeah. uh and make itself I well you'll see a ton of evolution on surface ahead uh we've already had a lot uh that we've improved and you'll see even more in the weeks and months coming and uh uh then I think that's a great spot where you can go back and forth because sometimes as you build it out you realize that actually there's more to explore and define on the design side.

Yeah.

Uh so use the best tool for the job. Um but I think don't be tunnel vision about there's one direction and that's the only thing that can work. That's where you'll fall into traps.

Yeah. Uh last question for me. Uh huge revenue growth, massive success on the financial side. I'm interested in going a click deeper and trying to understand uh what is working the most because it seems like there's great retention among big clients and customers that are using Figma at scale across a huge organization. There's also new uh entrepreneurs that are a team of one and they might be using Figma. There's uh almost consumer cases

the heaviest users of of coding agents are heavily using

Figma because they're making more software

and they need to add stuff to it. I mean I look at some of the stuff we've vibe coded and I'm like okay like it's time to level up and have Figma in the flow if it's not already. Uh even because you don't want some even like the dashboards like these things need to be designed at some point. as they grow and scale the the the first like most basic thing it could just be a CLI but as soon as we start building UIs and multiple users like it gets more complicated but but what is driving the growth is it both is one more of an opportunity for you over the next few years like what are you most excited about

uh I mean I think we're seeing growth kind of across the board right now and we're very thankful for that uh but our eyes are always in the future and you know the same things that I've said when I've been here in the past and you know I think have become um their own memes around design being the differentiator uh and design as the layer above code as code commoditizes more and more design is I think increasingly the battleground this is where everyone is going to really duke it out to figure out um what the direction is that they should explore and what they should go build and we need to build for that world a world where design representations code representations can live together and a world where um you know you don't have to make these false tradeoffs between direct manipulation uh and AI or you know being able to explore broadly uh or make fast progress like

both is the answer and so that's what we're really building for right now.

Exciting. Well, thank you so much for taking the time to come on the show.

Have a great rest of your week. Great to see you.

Good to see you all. Thanks for