May 2025
At InspiringApps, we’re constantly evaluating how emerging technologies can enhance our design and development process. The recent Figma Config 2025 event unveiled significant updates that promise to reshape how we create digital products. Here’s our perspective on what these changes mean for designers, developers, and clients.
Figma has established itself as the industry standard for collaborative design. While that foundation remains strong, Config 2025 revealed how Figma is expanding its vision beyond being just a design tool to becoming an end-to-end platform for bringing ideas to life.
As Dylan Field, Figma’s CEO, emphasized during his keynote:
“The future will not be designed by accident.“
This statement resonates deeply with our philosophy at InspiringApps. In a world where AI makes software development increasingly accessible, thoughtful design becomes even more crucial. Craft, quality, and point of view are what make products beloved by users.
Figma’s new Grid system represents a substantial upgrade to how we structure designs. As the Config presenter described it:
Layout is “the dark matter of our designs...a gravitational force you can never see but is always there to ensure things stay in place.“
The new grid system allows designers to resize every column or row independently and precisely control how elements respond to different screen sizes. This seemingly technical feature actually unlocks significant creative potential by giving designers more precise control over their canvas.
While grids have always been fundamental to good design, these enhanced controls will help our designers create more sophisticated layouts that maintain their integrity across devices. The way it works seamlessly with Figma’s autoflow feature is a huge bonus, and we believe this will be a valuable enhancement.
Perhaps the most anticipated announcement was Figma Sites, which allows designers to deploy websites directly from Figma. The feature includes responsive breakpoints, component libraries, and will soon add CMS capabilities for content management.
Figma Sites represents an exciting option for certain projects, particularly marketing sites, landing pages, and prototypes that need to be quickly deployed. However, we see this as complementary to custom development rather than a replacement. Complex functionality, performance optimization, and accessibility considerations will still require dedicated development expertise.
Ensuring WCAG compliance, proper ARIA roles, and keyboard navigation often requires deeper code-level adjustments than visual design tools alone can manage. These considerations are critical for creating truly inclusive digital experiences.
For our clients, this means we ensure the chosen solution—be it rapid deployment via Figma Sites or robust custom development—perfectly matches their project’s complexity, budget, and long-term goals, maximizing their ROI. It’s about having the right tool for each specific job while never compromising on quality or accessibility.
One of the most significant updates is the new accessibility checker integrated directly into Figma’s color picker. What started as manually checking contrast ratios on webaim.org, then evolved to installing plugins, is now seamlessly integrated into the design experience. This saves considerable time when testing different color combinations, and includes a helpful visual graph showing which tints would fall outside acceptable contrast ranges.
This integration represents precisely the kind of thoughtful tool evolution we love to see—making accessibility testing effortless rather than an afterthought. By removing friction from the accessibility workflow, Figma is helping ensure more inclusive designs from the start of the creative process.
The introduction of Figma Make represents Figma’s entry into generative AI. This tool allows designers to turn static designs into interactive prototypes through natural language prompts, leveraging the Claude 3.7 model. During the demo, product manager Holly Lee emphasized that Figma Make isn’t just generating from images; it’s working with all the structured data in your Figma file:
“Because we’re Figma, we’re not just giving the AI an image. We’re passing all that structure and metadata. The model can reference the layers of your design, understand what they’re for, and iterate.“
Examples showed prototypes with complex interactions, 3D elements, and even simple games being created directly from Figma designs.
While Figma Make can generate impressive interactions, the quality of the output still depends on the quality of the input, both the design itself and the prompts guiding the AI. The strategic thinking behind a prototype—what to build, why to build it, and how users should interact with it—remains a fundamentally human task.
While AI features grab headlines, Figma’s commitment to craft was evident in the introduction of Figma Draw and 22 new design features. These tools aim to “unflatten designs“ by adding texture, depth, and personality. New capabilities include radial repeat, text on a path, non-destructive texture effects, background blurs, and brushes that mimic hand-drawn aesthetics.
The real benefit is that it saves time by integrating features that designers would typically need Adobe Illustrator for. While Illustrator will still have more comprehensive functionality, having these common design tools available directly in Figma as you work is incredibly valuable for workflow efficiency.
The performance improvements (33% decrease in load times) are equally important, as they remove technical barriers to creativity when working with complex designs.
The announcements at Figma Config 2025 offer insight into Figma’s strategic vision and broader industry trends. Let’s decode the key signals:
Figma is pushing beyond design and prototyping toward becoming a comprehensive product creation platform. This is an industry-wide trend toward tool consolidation and integrated workflows, driven by the desire to reduce context switching, streamline collaboration, and accelerate development cycles. Teams must evaluate whether these expanded platforms truly offer such efficiencies or create new dependencies and complexities in their toolchains.
The careful framing of Figma Make highlights a strategic choice: positioning AI as an assistant that augments designer capabilities rather than replacing human creativity. Dylan Field’s cautious setup and Holly Lee’s emphasis on AI working with Figma’s structured data signal that AI’s immediate value is being channeled into enhancing specific parts of the workflow—like accelerating ideation and exploration—not yet fully supplanting the holistic creative process or strategic decision-making.
Alongside AI features, Figma’s investment in foundational improvements—33% faster load times and 22 new vector editing capabilities—indicates their understanding that core design functionality remains essential. Lauren Budorick’s focus on “unflattening designs“ responds to the industry’s desire for more expressive digital aesthetics. For design professionals, this dual investment is a reassuring signal: even as automation capabilities expand, the tools will continue to evolve to support the deep, nuanced craft essential for creating truly distinctive and emotionally resonant digital experiences, validating the enduring value of human-led artistry and detailed execution.
In a talk by Michelle Lee at IDEO, she describes some of the thinking behind what they do at their Play Lab department at IDEO and how these principles could be applied beyond children’s games. Our world is exponentially speeding up with the rapid development of AI and technology, which, while it’s incredibly helpful at times, we all know it takes us out of the present moment at others. She speaks to how some Gen Z are promoting “digital detoxes” and intentionally trying to get away from technology because of its effects on mental health.
Michelle strikes an insightful balance of connection and innovation when she talks about using technology to create friction, rather than removing it. Some examples she provides are:
As Figma continues to evolve, we see the future of digital product creation as fundamentally hybrid, combining the efficiency of AI-powered tools with the irreplaceable value of human expertise, creativity, and judgment.
The most successful digital products won’t be those created entirely by AI or entirely by humans working with traditional tools. They’ll come from teams who know how to tap into automation for speed and exploration while applying human insight for strategy, nuance, and quality.
At InspiringApps, we’re committed to mastering this balance—using the best tools available while never losing sight of the human element that makes digital products truly exceptional. As we explore Figma’s new features in our daily work, we’ll continue to share insights about how they can be used most effectively to deliver value to our clients and users.
How do these new Figma capabilities benefit your next digital project? Reach out to our team—we’d love to explore the possibilities together.
Want to see how strategic color choices elevate real digital products? Explore bold, intuitive, and accessible color in work we’ve delivered for clients like Fidelity National Financial, Movie Pear, and Empath.
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