Tyler Hammond photographed from behind in bright, sunlit tropical greenery, wearing an oversized white T-shirt printed with the Japanese characters 波を立てる (meaning “make waves”) and a black graphic of waves, flying cranes, and a large circle in the style of Japanese woodblock art; a wooden footbridge is visible through the leaves ahead.

Introduction

For years, we have treated design and development as two separate disciplines.

Designers created screens. Developers built them.

I believe that line is starting to blur.

Over the last few months, I have noticed a change in my own workflow. More and more, I find myself building ideas before I have fully designed them in Figma. What was once a design-first process in Figma has become more of a build-first process in Cursor, with Figma acting as official project documentation rather than the single source of truth.

Prototyping in code

At Sage, designers are now creating coded prototypes using the actual design system. These prototypes are built using a Design Playground, created by Kyle Mayne, my Team Lead. You can read Kyle's article here.

The prototypes never reach production code, but they are incredibly valuable to UX, User Research, and Developers. They let us test ideas quickly, create experiences that respond to a user's viewport, and ensure accessibility is considered from the start.

Unlike traditional design prototypes, there are no frame boundaries, fake presses and typing, or artificial constraints.

The result is often a more true-to-life experience for user testing, and ultimately it helps us validate ideas faster. For example, we try to eliminate as much bias as possible when testing with users, but having text inputs automatically populated with what we assume a user will type introduces bias. That is just one of many issues coded prototypes can remove.

This shift is wider than one team

This shift is not happening in isolation. It is happening everywhere.

I recently read that Shopify's design team rebuilt their design tooling around Swift so designers could work directly within the product's codebase. More recently, startups such as Dessn have emerged with a production-focused approach to design, reflecting a growing belief that the gap between designing and building is becoming increasingly unnecessary.

Why the gap is shrinking

The idea of designers being able to build has always felt like the dream. Historically, the barrier to entry was simply too high. Design and development were fundamentally different skill sets, requiring years of specialised knowledge, and creating huge silos between the two teams.

I believe the way we work is changing, and ultimately that designer/developer gap is shrinking.

What happens to Figma?

LinkedIn is flooded with "Figma is dead" takes. I do not think Figma is going away anytime soon, but I do think its role is evolving. Whether that means it sticks around long term, I would not like to guess.

Although the future may not be designers learning to code, I do think it might be design itself moving into production.