Why I no longer use Figma
How I went from designing screens to writing prompts, and why a pencil and paper give me more than any design tool.
The last time I opened Figma
I don’t remember exactly when it was. I know it was to review something, not to create. At some point I stopped opening it without it being a conscious decision. It just stopped making sense.
For years I followed the classic workflow: wireframe on paper, design in Figma, implement in code. Three layers to reach the same place. And I was all three people at once.
That’s a lot of time spent reconciling versions of the same reality.
The real cost of handoff
Handoff is always talked about as a team problem — the designer passes the files to the developer and something gets lost in translation. But when you’re both, the problem doesn’t go away. It becomes internal.
You design a component in Figma with perfect spacing. Then you build it in code and the result isn’t exactly what you had on screen. You adjust. Go back to Figma. Adjust again. The real work was in the code from the beginning, but you spent time maintaining a parallel representation nobody else was going to use.
Figma was my way of thinking before I learned to think directly in the final medium. Once that changed, the tool became redundant.
Paper → prompt → component
The workflow now looks like this:
Paper and pencil for structure. Blocks, hierarchy, flow. No colors, no typefaces, no visual decisions yet. Just the logic of what goes where and why. This isn’t a step backward — it’s thinking without noise.
Prompt to convert that structure into code. Not a vague prompt. A prompt with intent: proportions, behavior, visual tone, system constraints. The prompt is the design.
Browser as the final environment. This is where the real result lives. Not in a Figma file that no user will ever see.
The jump from paper to code feels abrupt until you try it. After that, you can’t understand why there was a layer in between.
The tools that make it possible
v0 and Claude to generate components from description. You tell them what you want, with what constraints, within what system. They return working code you can refine.
VisBug to edit directly in the browser. Change spacing, typography, colors, alignment — in the actual DOM, without touching code, without leaving the page. It’s what Figma promised to be and wasn’t: visual editing on the final result.
DevTools as a design environment. Chrome DevTools used well operate on the real result, not a representation. Spacing, states, responsive behavior — all live.
Browser + code as the source of truth. If it doesn’t exist in the browser, it doesn’t exist.
What Figma doesn’t teach you about the browser
Figma lets you do anything. That seems like an advantage until someone has to build it.
Multi-layer shadows that in CSS are three lines or a performance issue depending on how you use them. Layouts that ignore document flow. Typography with properties that don’t exist in any browser. Animations that in Figma are a prototype and in code are three weeks of work — or a decision not to build them at all.
A designer who has never had to implement what they design never develops the instinct for what things cost. And that cost is always paid by someone.
But there’s another side. The browser does things Figma can’t even represent: scroll-driven animations, container queries, native state transitions, subgrid, clip-path. Elegant solutions that have been available for a while, which many designers never propose because they’ve never seen them working in a real context.
Working directly in the browser closes that gap in both directions. You stop proposing the impossible and start using what’s already there.
The prompt as design language
This is the part that gets most misunderstood.
A lot of people try v0 or Claude, generate something generic, and conclude that AI can’t design. They’re right — AI can’t design. You can. The difference is in what you tell it.
A prompt without intent:
“Make me a hero with image and text”
A prompt with intent:
“Full-width hero. Editorial typography, large size, light weight. Text left-aligned with generous vertical space. Image with fixed aspect-ratio on the right. No shadows, no rounded corners, no gradients. Generous spacing between all elements. Monochromatic palette with a single accent color.”
The second isn’t harder to write. It’s harder to think. And thinking it is exactly what a designer does.
Years building visual vocabulary — hierarchy, rhythm, proportion, restraint — become a direct advantage here. Not in Figma. Here.
A developer who discovered v0 three months ago generates interfaces. You generate interfaces with judgment.
When I would still use Figma
In large teams with multiple stakeholders who need to approve screens before development. In projects where the client needs to see and interact with mockups. In design systems with shared tokens across multiple roles.
Those are valid contexts. They’re not mine.
If you work alone or in a small team where design and development are the same conversation, keeping Figma means keeping a translation nobody asked for.
The pencil and paper are still the first step. But the second is no longer Figma.