Emil Sjölander from Figma discusses bringing Dev Mode to Figma, the challenges of collaboration in software development and design, the importance of security concerns when consuming open source dependencies, and the integration of design systems for generating code samples and guidance.
Read more
AI Summary
AI Chapters
Episode notes
auto_awesome
Podcast summary created with Snipd AI
Quick takeaways
Dev Mode in Figma bridges the gap between designers and developers, improving collaboration and alignment.
Effective utilization of design systems in Dev Mode reduces inconsistencies and enhances overall product quality.
Dev Mode streamlines workflows, integrates with developer tools, and optimizes processes to boost developer efficiency and productivity.
Deep dives
The Importance of Collaboration and Organizational Alignment
The podcast episode explores how collaboration and organizational alignment are crucial for building better products faster. It highlights the challenges of using different tools and platforms for designers and developers, leading to miscommunication and inefficiencies. The introduction of dev mode in Figma aims to bridge this gap by providing a shared workspace for developers and designers within the same tool. This helps teams align on design decisions, eliminate information silos, and improve overall collaboration.
Enhancing Product Quality with Design Systems
The podcast episode discusses the significance of design systems in maintaining product quality. While design systems are widely used, their effectiveness can be hindered if not utilized properly. Dev mode in Figma focuses on ensuring that design systems are effectively implemented and utilized by providing tools for designers and developers to easily connect to design system components and resources. This enables better adherence to design system guidelines, reducing inconsistencies and improving overall product quality.
Improving Developer Efficiency
The podcast highlights the challenges developers face in maintaining high efficiency as organizations scale. Common issues include complexities in onboarding, repetitive manual tasks, and information mismatches between designs and code. Dev mode aims to address these challenges by streamlining workflows and providing seamless integrations with developer tools like Visual Studio Code. The goal is to reduce context switching, enhance code visibility, and optimize development processes to boost developer efficiency and productivity.
Code Generation and Future Directions
The podcast explores the potential of code generation in dev mode, allowing designers to generate code snippets for various platforms and programming languages. While this feature is already available to some extent, the focus is on making it more customizable and aligned with individual design systems. The episode also mentions ongoing efforts to integrate dev mode into Visual Studio Code, providing developers with a seamless experience between code and design. Although achieving perfect code generation may be challenging, the objective is to continually improve the functionality and provide developers with more efficient tools for translating designs into code.
The Benefits of Using Design Systems
Design systems, such as Material Design, are widely used by companies to streamline their design process. These systems provide a consistent look and feel across different elements, like logos and buttons. They offer a starting point for startups, allowing them to quickly establish a cohesive design. While design systems are not binary, often evolving with each decision made, they serve as a foundation for a strong design system. By utilizing design systems like Dev mode, developers can move faster in their development process. They can easily access documentation and find the appropriate components to use. Features like compare changes help ensure developers stay in sync with designers, resulting in higher quality products.
The Power of Collaboration and Feedback
The development of Dev mode in Figma has been a collaborative process between designers, product managers, and engineers. By involving multiple perspectives, they were able to create a tool that meets the needs of developers. Feedback from users played a crucial role in refining and improving the product. The ability to communicate and iterate quickly has been a significant advantage of Dev mode. Additionally, the Figma platform offers a robust API that enables developers to build plugins and integrate with other tools. The possibilities are vast, from exporting assets in custom formats to generating code based on design elements. The continuous collaboration and innovation within the Figma community are driving the future of design and development.
This week on we’re joined by Emil Sjölander from Figma — talking about bringing Dev Mode to Figma. Dev Mode is their new workspace in Figma that’s designed to bring developers and design to the same tool.
The question they’re trying to answer is “How do you create a home for developers in a design tool?” We go way back to Emil’s startup that was acquired by Figma called Visly, how we iterated to here from 20 years ago (think PSD > HTML days), what they did to build Dev Mode, what they’re doing around codegen, the popularity of design systems, and what it takes to go from zero to Dev Mode.
Changelog++ members get a bonus 5 minutes at the end of this episode and zero ads. Join today!
Sponsors:
Neon – The fully managed serverless Postgres with a generous free tier. We separate storage and compute to offer autoscaling, branching, and bottomless storage.
Traceroute – Listen and follow Season 3 of Traceroute starting November 2 on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts!
Fly.io – The home of Changelog.com — Deploy your apps and databases close to your users. In minutes you can run your Ruby, Go, Node, Deno, Python, or Elixir app (and databases!) all over the world. No ops required. Learn more at fly.io/changelog and check out the speedrun in their docs.
