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Insights Unlocked
Designing AI products: Insights from Figma's 2025 report
00:32:43
Discover how design drives AI product success with insights from Figma’s 2025 AI Report, featuring Andrew Hogan on Insights Unlocked.
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- [00:02]
Nathan Isaacs
Welcome back to the Insights Unlocked podcast. In this episode, we're diving into Figma's 2025 AI report, the Year of AI at Work, with Andrew Hogan, head of insights at Figma. He joins User Testing's Jason Giles to explore how AI is really being used in design and development and why design is more important than ever in shaping these new tools. It's a thoughtful, energetic conversation packed with real world insights. Enjoy the show.
- [00:34]
Jason Giles
Welcome to Insights Unlocked, an original podcast from User Testing where we bring you candid conversations and stories with the thinkers, viewers and builders behind some of the most successful digital products and experiences in the world, from concept to execution.
- [00:54]
Nathan Isaacs
Welcome to the Insights Unlocked podcast. I'm Nathan Isaacs, Principal Content Marketing Manager at User Testing. Joining us today as host is Jason Giles, User Testing's Vice President of design. Welcome, Jason.
- [01:08]
Andrew Hogan
Hello everyone.
- [01:10]
Nathan Isaacs
And our guest today is Andrew Hogan. Andrew leads Insights at figma. His research focuses on the digital product and design industry and the ways the most successful teams work. Previously, Andrew spent seven years at Forrester, a leading research firm, analyzing the intersection of design and tech. Welcome to the show, Andrew.
- [01:32]
Jason Giles
Thanks for having me. Glad to be here, Andrew.
- [01:35]
Andrew Hogan
It is so nice to talk again. We would love. Before we dig in, you've got this big juicy report we'd love if you could just give us a little bit of background. You've been researching the intersection of design technology for years now. First to Forester and now at figma. Just on a personal note, what drew you to this space?
- [02:01]
Jason Giles
I mean, at some point, a long time ago, I learned that you could find out a lot if you spent time researching a topic, talking to people about it, trying things out. And the origin of that is actually being better at video games. A million years ago, I wanted to be better than my brother at a particular game and his friends. And so I did a lot of research in that. And then that was just this fantastic jumping off point to the power of research and analyzing synthesis. And I've just been doing that for different sets of technologies for, you know, now like definitely more than a decade. I think we're like coming up on like two decades, actually.
- [02:46]
Andrew Hogan
Wow, amazing. I can imagine that your perspective has evolved dramatically over that, that time.
- [02:54]
Jason Giles
I mean, the possibilities though, I don't know, it's just made me optimistic and excited for the things that you can find and, and the things that humans discover. So I would say that that part has not necessarily changed.
- [03:06]
Andrew Hogan
Oh, amazing. I, I hinted at it at the top, but you guys just released Figma's 2025 AI report. It's the, the state of AI according to the people designing and building it. Can you tell us more about the survey? And specifically I always like to ask this of researchers. You know, what surprised you most about how teams are building with AI right now?
- [03:35]
Jason Giles
So the origin of the survey is that, you know, executives and AI experts get asked a lot about AI and what they think will happen. And we have a unique view at figma in that many of the people using figma are building products powered by AI. There's something fascinating about the sort of like meta view. And what do those people who are working on it every day actually think? And how could that perspective differ? So we did a survey with 2500 designers and developers and asked them, you know, how has your work changed? How has your perspective changed? What do you think about the products that you're building? And I would say the most surprising thing was the power of design and how it carries through even with a brand new design material. And what I mean by that is we asked them, you know, is design as important, more important, less important with the generative AI powered product? And you probably know this better than anybody working directly on it. Design is for 95% of the respondents just as important and for more than 50% is actually more important when working with Gener. I mean, when you're inventing something new, thinking about design. And I think the part that was most interesting there wasn't the answer because designers, of course they think these things are important. What was most interesting is that they said their company leadership thought the same thing. And then designers and developers largely agreed about the power of design for generative AI powered products. And I think the, the consistency of the statements there, I think that was actually a little surprising to me. I think I would have expected a bigger gap between those different groups.
- [05:23]
Andrew Hogan
Well, what do you think? What do you think the, the lack of gap, the, the, the unified kind of perspective on AI is, is attributed to?
- [05:36]
Jason Giles
I mean, I think we've all seen this over the last couple decades as more and more people have been drawn into design and design has become a larger and larger part of, you know, competitive advantage. And you know, that goes for understanding customer needs, that goes for the power of iteration. And so you just have more and more people working in design and there's something about that that creates this perspective that yeah, if we iterate around solving customer problems, we will be more successful. And I think people have seen that happen over and over again in their careers, which then leads to it not being this fringe viewpoint, this is the consensus.
- [06:17]
Andrew Hogan
Yeah. And I also think, I mean, there's an acknowledgement of how incredibly powerful and how quickly it's moving. And I think those of us with a design bent realize the urgency of getting involved so that it can be shaped and crafted.
- [06:35]
Jason Giles
And the opportunity.
- [06:37]
Andrew Hogan
That's right, that's right, Absolutely.
- [06:39]
Jason Giles
I mean, I think the opportunity is really clear. Like, I can see it on, I can see it on your face and hear it in your voice how much you enjoy working on these things and solving this brand new set of problems. And that is, that is by and large the response. This is, this is a huge opportunity. And whenever there's some new thing to work with, there's always a surge in design interest.
- [07:03]
Andrew Hogan
Well, there's both the taking advantage of the capabilities to develop, to design something new, and then there's the other side of it, of how we work today. I wonder, did the survey go into much around how we might be working, how our workflows might be changing?
- [07:24]
Jason Giles
Yeah. So there were two halves to it. There's one half of what are we making? And then there's, you know, how are we working and how do designers and developers see this? And, you know, I kind of alluded to it. We found the teams that were working most successfully on products were actually using a lot of the methods that you would expect. So they were working, you know, around customer needs, they were iterating. There's this really fascinating data point that if you struggled with prototyping a generative AI powered product, you were more likely to be successful because you had gone through the attempt to struggle. You had gotten to the point where you were prototyping something and you were working with something real and you could feel it. And so that just tells me a lot of the practices carry through. And then even working on products that are not generative AI powered, a lot of the methods, the approaches were being shaped. Generative AI was being used more for customer research, it was being used more for synthesizing data. And then certainly for something like code generation, I think the number is close to 2/3 of developers were using AI for code generation, which then creates this interesting, well, how good is the code? What's the quality? Is it making it better? What are the opportunities there? So, you know, there's the two halves, and we looked at the two halves equally.
- [08:59]
Andrew Hogan
When we think about specifically me as a design leader with all these new superpowers that my team, they're all augmented with. Based on your time looking at the feedback, the results, how do you envision the role of design leaders evolving? Whether that's to empower the teams or for us ourselves to really be, whether that being thought leadership or enabling our teams?
- [09:27]
Jason Giles
I mean, you've got to be out in front of a couple different challenges. And I've framed it before as like working with the contradictions. And so one contradiction is in many cases, people think they're getting more efficient. Designers and developers think they're getting more efficient, but they don't always think it's making them better. And so you've got to work through how do we, you know, keep the efficiency gains, but make sure that this is actually making my people feel better. And it's, you know, it's supporting their, the quality of their work and the way they want to work. And then the truth is that not everyone is also adopting the tools equally. They maybe don't know what they even have access to. That certainly has come up in the research, like, what are, what are the tools I can even use and bring into my company? Many people are working on side projects in order to use AI tools more because the company won't allow the use of different kinds of tools. And so you've got to work through that contradiction. You've also got to work through the contradiction of this is a brand new thing and your company is trying to find ways to create value from it. You've got to sort of set the vision at a company level too and, and ensure that this is something that is, you know, valuable for people and valuable for the business. And there's no guarantee that those things will happen unless you do that work and help your team sort of clear a path for them.
- [11:01]
Andrew Hogan
Yeah, I think there's a lot of learning going on just in general. And I think it was, I don't know, maybe last month Microsoft released a report on General AI's impact on critical thinking. And I see headlines like that and I'm like, okay, like that's great, we're superpowering. But are we losing something in the wash? And how do we, you know, ensure that with all this experimentation and the speed of where you can get some really compelling results, that we're not maybe losing something in all that? I don't know if whether you have thoughts on that.
- [11:47]
Jason Giles
I love that study. It was such an interesting. Because this is a design challenge, right? If you just let people go on autopilot, whether they're designers, whether they're developers, whether they're, you know, teachers, whether they're students, you know, part of being good at Something is thinking hard about it and is almost working at the, like, the friction of the thing that I don't know and the thing that I do know and comparing those things together and what designers and developers are experts at is bringing the context of either the system or the people or the business situation, bringing those things in to almost like pit against the technology. And I think that's an integral role for. You know, you brought it up in the context of the design leader, but the designer as well. You know, one other data point from this study, agentic AI was the fastest growing type of AI product that was being created, so it doubled from last year. So it's not your imagination. Like, everybody is doing agentic stuff. I'm sure you're working on something. I'm sure you know what I mean. Everybody is doing this. And I think it, it's really hard though. Like, how do you, how do you check in with the user? What should you check in with them on? What information should you share? What format should that even take so that they're not just going on autopilot? Those are all design challenges. And I think those of us who have been following design for a long time know that's, that's like where this, this profession really shines.
- [13:24]
Andrew Hogan
You actually wrote a really interesting. I think it was a blog post where you referenced this phrase, you can just do things as being emblematic of today's AI fueled momentum in that you touch on how we balance speed and experimentation with it not coming at the cost of intentionality or, or getting feedback and building that customer empathy. Do you want to talk a little bit more about some of the perspectives shared in that piece, Jason?
- [14:00]
Jason Giles
You can just do things. And that's the.
- [14:04]
Andrew Hogan
Yeah, you can.
- [14:07]
Jason Giles
Should you always. That was the other half of the title. And I think it's amazing the capabilities that we've all got now, right. We can do. In my side, I've run a, I run a parent technology newsletter and podcast. And like, that's only possible because there are so many tools that support that now. You probably have side things that you're able to do now and then at work. You can do all kinds of things. You can spin up a draft of something real quick, you can write. You know, all of that is possible. You can make a prototype of something in an hour. But then, you know, you need to think about how is that going to fit into the broader context of the work that you're doing. The people who are maybe using this, what is your business trying to do? What, what are you supposed to be doing at that time instead of prototyping the thing? Like, are you, you know, are you just, are you just spreading your focus too thin to take a quote from Lord of the Rings, you know, like butter over too much bread? Like, have you shifted the focus too much? And I think that's part of the design leader's job. I think that's part of the business leader's job to keep the focus on what are we trying to achieve, for who, and what are the best ways to do that.
- [15:30]
Andrew Hogan
Yeah, obviously here at User Testing, we're thinking a lot about getting that continuous feedback right to really inform design decisions. And how do you see that kind of feedlot feedback loop fitting in with the future of our AI design workflows? I mean, I know you can't speak about what's coming down for figma and that's awesome, but I can imagine where your head is around just the new ways of working and, you know, do you see an opportunity where we can really basically change the way we work so that we can be getting more of that feedback in the way that we work?
- [16:15]
Jason Giles
I think so. One of the more used practices for AI was within, you know, customer feedback in discovery and analyzing data for both designers and developers. And I think it would have been true for other people. We would have asked. There's just the possibility now to sift through more and to do it faster and get meaning faster and I think to get better meaning. One of the interesting contradictions within the data was this sort of like standby set of methods of, you know, customer research, iteration, collaborative design and development work and working across a team. Those things seem to lead people to more success. The data said if you agreed that you did those things, you were more successful at AI powered products. And I don't think that's surprising. What was more surprising though, was that they also said the teams that were more successful also said that the process was completely different. They were more likely to say that the process was different. And I think where we are right now is working through the best way to build those things in, you know, to build in things like feedback, tight loops and how best to integrate the new capabilities into our workflows. And so this contradiction between those points, I think suggests the thing that you're saying, which is that there is some new set of methods at play, there are some new possibilities that we're all still working our way through. There's kind of a meta thing. This report was about the products that you make and about how you work, but the products that you make also change how you work. And so there's a looping sort of meta discussion that I think we're all still working our way through. And I don't think that's that dissimilar than, you know, with mobile apps, with the Internet, there's always this period of everything is different and then some things remain sort of from previous eras.
- [18:23]
Andrew Hogan
Yeah, you know, it's interesting. We've been obviously spending a lot of time and exploring other tools too to just analyze and think around how could this change the way we work. And it's interesting because so often, particularly for us, we think, well, how can I get something more realistic quickly, higher fidelity or actually interactive to be able to get feedback on earlier? That makes sense. The other piece though is also the collaboration internally of how quickly can I generate an idea that gets across just even what I'm thinking. We look at some tools, they're like, oh my gosh, you give a prompt and all of a sudden here's working code or it's a fully fledged prototype. And sometimes that freaks people out versus like, well, wait a minute, like this just saved a PM hours in a PowerPoint slide trying to sketch out kind of just the early ideas. And I think it's really interesting when we have these capabilities to express ideas quickly that not only getting for customers, but also internally to help kind of generate the collaboration or the share getting on the same page quicker. And that's the piece I'm actually really quite excited about. It's one thing to be able to get folks into a same design file, it's another folks to start playing with something together. It reminds me a little bit we had. So when I worked on Xbox, we had dedicated design developers sitting right next there and you could draw all the pictures you want and it'd be beautiful. But until you pushed it up onto a console and started playing with it and feeling with it like that, it was just so telling one way or the other. And I'm hoping that this allows us to elevate the craft so that we can feel it quicker and get, be able to make some of these more taste making decisions in the design, the design itself. So obviously you can tell I'm pretty, pretty stoked.
- [20:31]
Jason Giles
You are, you are excited. I mean the, the thing you're pointing at there is also the most successful teams have this really tight design and development collaboration in the way that it works, not just in the way that it looks. And I think, I think that's something, you know, that, that's really exciting and interesting about this, this era because then you can get to how are we going to, you know, not only validate this but also polish it, but also ship it to production. It really does create some tremendous opportunities to accelerate and then do the thing we have to work through is how to make sure that the best work and the best, you know, the thing that is there at the end is amazing and is amazing for customers, end users and that they are able to accomplish their goals and that, you know, along the way the business is also successful.
- [21:29]
Andrew Hogan
Yeah. Going back a little bit, you, you were talking about how the big one big difference from the, from last year's report was around agentic and everybody like really understanding. Do you get a sense that, that people are getting their heads wrapped around how to balance this, you know, letting go of some control, you know, creating these agents to do whether it's part of our jobs or part of our customers journey and that balance of control and transparency. Did you get any sentiment from the survey? It's okay if you didn't, but I'm just really curious about that date.
- [22:17]
Jason Giles
We are early. We are really early in that there's, you know, the analogy I use a lot is, you know, mobile apps and the Internet and how long that took. And then there's another phrase from futurist Roy Amara. You know, people underestimate, overestimate what will change in two years and underestimate what will change in 10. And I think we are very early at this and you can see it in this is, this is totally a like a storytelling technique. But I always think of like a headline quote from studies that I, that I work on just as a way to explain them quickly. So last year, you know, it's hard to ride a wave when you're surfing a tsunami was the quote. And then this year the headline quote for me was it's like running a restaurant where the menu changes daily. And I think that's how people feel is that everything has the capabilities shift so much from model to model from you know, the, the work that you do on your side even using a model that it's so it's hard to do. It's hard to know exactly what to ship. And that's part of where design is so important. Because we are so early, then you can really work to envision the future, to look at where the tension is between the technology's capabilities and what people want to look at. If we put people on autopilot with an agentic experience and then actually the Outcomes are worse. Well, that's not very good, you know, so. And I think that's, that's an integral spot for design to be in. Just like, you know, early mobile apps didn't always do what we wanted them to do. It took, you know, five plus years for Uber to come out. It took longer for like a doordash to come out. You can think about how long it takes to work your way through what you can really accomplish, but the possibilities are exciting and there is as much energy, there's more energy here than there was with previous technology. Sort of like shifts. And I can feel it from you. I don't know if you were this excited about mobile apps, to be honest. Maybe you can.
- [24:29]
Andrew Hogan
Yeah, certainly mobile. I mean, for me, I'm old enough that I was able to, I got my foot in the door because of this Internet thing that came along. Microsoft was hiring anybody who knew anybody and that was. And it feels exactly like that, you.
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Jason Giles
Know, and each, each of those moments also created these huge opportunities for, for new and exciting things to happen. And I think that's one of the most interesting things about this study, is that it essentially reveals we are making progress on that sort of same axes.
- [25:05]
Andrew Hogan
Yeah. Kind of using the app analogy or mobile analogy or the web. And based on all this feedback now you've got from customers, do you have any advice for these folks that are. The menu is changing every day just to kind of weather that or to kind of set themselves up for success over the next few years.
- [25:31]
Jason Giles
You've, you've got to, you've got to try things. And I think that is, you know, for people leading organizations, you need to try. I have this saying that you need to work on enough AI powered projects to know which ones are worth working on. You have to try things that get a, at a big portfolio level and then at an individual level, you know, play with the different features that are being betaed and all the platforms and tools you use, talk to people about what they're using. Find some way to experiment. If you need to do it outside of work with your own projects, I think that is, you know, the biggest thing is to step in and really think about it critically. And I think we can all find different areas where it can support our work in whatever way we feel most comfortable with. But it just opens your eyes to sort of like the possibilities, whether it's in your personal life or in your professional life. I think it's worth trialing things.
- [26:35]
Andrew Hogan
I keep going back to some of the crazy things we did in the early days of the web. And what I tell folks is like, learn from some of the mistakes. Remember, what problem are you trying to solve? I think we used to have, there was these things, flash, splash, intro pages to set the scene before you entered the website. You know, there was so much and it was fun and we were learning the tools. But I always tell folks like, what problem are you trying to solve? You know, going back to.
- [27:10]
Jason Giles
We were trying to solve a problem there and I think the problem though was an internal problem. Typically it was that somebody wanted to get a message across in an exciting new way to use a technology. And there may be some analogies there.
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Andrew Hogan
Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally, totally. I think I was, I was getting my hair cut last week and I was flipping through the barber magazine and the number of AI enabled products for a barber were. It was shocking. And I'm like, okay, you can, but should you? And really what is it you're trying to do?
- [27:49]
Jason Giles
Yeah, well, I mean it's not just, it's not just that either. My, I have a friend who plays in a men's rec league basketball league and you know, every week he gets AI powered highlights of his performance and his stats are tracked using machine vision in every. And this is a totally meaningless basketball league week. It's, it's literally irrelevant. There is no, you don't even get like a banner on the wall or anything. And then they added, they added fireball emo fireballs to the basketball. You could put those on there as a beta. We couldn't get it to work. I was really disappointed. I keep asking, is it working yet? But, but I mean, you know, it's in all of these places and I applaud all of the companies for trying it and trying it in hopefully innocuous ways, finding, you know, safe spots, spots to put it in. And I partially do that because we have data that for small companies particularly, this is seen as an essential way into different markets. So you know, if you're a 1 to 10 employee company, AI as an essential part of your product is like that's, that's the leading way then. And, and so, you know, I think, I think you have to try these things. You have to experiment, you have to make useless apps to go back to the mobile days because then you find the good ones. And that is, that is part of it.
- [29:09]
Andrew Hogan
Well, and it's just that reminder of the role of play in creativity and stumbling onto something that really unlocks some incredible value. Yeah, sometimes it's the happy accidents as well.
- [29:21]
Jason Giles
So Absolutely.
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Andrew Hogan
Andrew, was there anything else from the report that you specifically wanted to kind of whet our appetites? Four that made it maybe popped out to you as particularly salient?
- [29:37]
Jason Giles
I just want to go back to the consensus around design's importance and you know that 95% say it's as important as with non AI powered products. You know, roughly half say it's more important. And that like, it just almost indicates this, this like design energy that is almost like, I don't know, like, like palpable from, you know, comparing to previous moments. And that seems like the way forward with, you know, what's an increasingly crowded app layer as there is more creation of more software as it is faster to create software. Designing something around a real need that is really useful, that is really valuable and is done really well, I think will continue to be rewarded. And that just seems, that seems like exciting and interesting to see it come through like that in this data. When you write a survey you're always like, oh, is this, is this hypothesis going to be true? Is it going to be false?
- [30:44]
Andrew Hogan
Sure.
- [30:44]
Jason Giles
You know, our chatbots going to take it. Turns out chatbots are really hard to design. Design well and if you want to do anything more complex than a chatbot, it's even more hard. And I think that is, that's just a really interesting thing that we should all think about. What is it that's valuable and how can we think about this sort of moment and design's possibilities.
- [31:05]
Andrew Hogan
I love it. If our listeners would like to learn more about the report or about you. You got your hands in a bunch of really cool stuff. Where would be the best place to direct them?
- [31:20]
Jason Giles
Figma.com reports we have a repository. You can find me on LinkedIn. I'm a big LinkedIn. Er, I just gonna lean right into it. I know some folks have opinions about LinkedIn but I love it. And if you're listening to this before config, config is always an exciting place to find out new things and I think user testing has some things coming up as well. In general, getting together with people to talk about new things is exciting and energizing.
- [31:53]
Andrew Hogan
I can't agree more. I won't be able to join you in San Francisco, but I'll be in the London config. So we're getting really excited about that. Andrew, it has been such a pleasure. Thank you so much for coming on the show.
- [32:09]
Jason Giles
Thanks for having me.
- [32:11]
Want to keep the conversation going? You can find the show notes@usertesting.com podcast if you haven't already, don't forget to follow us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast or Google Play so you never miss an episode. And if you enjoyed today's show, please share it with a friend or leave us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts. And until next time, this is Insights Unlocked, an original podcast from User Testing.