It doesn't really matter how "skilled" the designer is. Figma's MCP already provides HTML and CSS that's basically ready, and all AI needs to do is translate that into React or whatever. Or if you mean that AI wouldn't be able to make a proper interface without the human, that's also not true. The only reason I use Figma MCP is that my company uses Figma and has a dedicated Figma person. My opinion is that is just a bottleneck, and it would be easier to prompt AI to make whatever interface.
> The only reason I use Figma MCP is that my company uses Figma and has a dedicated Figma person. My opinion is that is just a bottleneck, and it would be easier to prompt AI to make whatever interface.
Here's where our opinions differ - I think replacing that Figma person with AI prompts will negatively affect product in a way that is noticeable to the end-user and effects their experience.
It does of course depend what kind of product you're making, but I'd say most of the time this holds.
I'm not even arguing that you should replace the Figma person with AI. I am arguing that even without AI, having Figma persons is a bottleneck. It is much faster to just use some kind of component library, like shadcn, and let the developer figure it out. And with AI that would be even faster, as the developer wouldn't have to write any code, just check the AI output and prompt to make changes if needed. Unless of course you need one of those really fancy landing pages, but even then, you would likely need a specialized developer, and not a Figma person.
If you work in B2B SaaS, sure, I guess. That's a lot of HN by virtue of being a lot of SF VC, but only a tiny part of all tech. Elsewhere shadcn isn't a realistic option.
..literally everything that isn't a recent, up and coming B2B SaaS. So >90% of the software written today.
To give but one example, effectively all of the >$300B mobile app market. Or all enterprise software that can't run on Electron. Or any company that cares about image/branding across their products, which is every single company past a certain size (and don't come at me with "but hot AI startup uses Shadcn and are valued at X trillion").
I will come at you at say that >90% of software written today is garbage, and >90% of companies are run by incompetent people. My hypothesis is that is the reason why we "need" Figma persons and project managers.
