The dark side of Figma’s Dev Mode
A cautionary tale of Figma and the series of events that led to its latest release at the Config23 Conference. Read to the end to see the other side.
⚠️ I have received responses from Medium and from other channels. Figma is constantly updating their policies and features. Click here to get to the latest discussions on Figma Dev Mode.
Speak To Me
Designers are on a perpetual quest to find meaning in the objects of their lives. To inject beauty, wonder, and emotions into experiences. To improve the lives of others. To make a difference in the world that they cohabitate in.
In the mind of a designer, they see possibilities that many may overlook. They are in search of people who share the same mindset and approach. The manifestation of inspiration comes in many forms: humans, objects, the environment, and tools. The list goes on, but through the myriad mess of ideas, designers distill their thoughts by handpicking the ingredients, equipment, and place that will serve them.
They are in search of the perfect companion tool to meet their needs.
Breathe (In The Air)
Breathe, breathe in the air...
Look around and choose your own ground.
At one point, designers had many options from which to choose, but those who chose to go digital were riding the tide of digital user experience, better known as UX/UI (or was it UI/UX?). Where the growth of interest was, so were the platforms that provided it.
It really sparked off when Apple gave the world a new way of seeing design in user interfaces. Gone are the days of skeuomorphism, and in comes flat design—a pragmatic but tasteful approach for digital products to experience an “Ulm” way of seeing through the eyes of Jony Ives and his inspiration, Dieter Rams.
It was a beautiful time because people were interpreting how a new design language could exist in the digital world. And the collaborators were plentiful: InVision, Axure, Balsamiq, Sketch, Zeplin, Abstract, UXPin, Framer...
And Figma.
On The Run
Live for today, gone tomorrow, that’s me, Hahaha!
And we set off on a journey. A journey to learn and grow in our skills as digital product designers. A race to update ourselves with the latest features. To be the first beta users of the latest technologies.
The tool providers were on the run to meet the appetite of the designers, but also to respond back to the competitors. Invision started working on their own screen design tool after the success of their prototyping platform. Sketch went to the cloud in response to the other tools doing likewise. It was their own race to release new versions and fix bugs.
The culture was accommodating as the technical world embraced Agile and continuous delivery. Corporations started learning from one another, timing product launches with balance sheets so as to maximize shareholder value. The Apple of before transitioned into the Apple of today, where every business decision synergized with their product and marketing materials. Tim Cook was indeed the right man to grow Apple’s market share over the years. He has set a rhythm of market anticipation for new releases in his own way.
Time
Waiting for someone or something to show you the way.
Meanwhile, although a later entrant, Figma was building in the same vein as the other tool providers. But as with every startup, they come with two sides to the story: as a provider to bring delight to their users and as a business to survive.
As a provider to bring delight
The original objective behind Figma was to enable “anyone [to] be creative by creating free, simple, creative tools in a browser.” Cofounders Dylan Fields and Evan Wallace wrote these words in 2012.
Think about it as taking some of the ‘pro’ features of Photoshop and making those available to everyone — Dylan Fields, 2012
That thesis soon expanded to include collaboration, transparency, and community, but part of Figma’s success in accelerating adoption was due to its accessibility—it was free for anyone to use. One more thing: it made the barrier to learning design and being together with designers really easy. That was why designers loved Figma because it understood their pain points. Features like “a single source of truth for files, cross-platform support, and multiplayer editing” were the results of speaking to their customers.
As a business to survive
Every coin has two sides. The darker side, facing down, deals with the pressure and fiduciary duties of a company utilizing their investor’s money. Simply put, any startup founder is answerable to the investor who initially backed them because the latter will expect returns on their investment. Amidst the pressure of balancing their revenue and costs, Figma had to stay competitive so as to exponentially attract more users onto their platform.
A total of $333.4 million were invested in Figma with seven rounds of funding, from pre-seed to Series E. Nevertheless, by the end of May 2021, Figma had received a valuation of more than $10 billion. The valuation may sound impressive, but just like how every idea starts, there has to be an end in mind.
The three typical paths are as follows:
- Continue to grow. In this case, go for an initial public offering (IPO)
- Get an exit with returns through an acquisition
- Winding up, in which the company’s assets are sold to pay off its debts.
And as each year goes by after the release of its closed beta, it becomes clearer: How long will Figma be able to operate in the same way without changing the business model? Could they continue to get more funding beyond Series E, get more valuation and revenue without hurting their own equity? More importantly, how long could they continue to keep designers happy with their features?
The Great Gig In The Sky
I never said I was frightened of dying
The day came like a whiff of smoke or like an answer from the heavens. On September 15, 2022, Dylan officially announced to his Figma community and to the world that they had made an agreement with Adobe to be acquired. The motivation was clear: at $20 billion, it was an obvious exit for Figma to make everyone happy. Thus, the tone of his messaging was generally optimistic, with a tinge of sadness at “the closing of a chapter”.
The design community took a completely different view. There was mourning at every corner, both within the Figma community and in other community spaces, including among members of the UX Collective. No doubt, there were attempts to look at the positive side of the merger, but the general sentiment was disappointment. Even Adobe's share prices dipped significantly on the day of the announcement.
Perhaps Adobe’s acquisition left a sour taste in everyone’s mouth. Ask anyone about their experience with any of the Adobe Creative Suite products, and they will largely share their tale as a love-hate relationship. What made the blow heavier was that Figma was, in some sense, an antithesis to Adobe. After all, the birth of a browser-based design toolkit came purely from the horse’s mouth, disagreeing with Adobe’s approach. In an ironic twist of events, it looked like the problem had become the victor.
Death will come to all of us, including non-human entities (known as depreciation, amortization, or acquisition). The question lies in whether there was a fear of dying. Figma did not look like it was frightened to “die”. On the other hand, the design community was frightened to see it die. In any case, life with Figma after Adobe will not be the same. Or so we think.
Money
Get a good job with good pay and you’re okay.
Let’s face it: Figma is not a charity; it is a business that seeks profits. So while Figma continues to be free for new users, someone has to pay the bills. Thankfully, larger design teams have been able to do so for very good reasons. One game-changing benefit was the ability to bring an entire product team closer together without having to be part of it. Seemingly contradictory, the previous statement meant non-designers in the product team could still do their jobs of inspecting elements and reviewing wireframe flows with real-time collaboration. All without needing to pay for a seat.
In 2021, this was what set Figma apart from its competitors like Invision and Zeplin, who were at the time charging seats to both designers and developers. At the same time, Figma announced their beta in branching, attempting to disrupt Abstract’s core product of versioning. Wouldn’t it have made sense to have these key features of various products for the price of one? For design teams, the choice was obvious for both desirability and viability. The finance departments of these teams would think so too.
So when Figma’s Config 2023 dropped their biggest feature announcement, most of us rejoiced when we saw the all-new Dev Mode. That’s because Figma did it again; they understood the needs of the developers and the importance of design collaboration with a set of complementary “game-changing” features.
The only problem is that the developers have to pay for a seat at the Figma table. That could be a lot of money. To Adobe’s Figma, it’s business.
Us And Them
And after all we’re only ordinary men
What happened to “anyone” from the original thesis by Dylan? Yes, equal emphasis is now given to the developers, but have we forgotten the original creed of accessibility for all? Notice the concerns that Figma is already creating among the design community on Reddit.
The general consensus is that there will be harder debates in a developer-biased environment or an environment geared towards cost efficiency. The losing battle is when a designer is pegged against 4 to 8 developers, which amounts to more paid licenses. And if you have a hardened finance bookkeeper who seeks justification over the additional cost, you won’t have Figma in the hands of the developer.
Perhaps Figma’s research team assumes that developers will see the value of design, or they are targeting companies with a strong design culture. If so, then they are addressing one specific group and not others that have a weaker design culture.
However, there are more systemic problems. Another danger lies even in the design of the entry point to Dev Mode—the toggle. From a UX perspective, it gives a great dedicated view for the developer, leading to greater specific interactions and usage from developers. But subtly, from a psychological perspective, it has created a binary bias—a signal of an us-and-them mentality. Even more devious, the toggle can also be viewed as a lock for fuller features. Isn’t this disabled state a deceptive pattern?
It is a signal to teams that unless you are ready to pay, you will have limited collaboration with your developers because the inspect panel is now embedded within the Dev Mode. The teams losing out are either new to design or may not have the financial means.
Any Colour You Like
Roger Waters, in an interview with the author Phil Rose, stated:
"In Cambridge, where I lived, people would come from London in a van—a truck—open the back and stand on the tailboard of the truck, and the truck’s full of stuff that they’re trying to sell. And they have a very quick and slick patter, and they’re selling things like crockery, china, and sets of knives and forks. All kinds of different things, and they sell it very cheaply with a patter. They tell you what it is, and they say, 'It’s ten plates, lady, and it’s this, that, and the other, and eight cups and saucers, and for the lot, I’m asking NOT ten pounds, NOT five pounds, NOT three pounds... fifty bob to you!,' and they get rid of this stuff like this. If they had sets of china, and they were all the same colour, they would say, 'You can 'ave 'em, ten bob to you, love. Any colour you like, they’re all blue.' And that was just part of that patter.
So, metaphorically, 'Any Colour You Like' is interesting, in that sense, because it denotes offering a choice where there is none. And it’s also interesting that in the phrase, 'Any colour you like, they’re all blue,' I don’t know why, but in my mind it’s always 'they’re all blue’, which, if you think about it, relates very much to the light and dark, sun and moon, good and evil. You make your choice but it’s always blue."
The new Dev Mode would connect to your tools and codebase; it would track what needs to go to production; and it would inspect files alongside code with Figma in VS Code. The difference lies in two new plans offered to developers, but they all come at a cost.
Any colour you like, but it’s always blue! The truth is inescapable because Figma will not give a subpar product of the present or the past as a choice to their current users. It does not want to give the third option of keeping to the original. Figma wants to evolve with a new business model.
Brain Damage
I’ll see you on the dark side of the moon!
We go back to how Apple keeps their shareholders happy by spinning new narratives around their key products and tweaking the formulas slightly. What it needs is a stage to announce the new arrivals. Timed to perfection, we have seen countless iterations of Apple products with different colours and their associated operating systems. What was an art form for Steve Jobs is now a mechanical, scientific formula to sustain the interest of Apple fans and investors. That same strategy is replicable at other conferences.
It is no surprise that other corporations picked this up quickly. Adobe and Figma are no different. All it needs is a recurring event, as well as the ability to dress it up with great visuals, great speakers, great networking opportunities, and great stories. The Config23 Conference is the WWDC of Figma. It would be said to have been a resounding success because many designers felt enlightened and empowered. And when a few designers chirped about the events, the rest followed like the same rising tide through social media.
Among the waves of exhilaration and adrenaline, the brain becomes a little foggier because of the stimuli that are given in the moment. Nine months ago, the initial uproar in the Figma community died down due to digital amnesia. Had Adobe acquired Figma three months ago, we may have heard a different reaction.
One lingering thought is how the conversation will be managed beyond the conference. Could Figma Dev Mode see a surge in adoption by the dev community? Could the designers act as advocates and push their organizations to take up new licenses? Could Figma continue building developer-centric features to drive more sales so as to “feed the Adobe beast”? There are more questions than answers at this point, but only time will tell whether Dev Mode pays dividends across its ecosystem.
Eclipse
All that’s to come and everything under the sun is in tune, but the sun is eclipsed by the moon.
I have nothing against Figma because it was, is, and will be a beautiful part of my life as a designer. The fact that I can share my work with the product team is liberating because no longer are designers seen as hermits with their specialized tools. We can effectively work together and build upon each other’s work. Dev Mode is a step toward making a developer’s experience in Figma great.
At the same time, all the good things in life have a dark side and tradeoffs. Like the eclipse, the moon blocks the sun, shrouding the Earth in darkness. Metaphorically, it is a sign of impending doom in the ancient world or a cautionary tale in our modern world. Dev Mode may make life difficult for design teams with lower design maturity in their organizations, especially those who used previous versions with their developers. Their developers will face a paywall to use a valuable feature once available to them. Their managers will weigh the benefits with their senior management and their finance teams. Design teams that once had a way of working now need to rework other scenarios of working in the new mode. Some rock-star product teams may have skipped past the process of rediscovering. For many normal teams, this will be a new, darker reality to face. Time will only tell the fate of design teams using Figma.
I was exposed to many different forms of inspiration in my early years as a designer. What fascinates me is that creativity can come from anywhere, including rock music. Revisiting Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon has been a walk down memory lane, recalling the beautiful things in my design life.
Coincidentally, Pink Floyd is celebrating their 50th anniversary in 2023 since the inception of their conceptual album. In many ways, they upheld the spirit of innovation, as their lyrics are still relevant today. So it was rather serendipitous to write about my personal reactions to Figma, linking them with the Dark Side of the Moon as my writing guide. But at this juncture, I would like to add one last section.
The Sun
There is no dark side in the moon, really. Matter of fact, it’s all dark. The only thing that makes it look light is the sun.
Those famous lines of lyrics by Pink Floyd’s Irish doorman, Gerry O’Driscoll, were added to the songs. Listen hard enough, and you would not find the last part of the sentence about the sun. It was only revealed during the making of The Dark Side of the Moon, released much later in 2003.
Yet the sun is a very important aspect of the discussion. The sun, in this case, is our hope and our positive energy to plot our next moves. Below is a summary of the key lessons to conclude the article.
1. Protect the babies. Feed the beast.
Ed Catmull, CEO of Pixar, spoke these words, and just like Figma, Disney consumed Pixar in a similar manner. Having a parent company is both a blessing and a curse in disguise. A blessing because there is financial security. A curse to bear because Pixar is now answerable to Disney, who is the beast that is always hungry for profit. In his book, Creativity Inc., Catmull shared the many lessons faced by the leadership team at Pixar. One of them was to safeguard the culture of his team by giving them a space to continue to do what’s best. Pixar continued to innovate under the guidance of their leader, who was very much part of their process. The hope is for Dylan Fields to adapt his leadership with Adobe by learning from another creative leader.
2. As designers, recognize the tools in the toolbox.
A Swiss Army knife is a great tool to use for various purposes, but it is not the only tool in the shed. More importantly, we need to be adaptable to changing conditions and be ambidextrous. We can work with the new conditions of the current tool, supplementing them with the right plugins or adjacent tools. Alternatively, we can seek a completely new tool that addresses the job to be done for not just the design team, but for your entire setup, including the developers, managers, and finance representatives. Lastly, garages are the birthplace of raw solutions. What if we could see UX/UI as open-source? With enough case studies to choose from, from Firefox to Linux to Blender, open source UX/UI could be the answer to truly making UX/UI accessible to all. Could we see this emerging in the years to come?
3. Reflect on what was shared.
Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky are best known for their System 1 and System 2 thinking. In a nutshell, System 1 operates automatically and quickly with no sense of voluntary control, while System 2 requires more concentration and includes complex computation.
In a Config23 Conference situation, there are many triggers that will activate more System 1 thinking, which in turn becomes beliefs when left unchecked. Here is the best advice provided by an article by Farnam Street: The best we can do is recognize situations in which mistakes are likely and try harder to avoid significant mistakes when the stakes are high.
Be on the other end and ask ourselves: By not having this, what are we losing? Our biases could lead to irrational thinking and behaviors. As designers, we need to conduct periodic reflection besides tapping only on emotions.
4. Find the beauty in everything.
Lastly, live in the moment. Create options and new perspectives beyond a single or binary choice, but also take the courage to seek the truth about matters. Figma is a great tool, but so are Photoshop, Invision, and others alongside it. As much as we possess these tools, we have to be cautious when they start to possess us.
Enjoy the days with Figma (hooray for auto layout and variables!) Recognize the tradeoffs and respond to future setbacks. As the sun sets with one tool, another will rise to take its place, but for what it's worth, let’s enjoy the beauty of both the sun and the moon.
⚠️ Updates to Figma Dev Mode (Aug 2023)
Since the date of publication, there have been some responses to the article, claiming that Figma is offering free “inspect” features. (Link to resource) Especially in beta, we are expected to receive new changes in Figma’s environment from user feedback. Figma has also made it clearer with the following statement:
“The ability to copy values, generate code, and export assets will remain free and accessible from Design Mode as a viewer. These features were previously in the Inspect panel of a design file, but are now incorporated into the updated right sidebar view-only experience under Properties and Export →”
There are still caveats:
- “Properties” is not “Inspect”. The “Inspect” that we once were familiar with no longer exists.
- As a viewer or editor, you can still copy code (CSS, iOS, Android) via right-click directly on the asset. That being said, it lacks context and additional information, which makes the “Inspect” panel such an attractive tool to use. From a usability standpoint, it is a poor experience. A possible nudge towards the paid Dev Mode model.
- Figma is a business that will need to continue to feed the Adobe beast. We can expect newer Dev. features to be behind the paywall. The collaboration between designers and developers will be challenged.
In this situation, I hope to be proven wrong that “anyone can be creative by creating free, simple, creative tools in a browser.” That, to me, is more of an open-source model, which Figma is not. Until then, we can only observe and see where Figma is headed next after the end of the free beta access in 2024.
Further Readings
- Berg, M. (2012, September 9). CS undergrad wins tech fellowship. The Brown Daily Herald. https://www.browndailyherald.com/article/2012/09/cs-undergrad-wins-tech-fellowship
- Catmull, E. (2015). Creativity, inc. Corgi.
- Farnam Street. (2014, July 23). Daniel Kahneman Explains The Machinery of Thought. Farnam Street. https://fs.blog/daniel-kahneman-the-two-systems/#:~:text=The%20Two%20Systems%20of%20Thinking&text=System%201%20operates%20automatically%20and
- Fields, D. (2020, December 9). Meet us in the browser. Figma. https://www.figma.com/blog/meet-us-in-the-browser/
- Fields, D. (2022, September 15). A New Collaboration with Adobe. Figma. https://www.figma.com/blog/a-new-collaboration-with-adobe/
- Figma. (2015). Five years of Figma. Figma. https://www.figma.com/five-years-of-figma/
- Figma. (2023). Design, prototype, and inspect (right sidebar). Figma Learn. https://help.figma.com/hc/en-us/articles/360039832014-Design-prototype-and-inspect-right-sidebar-#Inspect
- Longfellow, M. (Director). (2003). Pink Floyd — The Making Of The Dark Side Of The Moon (Classic Album). Amazon Prime.
- Mickle, T. (2022). After Steve. HarperCollins.
- MUSIC-AND-ART-45. (2023, May 28). The Meaning of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon. Spinditty. https://spinditty.com/genres/The-Meaning-of-Pink-Floyds-Dark-Side-of-the-Moon.
- Pink Floyd. (1973). The Dark Side of the Moon [Album]. Pink Floyd Music Ltd; Parlophone Records Limited.
- Rasmussen, K. (2023, June 21). Introducing Figma’s New Dev Mode | Figma Blog. Figma. https://www.figma.com/blog/introducing-dev-mode/
- Rose, P. (2015). Which one’s pink? : an analysis of the concept albums of Roger Waters & Pink Floyd. Collector’s Guide Publishing.
- Teixeira, F. (2022, September 19). Adobe Figma, The rise of the TikTok pattern, iOS 16 UI Kit. Medium. https://uxdesign.cc/adobe-figma-the-rise-of-the-tiktok-pattern-ios-16-ui-kit-190d6fd6aa58
- whimsea. (2023, June 22). Dev mode replacing inspect panel? Reddit. https://www.reddit.com/r/FigmaDesign/comments/14fwnyx/dev_mode_replacing_inspect_panel/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
