Today's innovators are racing to change product development,
02.1
THE OPPORTUNITY / COMP. RECON
02.1
THE OPPORTUNITY / COMP. RECON
Cursor
Lovable
Framer
Coding with natural language.
Cursor is an IDE (built on VS Code) overhauled with automation to streamline and make coding more accessible.
Pros / Cons
Deeply integrated in dev workflows (as an IDE)
Fully supports complexity, embracing the power of code
Requires code fluency to work well
No systems-level design thinking
Not visual, making it less accessible for non-devs
Designing with natural language.
Lovable is an AI UI builder that turns plain text prompts into screens.
Pros
Great for building alignment with PMs
Fast and simple exploration
Cons
No real logic or behavior
Poor scalability, falls apart under complexity
Generated designs don't become systems
Developing without code.
Framer gives designers the power to build polished, responsive sites without writing code.
Pros
Visual development is intuitive and accessible
Component based
Cons
No deep logic or branching flows
Lacks system perspective (still screen-by-screen)
Not built for complexity (no conditions, states, or BE)
Cursor
Lovable
Framer
Coding with natural language.
Cursor is an IDE (built on VS Code) overhauled with automation to streamline and make coding more accessible.
Pros / Cons
Deeply integrated in dev workflows (as an IDE)
Fully supports complexity, embracing the power of code
Requires code fluency to work well
No systems-level design thinking
Not visual, making it less accessible for non-devs
Designing with natural language.
Lovable is an AI UI builder that turns plain text prompts into screens.
Pros
Great for building alignment with PMs
Fast and simple exploration
Cons
No real logic or behavior
Poor scalability, falls apart under complexity
Generated designs don't become systems
Developing without code.
Framer gives designers the power to build polished, responsive sites without writing code.
Pros
Visual development is intuitive and accessible
Component based
Cons
No deep logic or branching flows
Lacks system perspective (still screen-by-screen)
Not built for complexity (no conditions, states, or BE)
02.2
THE OPPORTUNITY / OPP. STATEMENT
02.2
THE OPPORTUNITY / OPP. STATEMENT
but they all struggle with complexity and scalability.
I'll also be addressing collaboration, documentation, and version history.
Users are building from inside the product, but complex systems require perspective.
Inside a product
>
High-level view
>
Architecting a system
|
03.0
THE SOLUTION
03.0
THE SOLUTION
So how can Figma meet the need?
03.1
SOLUTION DEMO / PROCESS
03.1
SOLUTION DEMO / PROCESS
Primary Research
Critique
Usability Testing
How do professional designers work, and what's inhibiting them today?
I used surveys and interviews with professional product designers from industry leading orgs to learn…
Take-aways
Documentation is done differently everywhere
Onboarding and familiarizing with a new team's work is difficult
Current ai product builders are surface level
AI is the future of front-end engineering
Building basic knowledge of back end systems is invaluable to product feasibility
Designing for async critique.
I built slide decks at various stages in the project to send out to a handful of working product designers, allowing them to leave their feedback as comments at their own pace and convenience.
Testing with student designers.
I (painstakingly) prototyped Figma inside Figma to observe how designers at different experience levels navigated my features.
Take-aways
High-complexity flows are difficult to test without an excessively comprehensive prototype (in Figma)
Github vocabulary (pull, push, repo, etc.) were unintuitive
Testers found the proposed file-structure too rigid
Iteration
I find pushing designs through thorough iteration within a feedback loop works best for me.
Primary Research
Critique
Usability Testing
How do professional designers work, and what's inhibiting them today?
I used surveys and interviews with professional product designers from industry leading orgs to learn…
Take-aways
Documentation is done differently everywhere
Onboarding and familiarizing with a new team's work is difficult
Current ai product builders are surface level
AI is the future of front-end engineering
Building basic knowledge of back end systems is invaluable to product feasibility
Designing for async critique.
I built slide decks at various stages in the project to send out to a handful of working product designers, allowing them to leave their feedback as comments at their own pace and convenience.
Testing with student designers.
I (painstakingly) prototyped Figma inside Figma to observe how designers at different experience levels navigated my features.
Take-aways
High-complexity flows are difficult to test without an excessively comprehensive prototype (in Figma)
Github vocabulary (pull, push, repo, etc.) were unintuitive
Testers found the proposed file-structure too rigid
Iteration
I find pushing designs through thorough iteration within a feedback loop works best for me.
03.2
SOLUTION DEMO / PLANNING A PRODUCT
03.2
SOLUTION DEMO / PLANNING A PRODUCT
To show you, let's build an app, starting with planning.
Let’s make a tik-tok-style social media app that helps inform high-school student career choices.
03.3
SOLUTION DEMO / DEFINING A FLOW
03.3
SOLUTION DEMO / DEFINING A FLOW
Now let's focus on a single flow.
Animation, illustration, a personal design system, pro-bono local-business work, I almost always have something going on, don't hesitate to ask me about it.
03.3
SOLUTION DEMO / DEFINING A FLOW
03.3
SOLUTION DEMO / DEFINING A FLOW
With planning done, we can design our screens (I'll do this part for you).
Animation, illustration, a personal design system, pro-bono local-business work, I almost always have something going on, don't hesitate to ask me about it.
You can find some of this in my
04.0
MORE FEATURES
04.0
MORE FEATURES
You've got the big-picture, now what else?
Let's address the "other" problems.
04.1
MORE FEATURES
04.1
MORE FEATURES
Empowering complex, centralized product work with supportive features.
(extra features)
Collaboration
Documentation
Version history
05.0
REFLECTION
05.0
REFLECTION
The future of product work blurs the line between roles.
The tools that come out on top will blur these lines slowly, and with respect to each discipline, while making everything a bit more accessible to everyone.
