The Design Velocity Shift
Figma CEO Dylan Field has successfully framed a powerful truth: design is increasingly at the center of every industry in today's software economy. This shift has redefined the designer as a strategic leader, not just a creator of assets. The new imperative for business is not just to invest in design, but to make it move at the speed of software development. This relentless pursuit of design velocity is exactly where Figma's platform leaves its legacy competitors behind.
The key to Figma's dominance is its open, modular ecosystem, which fundamentally reduces the lag time between a concept and production—a lag that traditionally plagued design workflows built on legacy tools.
The New Mandate: Design is Everyone's Business
Field is clear: AI won't replace world-class designers, but it will eliminate the "drudgery"—the routine, time-consuming tasks that slow down creative momentum. This AI-driven efficiency allows designers to focus on higher-level strategy, vision, and judgment. The platform that wins is the one that best translates that creative vision into production speed. Field’s own company signage outside the New York Stock Exchange proclaimed: “Design is everyone’s business”. This shift is an operational imperative, demanding tools that empower every employee to contribute to the design process.
Figma's Velocity Engine: The Pillars of Speed
The future of design is a relentless pursuit of speed, and Figma accelerates this process through a deliberately open and interconnected platform. The ability to work quickly begins by tackling the blank canvas. Figma’s vast community and template library ensure teams rarely start from scratch, instantly standardizing elements like wireframes, design systems, and flowcharts (like FigJam). This lowers the barrier to entry, moving design out of its silo to include product managers, engineers, and marketers. By contrast, while older ecosystems like Adobe offer templates, they struggle to match the real-time, collaborative access and constantly refreshed, cloud-native library that Figma provides.
Next, the greatest drag on productivity—switching context between apps—is solved by Figma’s open, API-first approach, which fosters a truly modular workflow. This means the platform is built for instant integration. Designers can execute tasks like running accessibility checks, optimizing images, or generating dummy data directly on the canvas using plugins. Crucially, integrations with third-party apps like Maze (user testing) and Jira (handoff) create a seamless, end-to-end process. Traditional tools often require designers to stop work, export files, and re-import results, fragmenting the workflow, whereas Figma’s ecosystem constantly adapts to new industry tools.
Beyond the Canvas: Collaboration and Code Handoff
The core differentiator remains Figma's collaborative DNA; it was built for real-time teamwork, blurring the lines between design, engineering, and product management. The old friction-filled handoff is eliminated because the design file is a live specification document. Developers can enter Inspect Mode and pull precise CSS, iOS (Swift), or Android (XML) code snippets and specs directly from the file in the browser.
Figma further simplifies this with features like Auto Layout, which allows designers to create truly responsive components that adjust automatically as content or screen size changes. This means the design is production-ready, reducing guesswork and shortening the cycle for engineers. This instantaneous collaboration is how design "reshapes business," accelerating time-to-market and empowering companies to be swifter and more competitive.
The Takeaway: Judgment, Taste, and Agency
Field's core message holds up: the goal is not replacement, but amplification. Design's judgment, taste, and agency will matter more than ever as software continues its exponential growth. The tools that win are the ones that facilitate this empowerment, turning every designer into a strategic force capable of rapid, data-informed execution. The challenge for every business is clear: if your design tool is slowing down your engineers, fragmenting your team, and preventing quick adoption of new AI/plugin capabilities, it’s preventing you from achieving the necessary Design Velocity required for success in the software economy.
Works Cited
Field, Dylan. "Figma’s CEO said his software won’t replace the work of a world-class designer." Business Insider, 2 Oct. 2025, https://www.businessinsider.com/figma-ceo-dylan-field-software-wont-replace-designers-2025-10.
Safian, Bob. "Figma’s Dylan Field on how design can continue to reshape business." Fast Company, 1 Oct. 2025, https://www.fastcompany.com/91414468/figmas-dylan-field-on-how-design-can-continue-to-reshape-business.
Imagine Cloud. "Figma vs Adobe XD: main differences." 2025.
Mettevo. "Figma vs. Adobe XD: Which to Choose for Web Design in 2025?" 20 May 2025.
NUMI Blog. "Figma vs Adobe XD, How Do They Compare? Is Figma Better?" 2025.
PwC. "2025 AI Business Predictions." 2025.
Superflex.ai. "Figma vs. Adobe XD: Which is the Reigning Champion of UX/UI Design?" 22 May 2025.
Utility. "Why Figma Replaced Sketch in UX/UI Design." 2 June 2024.
YouTube. "Figma CEO Dylan Field: "Design is everyone's business" | Rapid Response." 1 Oct. 2025, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZhGJeWOxjRM
