Capitalism & Enshittification of Design Apps
On Figma, evolution of products, conference highlights, and Pokemon
Hi friend,
Was recently in SF for Figma’s Config design conference with our team at Stranger Creative & QTBIPOC Design. (Always a delight to be in community IRL with our remote teams!)
Along with 8.5k other creatives, we got to mingle and learn about new product launches coming this year (Youtube). Naturally, had many thoughts…
(For context, Figma is a tool our teams use daily)
1. Growth & Copycats
In the last few years, Figma has grown substantially:
Our teams spend about 90% of our time in Figma for client work
All of our large enterprise client design and dev teams are on Figma
Figma is estimated to have 30-40% of creative market share, but may be higher (adoption seems to be increasing with all of our clients)
Figma’s announcement this year seemed exciting, but oddly reminiscent:
This isn’t entirely new - we’ve seen this in tech with some of the most familiar products we use:
Product: Apple iPhone vs. Google Pixel
Social Media: Tiktok vs. Instagram Reels
AI: ChatGPT vs. Google Gemini
With such a large (and growing) market share, Figma seems to be positioned best with all the resources to lead innovation and change. However, this elephant in the room was glossed over every glitzy reveal.
What should we come to expect of product launches?
What are the rules of decorum around copying features?
Is mimicry, innovation?
Speaking of mimicry, at last year’s conference, Figma announced AI… to only roll it back a few months later after it was simply copying other apps (The Verge)
2. From Innovator to Defender
When I first pivoted to Figma in 2019, live collaboration finally worked in a new and remarkable way.
Previously, designers were limited to file syncing (Dropbox, Google Drive, Box) and the number of collaborators were capped based on how fast each person’s internet speed was (file sync) and how reliable the service was (sync errors).
Figma transformed this workflow by allowing creatives to design directly into the cloud, introducing real-time edits with almost infinite number of collaborators.
Years later, Figma would introduce new features to help designers think about their creatives in a more dynamic, scalable, and flexible way. (Components, prototyping, plugins)
Market adoption was clear and the value to designers were even clearer: Figma was here to help us do a better, faster job.
But in recent years, the updates haven’t been as monumental or transformative.
3. Enshittification & Capitalism
This new direction makes complete sense when we factor in Figma’s upcoming IPO (Bloomberg).
Increase market share
Dominate competitors
Create a buzz to improve public / shareholder perception
Make lots and lots of money
In recent years, Figma’s cost has also skyrocketed (UX Collective).
Cory Doctorow explains this as “enshittification” at work (Medium):
Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die. I call this enshittification, and it is a seemingly inevitable consequence arising from the combination of the ease of changing how a platform allocates value, combined with the nature of a "two-sided market", where a platform sits between buyers and sellers, hold each hostage to the other, raking off an ever-larger share of the value that passes between them.
TLDR: an endless cycle of less innovation and rising costs.
On the bright side - these shifts inevitably create the space for the next generation of design tools to further transform how and what we create.
In the meantime, some interesting ones to keep your eyes on:
Canva growing rapidly due to it’s unique interface, catered towards non-designers
Spline streamlines 3D and animation rendering alongside real-time collaboration
Rotato an even simpler take on 3D visualizations and animation
Unicorn.Studio to create web-ready texturized animations and lettering
Life updates
Traveling over the next month to the west coast after a week in SF for Config to meet up with friends, family, and colleagues 🌉
Caught a nasty bug a few weeks ago while traveling - feeling much better now after much needed rainy day soups, ginger lemon teas, and medicine 🤒
Spending less time on social media lately has been essential to navigating the influx of news and spam 🗞️
Recent finds
Video: One of our favorite talks from Config, a production designer of Severance shares behind the scene creatives of the popular TV show.
Book: One of those books that changes your perspective about the world. Talks about the evolution of intelligence across species and how it isn’t the same as today’s AI, A Brief History of Intelligence: Evolution, AI, and the Five Breakthroughs That Made Our Brains by Max Solomon Bennett.
Mobile App: Recommended by one of our team members, I can’t seem to put down Pokemon Trading Card Game Pocket. The virtual pack opening and the cards are stunning to play with.
Explore the running list of past recommendations
Previous writings
As always, thanks for reading!
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With Metta (loving-kindness),
Steven
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Brought to you by friends at Stranger Creative & published in New York City, traditional lands of Mohican & Munsee Lenape tribes.