Figma Unveils Major Redesign and New Features at Config 2024

At the Config 2024 conference, Figma introduced a significant UI redesign and a suite of new features to enhance user experience and streamline the design process. This is the first major UI update in nearly five years.

Key Highlights

1. New User Interface (UI3)

The redesigned UI3 offers a more immersive canvas, a component-centered UI, and a new icon set, improving access to Figma's extensive tools while maintaining familiar workflow patterns.

2. Advanced AI Capabilities

• Make Designs: Quickly generate UI layouts from text prompts.
• Visual Search: Easily find specific designs using screenshots or sketches.
• Content Creation Tools: Automate tasks like filling projects with realistic text and images, removing backgrounds, and creating prototypes.

3. Figma Slides

Figma Slides is a new tool for creating interactive presentations. It supports collaboration with comments, chat, audio, and an organized grid view.

4. Improved Dev Mode

Updates to Dev Mode include:

• Ready for Dev View: Helps developers find and update design elements efficiently.
• Focus View: Allows developers to focus on ready-to-build designs.
• Code Connect: Integrates design systems code across various frameworks and languages, now generally available.

5. Auto Layout Enhancements

Auto Layout is more intuitive, automatically suggesting and creating necessary frames. Users can hold ctrl to set absolute positions within Auto Layout frames.

6. UI Kits and Responsive Prototype Viewer

• UI Kits: Access pre-built UI kits from Apple, Google, and Figma.
• Responsive Prototype Viewer: View and present prototypes on any screen size, respecting constraints and Auto Layout properties.

Figma's latest updates, announced at Config 2024, mark a significant enhancement in design tool capabilities. With the new UI3, advanced AI features, Figma Slides, and improvements to Dev Mode and Auto Layout, Figma continues to empower designers and developers to create, collaborate, and innovate efficiently!

Figma AI and UI3 are in limited beta, with a full rollout planned through 2024. Figma Slides is in free beta, with full availability expected in early 2025. For more information and to join the beta, visit Figma's Help Center.

What are your thoughts on these updates? Do they meet your expectations for making your work as a designer easier and more efficient?