Figma Make Is Not the Future of Design
Figma recently launched Figma Make, a product that promises designers superpowers to prototype interactions. The marketing speaks of democratization, of lowering barriers, of making design more accessible. Yet the pricing tells a different story: Make is exclusively available to their highest "Full seat" tier. This isn't democratization. It's amplification of existing power structures.
While Make might rival tools like Vercel V0 and Loveable, it fundamentally misunderstands the moment we're in. The audience shouldn't be designers. It should be end users.
This is a textbook case of what Clayton Christensen called The Innovator's Dilemma. Figma isn't doing anything wrong by conventional business logic. They're listening to their users, responding to their needs, building features their customers request. But innovation isn't about what the voices say. It's about whose voices you choose to hear.
Figma, held captive by its existing market of design professionals, cannot see the emergent market growing from the force of AI. They're perfecting the horse-drawn carriage while the automobile is being invented in garages around the world.
