After Figma: The Next Design Tool

Screen design hasn’t reached its peak yet.
Or at least I thought so when I saw that AI was coming.
I was wrong, though.

The other day saw the Figma event where they announced what’s coming next to Figma. It’s all about AI features, of course.
It’s all exciting and none is essential.

We reached maturity.

The tools do what supposed to.
The screen design patterns are established.
There are more UX designers than projects.
Now we optimize and scale what works.
The screens are concerned.

The industry feels a bit stale and running in circles.

As creatives, we need a new creative challenge.
A new platform to concern.

And it doesn’t look like will be virtual reality (VR).
The tech is not ready for the consumer market. There are cartoonish graphics and motion sickness we need to solve first.

We need smoother onboarding as consumers to the full virtual experience. So let’s start with augmented reality (AR).

This is where I see the next big design challenge.
And it’s not in the AR product itself but in the design tooling.

Nowadays 99% of AR and VR products are designed and developed using game engines. Mostiny Unity and Unreal engine. So if you want to design an AR business tool you need to use game dev tools.

But most game developers don’t care about creating AR business products. While UX designers find game engines to be foreign territory.

So there is a big opposition here in the shape of a design tool that we are missing right now.

We need a simple project set-up.
More approachable 3D and spatial design interface.
We will need the ability to compile for all platforms.
And if possible not write any code.

I’m not sure if Adobe is ready for this challenge or if it’s even looking in this direction.

But the opportunity is there for the taking.