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Beyond Figma: AI-native design workflow

Moved design into the product org's builder model by retiring Figma entirely, and rebuilt the handoff so engineers' AI agents read it directly.

2026

Role
Product design manager, lead of the PD AI infrastructure team
Team
4-person cross-disciplinary team, serving the whole product team
Stack
  • Claude Code
  • Codex
  • GitLab
  • Slack
  • VS Code
Outcome
Figma retired, projects start without a designer

The shift

The whole product org at ShopBack is shifting to work as product builders. Each product is one end-to-end workflow across product management, design and data, and every builder is expected to build across it with AI. The product design team had to show what that meant in practice, and help non-designers design.

What made it hard

  • Root cause: Figma was not AI-friendly. Its AI integration was weak and restrictive, what it handed to AI was poor, and outside of designers almost no one knew how to use it. The tool became one of the main blockers stopping non-designers from designing.
  • Consequence: Design resources stayed scarce, so product managers kept working as usual and queued requests for designers.
  • Constraint: Product managers didn't believe AI was ready to design. Designers were hesitant to leave the tool they knew and loved. Engineers preferred Figma as the handoff artefact. Retiring Figma meant replacing a process that teams relied on.

What I did

Killing Figma.

Design should not be about cleaning up layers, checking that tokens follow the standard, fixing detached components or wiring screens into a prototype. None of that is design. Those are chores, and as long as we stay on Figma, they stay with us.

Figma keeps shipping features to make this easier, but our workflow should not wait on a product we cannot control. The ability to design should not be limited by a tool. AI takes the chores off our hands, which leaves more time for better design, not AI slop.

I led the PD AI infrastructure team of 4, a designer, a researcher and a localisation specialist, with one goal: make it possible for non-designers to design. We shipped:

  • Claude plugins
  • MCP
  • Slack agents
  • Guidelines via graph engineering
  • Agent-readable handoff template

Each one helps non-designers create good design and share their ideas.

What changed

  • Projects now start without a designer, which frees designers for higher-impact work.
  • Figma is gone from the team's workflow, and handoff now runs through an agent-readable template.
  • 100% of the product design team uses Claude Code to design.
  • The first Figmaless hi-fi design in the team's history went to engineering kickoff.
  • Designers produce better interactions, animation and prototypes, which help them communicate and let stakeholders see the idea sooner.