RA: When Claude Design launched, there was a lot of talk about what it meant for Figma. Do you think tools like this challenge your place in the industry?
LC: We certainly believe that AI raises the floor. And we’re adding AI to Figma, but we’re adding it in a way that has a different point of view than many of these tools.
Our goal is not to generate more work, but to create better work. AI becomes a tool in the human arsenal, but it’s one of the tools they can use.
I actually think Figma becomes even more important in this scenario, because you have a multiplayer canvas, you’re there with your team, you have an infinite space for exploration and direct control over what you’re producing, or what AI produces.
And if you look at all of these tools, their first action is to take whatever AI generates into Figma, because they realise that’s what creative people actually want.
RA: How do you build a creative culture?
LC: I think a lot about helping ideas reach escape velocity. Ideas are fragile, and they might not become something, depending on the environment and how you cultivate them.
I’ll give you Motion as an example. We knew we wanted to work on motion, but it was really easy to overthink what motion would be at Figma. Will it be a mode? Will it be a tab?
We had a few rounds of conversations where instead of making, we were just debating things. The idea did not have momentum. In the end, the right move was to get the product in staging. The team could pick any direction – just get it to be real so we can play with it.
And honestly the moment it was in staging, the team accelerated on their own. There were very few decisions where we got stuck.