In last week’s episode about the Future of AI in Figma, Jordan Singer raved about visual search as the killer feature:

But here’s the crazy thing…

Visual search wasn’t the plan at all. It was actually a mid-project pivot 🤯

Here’s the story of how a design engineer named Vincent made it happen 👇

🔍 The story of visual search in Figma

Remember the old Diagram website and the man who broke design Twitter?

Marco’s Bento grid painted a picture of an AI assistant that designed alongside you in Figma. And after they announced their Diagram acquisition at Config 2023, the Figma team talked a lot about the potential for AI-powered “auto complete”.

But it turns out that creating an AI assistant capable of predicting your next move in Figma is hard. Like… really hard.

Github Copilot has a flashing cursor to tell the AI where the suggestion should be placed… but Figma has an infinite canvas 😬

So they decided to reduce the scope of the project and focus on “component suggestions” as a hackathon project. This removed the spatialization problem by displaying AI recommendations in the asset panel.

People internally at Figma loved the demo and it worked great for things like onboarding screens. But as the UI scenarios became more complex, the system started to break down…

What happened next fundamentally changed Figma’s roadmap and laid the foundation for the next wave of AI functionality.

But it took a design engineer going cowboy mode, a technical breakthrough, and a viral prototype video to get there 👀

This is the backstory of Figma’s new visual search feature (it’s a good one).

Listen on YouTube, Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts 👇

P.S. here’s Vincent’s original video pitch for visual search. It took some finagling with the Figma PR team but now you get to be the first non-Figmate to see it :)

👀 Inside look at the process behind Linear’s new home page

I’ve decided that I want to be like Gavin Nelson when I grow up.

He continually pushes himself out of his comfort zone, gets stuck, figures out how to get himself unstuck, and then comes away with a new skill (whether it’s icon design techniques, SwiftUI prototypes, etc).

If you want a look at his (unscientific) method, he wrote a fantastic article detailing his process for creating the 3D renders on the new Linear home page.

TOGETHER WITH ​FRAMER​

💻 Introducing the new AI web design kit

Framer just dropped a banger of a template for free.

It includes a ton of components, layouts, and a whole set of 3D assets that you can use for your next project 💪

(there’s even a matching Figma file)

🦸‍♀️ Become a Framer hero in a week

There is 0 chance I would’ve been able to launch the latest Dive website without the help of Tim Gabe.

The way he’s able to succinctly break down complex topics is so impressive.

I’ve been anticipating his Framer course for months and it’s finally here 🙌

• 23+ hours of in-depth lessons

• 120+ videos

• Lifetime Access To This Course

• Notion course companion

• Community forum

And you can get 25% off if you enroll today 👇

🌶️ Thoughts on user research and Teenage Engineering

Last week, Josh Taylor (former VP of design at Solana) wrote a Twitter thread in response to the Config talk with the CEO of Teenage Engineering.

I thought it was so good that I asked him if I could post it on the Dive website to share with you. He agreed 🙌

So here are his (spicy) thoughts on user research 👇

🏛️ The Future of Design collection

Maven just launched their new Future of Design collection and it’s 🔥

Here are a few of my favorites:

1) UI Engineering 101 for Designers → 

⤷ If you’re looking to break into design engineering then this is your course. Mariana Castilho and Derek Briggs are the perfect duo to teach it and I’ve already claimed my spot in the September cohort.

2) Next level web design →

⤷ Benten has been crushing lately. My personal taste library is full of his designs so if you want to learn web design techniques from a master of his craft then this is your course.

3) Build your personal brand as a designer →

⤷ The decision to invest in my personal brand was the tipping point for my career. When I started out, Oliur was one of the first people I looked to for inspiration. This course could put you on a totally new trajectory.

4) Advanced Figma Training Program →

⤷ 5,000+ designers have learned advanced tactics through Figma Academy. This program goes beyond the features and teaches you second-level strategies to make a bigger impact on your team. There are live workshops and I review all of your work with personalized Loom videos.

For the next week, the link above gets you 25% off the August cohort ☝️

🤿 Meet the Dive partners

I made a list of my favorite products and asked them to come on as sponsors of the newsletter/podcast. They said yes 🥹

The #1 way to support Dive Club is to check them out👇

​​Jitter​ → How I animate my designs

​​Framer​ → How I build my websites

​​Maven ​→ How I invest in my career

​​Raycast ​→ How I do pretty much everything on my computer

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