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🤿 phase 4

🤿 phase 4

the first designer at Adobe + Figma

Ridd
December 12, 2024

Did you know that the very first interface designer at Adobe was also the first designer to work on Figma? 🤯

His name is Andrei Herasimchuk and he knows a lot about design tooling…

So this week’s episode is jam-packed with stories about designing the earliest interfaces for Illustrator and Photoshop, as well as what it was like seeing the original seed of an idea that became Figma.

Not only that… Andrei gives us a behind-the-scenes of his new design tooling startup and shares his vision for where software creation is headed next 👀

Some highlights to expect:

How AI fits into his new product strategy
The bizarre story of Andrei’s first day at Adobe
The 3 types of designers that will exist in the future
What it was like joining Figma as the first designer in 2012
How Andrei defined the initial keyboard shortcuts in design tools
The #1 trait of designers he’s worked with over the last 3 decades
When to break out of the familiar interaction patterns for design tooling
+ a lot more

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

🤝 WITH PLAY

There is so much more to good design than what it looks like… It’s also how it feels and functions

Now I can accomplish a lot in Figma but there’s still a ceiling there. Which is why I’m so excited about Play 2.0.

Play allows you to create ultra realistic prototypes because for the first time you can design interactions with native iOS gestures and Apple’s Core Animation.

So your prototypes feel real because they are real…

Which is why so many of the best designers I know are all using Play to design and prototype their mobile apps 👇

🎓 KEY TAKEAWAYS

Insights from the OG tool designer

1 — The fourth phase of design tooling

1️⃣ — Pixels

The Macintosh brought pixels into the mainstream with products like MacPaint Pro. This continued into the early 1990’s including the earliest versions of Photoshop.

2️⃣ — Layers

In 1994 Photoshop 3 launched which ushered us into the “layers” era. All of a sudden you could do blend modes, transparency, etc.

3️⃣ — Objects

Eventually products like Fireworks brought even greater functionality (ex: border radius, box shadows, new transforms, etc.). This tech continued to mature through Sketch and eventually Figma.

4️⃣ — Components (this is what Andrei believes is next)

A big part of Andrei’s vision for Seldon is figuring out how to make components that feel fluid (you know… so you don’t cmd+opt+b them all day long).

Because this flexibility could open a lot of doors…

For starters, component-driven design tools unlock a higher ceiling for AI. This is because components are inherently semantic which makes it easier for an LLM to understand its role in a given design and make intelligent suggestions.

The more I talk to people building in this space the more clear it becomes that components have to be the foundation for AI. It’s no wonder why Figma invested in their simple design system leading up to 2024 Config.

The problem is that components in Figma aren’t really components… they’re “objects” meant to mimic code components. That’s where the rigidity comes from (and why my slot components breakdown is my most popular tutorial ever).

The fourth phase of design is where components become flexible, expressive, and built directly into the tool itself.

2 — AI will introduce new interaction paradigms

AI is going to fundamentally change how we think about the inputs in our design process…

“you could drop in a whole PRD, combine it with a couple of sketches and the recent data from your research team… AI can process all this”

Andrei Herasimchuk

But that’s just the start…

For a long time we’ve lived in a paradigm where your layer list is on the left and your properties are on the right, but Andrei thinks AI is going to disrupt that 👀

“AI is a paradigm shift the same way in that the mouse, when it came out to manipulate and draw pixels on a computer screen, was an entirely new interaction paradigm”

Andrei Herasimchuk

The mouse meant that all of a sudden you have new buttons and types of interactions (ex: click and drag). As a result the early painting apps had wildly different interfaces. Because nobody really knew what they were doing yet 😅

Andrei believes we’re about to enter a similar era in design tools.

3 — The three types of designers in the future

Andrei believes AI will eventually split the industry into a few buckets:

1) Designers who tend to be more business-oriented with a focus on higher level positioning. These people will begin to blend with traditional product management roles.

2) Designers who tend to be more qualitatively-driven and enjoy getting into the weeds of how people use the product. This is where traditional UX people live these days.

3) Designers who build the actual components. Notice I used the word “build” not “design”. These people will have to bring a pretty technical skillset to the table (Andrei uses the term “design engineer”).

Andrei compares this final bucket to modern day typographers. In the same way that most teams use existing typography, we’ll have a lot of existing components to choose from and they’ll be built directly into our tools. That means the people building them will be more niche craftsman vs. a role that exists on every team.