Why This Direction, Why Now
Why This Direction, Why Now
The Case for Change
The most verifiable argument isn’t about AI adoption or competitive pressure. It’s about medium mismatch. Figma is a static tool. The experiences we are being asked to design are not static. They are dynamic, non-deterministic, context-sensitive, and multi-path by nature. Figma can show a single path with craft and precision. It cannot show the many all at once. The medium we work in no longer matches the design problem in front of us. That gap is not a preference or a philosophy. It is structural, and it is widening.
The second argument is about speed, but not the kind usually invoked. The question is not whether we can move faster. The question is what the real terminal limit on speed actually is. For most of our history, tools were the bottleneck. Slow tools, slow feedback loops, slow iteration. AI removes that bottleneck. Which means the constraint shifts to human cognition itself – how fast we can think, frame, and make decisions. That is a fundamentally different design condition. It means the tools and processes we adopt should be calibrated to cognitive speed, not to the pace of prior tooling that no longer sets the ceiling.
The third argument is about expertise. AI-first is not a tech-first mindset. It is not a feature trend. It is the condition of the products our customers are using and will come to expect. Every product in the market is being reshaped by non-deterministic, language-powered interaction. Our users are forming new intuitions about what software can and should do. If we are going to build tools that reflect wisdom about AI – its strengths, its failure modes, its design constraints – we need to understand it at a level deeper than our customers do. That is a craft argument. It is a professional expertise argument. It is not optional if we take seriously what it means to build great products in this moment.
Finally, the resource reality. We have less headcount than we did before, and we are not backfilling. This is not the opening argument, because it activates a scarcity mindset before people have a reason to feel ambitious. But it is the honest closing beat. The design rationale above is reason enough to move in this direction. The headcount reality means we do not have the runway to move toward it slowly.
The Adoption Reality
We are heading into another adoption cycle, and it is already sorting itself out. Some people on the team are leading. Others are moving more cautiously. Some will lag, and some will resist. That variability is predictable and it is not a problem to be solved in a single meeting. It is terrain to be understood and navigated over time.
What makes this cycle different from prior ones is the stakes. The tools are not peripheral. The shift in how we design is not incremental. The people who move through this cycle faster will be building new intuitions, new workflows, and new forms of craft judgment. The people who move through it slower will not just be behind on tooling. They will be building their intuitions on a model of design that is becoming less relevant.
The Resistance Map
Not everyone who is moving slowly is resistant in the same way. The differences matter because the same intervention applied across all of these groups backfires. More demos do not help someone who is afraid. Structural space does not help someone who has not seen enough yet. Acknowledging the threat does not help someone who just needs a guided on-ramp. Grouping by the intervention required is more useful than grouping by the symptom.
Missing the signal – need exposure, not explanation
Some people have not had their own moment yet. They have seen enough bad AI output to be genuinely uncertain about where the quality bar lives in these new workflows. They are not resistant. They are appropriately skeptical based on incomplete evidence. More argumentation does not move them. Direct experience does, ideally in a low-stakes context where they can make something and evaluate it themselves.
Missing the path – need a legible bridge, not a destination
Some people can see where things are heading but cannot see how to get there from where they stand today. The destination is distant enough that the middle, the period of visible incompetence in front of peers, feels more real than the endpoint. They cannot picture the workflow of the future, not because they are opposed to it, but because it is too discontinuous from their current day-to-day. What they need is not a clearer destination. It is a visible next step from where they are standing.
Missing the space – need structural permission, not persuasion
Some people understand the value. They are not skeptical. They are simply unable to invest in something exploratory when they are underwater with current delivery. Others are waiting for a sanctioned approach, a team-level toolkit, a defined process. They have learned, often correctly, that early adoption means doing it twice. Both groups are waiting for a structural condition that does not yet exist. Persuading them harder does not change the condition.
Feeling the threat – need acknowledgment, not more evidence
Some people are feeling something that is harder to name. Fear of what this means for the future of design as a discipline, for HubSpot, for the SaaS model. A quieter identity disruption, because their craft is bound up in specific tools and specific ways of making. Figma is not just software for them. It is how they think. And something that the adoption curve is surfacing but rarely named openly: junior designers and non-designers are picking this up faster, which is quietly disorienting for senior practitioners. More evidence and more demonstrations do not address any of this. Acknowledgment does. Creating space for people to name what they are actually feeling moves them faster than any amount of proof.
The through-line across all four groups is the same. The path from here to there is not visible, and the transition cost feels personal in ways the destination does not account for. Making the path legible, and making the cost of the transition feel shared rather than individual, is the actual leadership challenge. The argument for the direction is strong. The work is helping people move through it.