[Insights]
FromFigmatoshipped:killingthehandoff,keepingthecraft
The handoff was never a process step, it was a translation loss. Design-to-code workflows finally let the person with the vision carry it all the way to production.
Every designer knows the feeling of seeing their work launched and doing a quiet inventory of everything that got lost: the spacing that drifted, the easing that became linear, the empty state nobody built. None of it was malice. It's what happens when intent has to survive a translation between two people with different tools and different deadlines.
The fix isn't better redlines or longer specs. It's shortening the distance between deciding and seeing. When the person who cares about the detail can change the detail, the detail survives. That used to require designers who code. Now it requires designers who can direct: clear about intent, specific about feel, fast at judging what's in front of them.
“Specs describe what you meant. Shipping it yourself is the only spec that can't be misread.”
In practice my flow looks like this: structure and visual language get decided in Figma, where thinking in systems is still fastest. Then the build happens conversationally, component by component, with the real content, real motion and real breakpoints on screen. The Figma file stops being a contract and goes back to being what it always should have been: a sketchbook.
The craft didn't disappear from this process. It moved closer to the surface, where users can actually feel it.
Still losing your designs in translation?
Let's look at where your design-to-production pipeline leaks, and what closing it would take.