Thoughts on the 2024 Design Tools Survey
Tommy Geoco and team are finally out with the results of their 2024 UX Design Tools Survey.
First, two quick observations before I move on to longer ones:
- The respondent population of 2,200+ designers is well-balanced among company size, team structure, client vs. product focus, and leadership responsibility
- Predictably, Figma dominates the tools stacks of most segments
Surprise #1: Design Leaders Use AI More Than ICs
From the summary of the AI section:
Three clear patterns emerge from our data:
1. Leadership-IC Divide. Leaders adopt AI at a higher rate (29.0%) than ICs (19.9%)
2. Text-first adoption. 75.2% of AI usage focuses on writing, documentation, and content—not visuals
3. Client Influence. Client-facing designers show markedly higher AI adoption than internal-facing peers
That nine-point difference is interesting. The report doesn’t go into speculating why, but here are some possible reasons:
- Design leaders are experimenting with AI tools looking for efficiency gains
- Leaders write more than design, so they’re using AI more for emails, memos, reports, and presentations
- ICs are set in their processes and don’t have time to experiment
I believe that any company operating with resource constraints—which is all startups—needs to embrace AI. AI enables us to do more. I don’t believe—at least not yet—mid- to senior-level jobs are on the line. Engineers can use Cursor to write code, sure, but it’s probably better for them to give Cursor junior-level tasks like bug fixes. Designers should use AI to generate prototypes so that they can test and iterate on ideas more quickly.
The data here is stale, unfortunately. The survey was conducted between November 2024 and January 2025, just as the AI prompt-to-code tools were coming to market. I suspect we will see a huge jump in next year’s results.
Surprise #2: There’s Excitement for Framer
I’m surprised about Framer winning the “Future of Design” award. Maybe it’s the name of the award; does Framer really represent the “future of design”? Ten percent of respondents say they want to try this.
I’ve not gone back to Framer since its early days when it supported code exports. I will give them kudos that they’ve pivoted and built a solid business and platform. I’m personally weary of creating websites for clients in a closed platform; I would rather it be portable like a Node.js app or even WordPress. But to each their own.
Not Surprised at All
In the report’s conclusion, its first two points are unsurprising:
- AI enters the workflow. 8.5% of designers cited AI tools as their top interest for 2025. With substantial AI tooling innovation in early 2025, we expect widespread adoption to accelerate next year.
Like I mentioned earlier, I think this will shift big time.
- Design-code gap narrows. Addressing the challenge faced by 46.3% of teams reporting inconsistencies between design system specifications and code implementations.
As I said in a previous essay on the future of product design, the design-to-code gap is begging to be solved, “For any designer who has ever handed off a Figma file to a developer, they have felt the stinging disappointment days or weeks later when it’s finally coded.…The developer handoff experience has been a well-trodden path full of now-defunct or dying companies like InVision, Abstract, and Zeplin.”
Reminder: The Tools Don’t Make You a Better Designer
Inevitably, someone in the comments section will point this out: Don’t focus on the tool. To quote photographer and camera reviewer Ken Rockwell, “Cameras don’t take pictures, photographers do. Cameras are just another artist’s tool.” Tools are commodities, but our skills as craftspeople, thinkers, curators, and tastemakers are not.
