Design-to-code gains are uneven, and collaboration is fraying

Ando Rajaohérisoa, writing for Refonte Learning, pulls together three separate August 2026 events to argue that design-to-code tools have crossed from prototyping into production. Figma's own randomized controlled trial of 100 participants found a 20% reduction in cumulative task time with Figma Make, but the gain was uneven: product managers improved broadly while designers saw significant speedups only on the hardest task. Rajaohérisoa's more useful point sits in the Designer Fund and Foundation Capital survey of over 900 designers, where weekly AI use jumped from 54% to 91% even as the share reporting reduced collaboration rose from 5% to 20%. The implication is that implementation literacy, not handoff documentation, becomes the scarcer skill.