Figma Design VP Says Job Candidates Must Now Show Multiple AI-Generated Prototypes

Noah Levin, vice president of product design at Figma, said Thursday that AI tools have raised the bar for job candidates by enabling the rapid creation of polished, interactive prototypes. Levin, who has held the role for more than eight years, stated that a decade ago it was difficult to find designers capable of producing ideas that felt like finished products because of limited technical skills.

Producing 10 interactive working prototypes before AI tools arrived required too much effort to justify, he said.

"What's changed a lot is that AI has made it possible to prototype your ideas in record time without technical knowledge and detail," Levin said. He now expects every candidate to express designs in the highest fidelity possible and to use AI tools to generate several realistic prototypes.

Levin added that he wants to see candidates who have experimented with new AI tools rather than lagging behind current practices.

At the same time, he said candidates cannot simply produce default AI outputs and must bring their own problem-solving and craft to the work. Levin said he particularly values candidates who show prototypes that failed and were discarded. He noted that hundreds of such discarded ideas, prototypes, and mock-ups lie behind every configuration launch Figma has presented this year.

Before joining Figma, Levin led the UX team at ClassPass and worked as a designer at Google.