🇯🇵 Schema by Figma: Tokyo Recap

Quick Overview

Figma presented highlights from the Schema 2025 event, focusing on design system evolution and three key initiatives: designing for agility, incorporating code-based context, and designing for all product stakeholders, while demonstrating new features like Extended Collections for variables and Slots for component composition.

Key Points: Figma is pursuing three key initiatives to evolve design systems: designing for agility, incorporating code-based context, and designing for all product stakeholders including PMs and researchers. The new Extended Collections feature allows users to create derived variable collections by inheriting from a parent collection, enabling efficient theme expansion across multiple brands, as demonstrated with the Astra video, board, and audio brands. The demonstration showed that overriding a property in a child collection (e.g., changing a color in 'Astra Board') only affects that child, while changing the parent ('Astra Video') propagates unless overridden in the child. The upcoming 'Slots' feature resolves the pain point of needing to detach instances to place other instances inside, allowing users to convert a layer to a Slot and accept other instances, enabling flexible layout component creation. The 'Check' feature, similar to third-party design linters, allows users to validate designs against variable application, hardcoded values, and contrast issues, with suggestions learned internally based on usage frequency. Variable collection mode limits are expanding: Pro plans get 4 modes, Organization plans get 20 modes, and Enterprise plans get 40 modes. Other updates include native export/import for variables (JS file export) and the ability to import NPM packages (React components only, currently) directly into Figma Make via a feature coming soon this month.

Context: This session recap focused on the 'Schema by Figma' event, specifically highlighting updates related to design systems. The hosts, including a designer from Figma and Honda-kun from CyberAgent who co-created the 'Spindle' design system four to five years prior, discussed the changing environment around design systems and Figma's strategy to support them beyond mere efficiency, aiming for design systems to power new creation, especially with the rise of AI.