During the Config 2026 keynote, Rogie King randomly said, “we’re designers, we want to touch the design” while demoing a new product.
It was such a small sentence, but it stuck in my mind.
Recently, I’ve been thinking a lot about how people will make products in the future. The line between designers and engineers is getting blurrier. Figma and IDE tools like VS Code and Cursor are still very different tools, of course, but they are starting to overlap to some extent. Canvas tools are becoming more powerful. Coding tools are becoming more visual. Designers are getting closer to code, and engineers are getting closer to product taste. I feel like these tools will not stay in completely separate worlds.
But the more I use AI and coding tools, the more I realize something simple: design is still the thing that brings a product closer to people. Not just because it makes things look nicer, but because design carries the final layer of intention. It decides how something feels, how someone moves through it, where the friction is, what feels warm, what feels generic, and what feels like it was actually made for a real person.
Controls in a coding context
AI coding tools are amazing when you already have a clear product direction. When you know what you want to build, tools like Cursor can help you move fast. You can prototype something workable, test ideas, build components, reuse patterns, and turn vague product logic into something real. A lot of things are becoming easier to explain to an agent: components, layouts, design systems, states, user flows, and even some interaction patterns.
But when it comes to design details, it still feels different. Micro-interactions, motion details, visual and flow rhythm, creative direction, and small emotional moments are harder to fully explain through a prompt. Sometimes you need to drag things around, try it, feel it, and see it with your own eyes. You change one tiny thing, and sometimes the whole feeling suddenly becomes different.
That is the part where I still want to “touch” the design. Not because AI cannot help, but because some decisions are not fully logical yet. They are based on taste, context, user understanding, and that weird designer instinct of “hmm, this doesn’t feel right.”
Canvas still matters
If you are exploring, nudging, or trying to find the feeling of a design, canvas tools still make so much sense. A canvas gives you direct control. You can move, compare, break things, duplicate versions, and quickly see what feels closer to your intention.
But canvas tools also have limitations. Sometimes you have an idea, but the tool does not support the interaction. Or you do not know how to create the effect. Or the prototype feels close visually, but still far from something that can actually work. That is why Figma’s current direction is interesting to me. It feels like Figma is trying to make that gap smaller. With AI agents, plugins, effects, and code layers, the canvas is slowly becoming less like a static design space and more like a place where ideas can become functional faster.
At the same time, coding tools are also moving toward the canvas. Cursor and similar tools can now help turn working websites into something closer to an editable workspace. You can ask an agent to change things, adjust UI, create components, and push the product forward without manually touching every line of code. So both sides are moving toward each other. Canvas tools want to make things more real. Coding tools want to make things easier to shape.
What does “touch” mean
Right now, I think “touch” means having a baby idea and being able to play with it until it becomes the best version it can be at that moment. Touch is not only about perceiving and controlling details. It is about being able to insert personal taste, care, warmth, and understanding into the product. I know that sounds abstract, but I think that is exactly what makes design hard to replace.
A designer’s touch comes from understanding the product, the users, the context, the emotion, and the small details that make something feel intentional. It is not always something you can explain clearly in one prompt.
As someone from a non-technical background, I’ve been working with AI and IDE tools for over a year. I actually learned a lot more technical knowledge through building with AI. Sometimes AI gives me something unexpected in a good way, and it becomes a new source of inspiration. Of course, sometimes it also gives me something very generic or just wrong. But the interesting part is that even when AI helps me build faster, I still often want more direct control when I am making design decisions.
Sometimes I want to test a motion idea quickly. Sometimes I want to adjust the feeling of an interaction. Sometimes I want to compare a few design directions without translating everything into technical language or specific parameter values first. Because the moment I have to describe everything through code or prompts, part of the creative space can feel smaller. Not always, but sometimes.
So maybe the future product building tool is not just AI that builds for you. Maybe it is a tool that gives you understandable context, lets you explore many versions quickly, helps you control details more naturally, and still keeps everything organized and shippable. Something that lets you think, touch, test, and ship in the same space.
Still half-baked
I do not think there is one right answer yet. Future interaction design itself might change a lot, and that will also change the tools we use to design. If products become more agentic, more spatial, more conversational, or more invisible, then the way designers “touch” the design will probably change too. That feels like another big discussion hahah :)
For now, I just keep coming back to that sentence: we designers still want to touch the design. Maybe the tools will change. Maybe the surface will change. Maybe the canvas and the IDE will slowly merge. But I still think designers will need a place to play, feel, adjust, and add the human layer that makes a product actually connect with people.
These are still half-baked thoughts, but I want to sharpen my product design thinking and have more conversations with others. So I guess this is my first note on here!!