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MobilePro #204: AI in Figma, AI Coding agents in Xcode, Kotlin’s new release, and more…

Hi ,

Welcome to the 204th edition of MobilePro.

You must have noticed the abbreviation AI twice in the headline. It's something you see everywhere now, isn't it? One could say AI arrived in mobile development with a bang, but I'd wager it's arriving quietly, tool by tool, feature by feature, and suddenly, our workflows are going to look completely different.

Let that headline tell you the story: First, Apple is bringing AI coding agents directly into Xcode, and then iOS 26.4 could push Siri toward deeper, more app-aware actions. Even on the research side, Apple-backed models are exploring things like generating sound and speech from silent video. AI is no longer a separate thing but an intrinsic part of the default developer toolkit.

This makes the design stage an especially important place to slow down and get things right. Because before AI helps you write code faster or analyze metrics better, it can help you think more clearly about what you’re building. That’s why today’s tutorial focuses on speeding up your flow with AI in Figma. If you think this is about automating design, it isn't really that. We're focused largely on removing the friction that shows up early, stuff like fuzzy personas, hidden assumptions, slow iteration, and messy handoffs. Used well, AI in Figma helps teams reach clarity sooner, so everything that follows—code, testing, and iteration—has a much better foundation.

Let’s get started!

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AI isn’t here to replace designers, and it definitely isn’t here to “auto-design” products. What it is good at is removing the slow, repetitive, and messy parts of modern mobile workflows, the parts that delay alignment, slow down iteration, and create avoidable confusion between design and development.

For mobile teams, speed isn’t just about moving fast. It’s about reaching clarity earlier: clearer user assumptions, clearer flows, clearer states, and fewer surprises during implementation.

Used well, AI becomes a workflow accelerator for both designers and mobile developers. Designers explore faster without losing intent. Developers get clearer prototypes, more predictable behavior, and fewer handoff translation errors.

The goal isn’t to “design with AI.” The goal is to ship better mobile experiences with fewer bottlenecks.

Before anyone opens Figma, most projects begin in ambiguity. You’re collecting inputs, forming hypotheses, and trying to understand what the product should be, all while stakeholders expect early direction.

This stage is where AI can help most, as long as it isn’t treated as truth.

AI can quickly generate persona skeletons from early notes, workshop inputs, or stakeholder assumptions. Tools like FigJam’s AI can cluster messy ideas into themes and draft rough persona profiles based on what’s already on the board.

External tools like ChatGPT can go further: refining motivations, expanding behaviors, and generating multiple persona variants to explore.

The key is to treat personas here as temporary structure, not “validated users.” They’re placeholders that help teams align early and move forward with intention, without pretending the answers are final.

Mobile teams often lose time because assumptions stay implicit. AI can help pull those assumptions into the open:

This kind of exploration creates better design conversations, and better developer questions, earlier in the process.

Competitive analysis is time-consuming, and it’s often done poorly because it’s rushed. AI tools can help you scan faster and structure insights more cleanly.

Source-based tools like Perplexity are especially useful here because they allow you to explore market patterns and product positioning while staying grounded in references. Instead of spending hours collecting fragmented information, you can quickly identify:

AI as exploration, not decision. This is the rule that keeps everything healthy:

AI is most valuable when it helps you explore, not when it tries to decide.

It speeds up thinking, but it doesn’t replace judgment. Your team still owns the product decisions.

If AI helps you explore before Figma, Figma Make is where it becomes a serious workflow upgrade.

Make is built for fast prototyping through conversation. Instead of building everything manually, you describe what you want, or paste an existing design, and Make generates a working interactive prototype.

This is especially useful for mobile teams because the hardest part of mobile UX is often not the visuals, it’s the behavior:

Make accelerates all of that.

Make works like a collaborative assistant. You can ask for: core screens for a feature, alternate layouts for a flow, a basic navigation structure, and Interaction behaviors (cards, modals, tabs, etc.).

For example:

Instead of staring at a blank canvas, you start with something functional.

The major difference between Make and traditional quick mockups is that it generates more than layout.Make supports interactive behavior, allowing you to preview: transitions, form inputs, navigation patterns, and data-driven states.

If you want realism, it can even connect to external data sources like Supabase to simulate an app that responds dynamically rather than remaining purely visual. That matters because mobile teams don’t ship static screens. They ship systems.

This is where Make becomes a shared tool. Designers get faster iteration and can explore alternatives without rebuilding everything manually.

Developers benefit because:

Instead of debating a flow in abstract terms, the team can test it in a working prototype.The right way to use Make: iterative, not giant prompts.

Make has a token budget per request. If you try to generate an entire app in one prompt, it will break or degrade. The best workflow is:

This gives you higher reliability and more creative control, and avoids treating AI as a “magic button.”

Once the prototype matches your intention, you can move it into Figma Design and refine: visual language, design system consistency, spacing and layout precision, and final interaction polish.

Make also produces inspectable code under the hood, which can help developers understand what’s being proposed and reduce ambiguity.

AI doesn’t stop being useful once you enter “real design.” In fact, this is where it becomes most practical. Mobile teams lose time in handoff because of translation gaps:

AI can reduce this, not by replacing communication, but by making outputs clearer.

When prototypes behave more like real products, handoff becomes less interpretive.Instead of handing off static screens and hoping the interactions are understood, teams can point to a working prototype that shows:

That’s especially valuable for mobile, where interaction patterns and state management are everything.

External AI tools can help you transform messy design notes into structured documentation. Claude is particularly strong at reading long content like:

It can rewrite those notes into clean, consistent documentation that developers can actually use. ChatGPT is also strong here, especially when you need:

Even if AI never touches the final implementation, it still improves the handoff by improving the shared understanding.When developers understand component behavior faster, fewer details get lost, and fewer rounds of clarification are needed. AI doesn’t remove collaboration. It reduces friction in collaboration.

AI is at its best when it supports the work you already do, exploration, iteration, documentation, and alignment.It’s not a shortcut to good design. It’s a multiplier for good design thinking. If you treat it as a tool for speed with intention, it helps mobile teams:

Design still requires judgment. AI just removes the parts that slow you down for no good reason.

The most valuable impact of AI in design isn’t that it produces screens faster. It’s that it helps teams reach shared understanding sooner.

When you use AI to explore ideas before Figma, prototype interactions quickly with Figma Make, and support documentation and handoff with clearer language, you reduce the gaps that slow mobile work down. Designers stay focused on judgment and quality. Developers get cleaner intent, fewer surprises, and more predictable implementation.

AI is not a shortcut around good design. It’s a multiplier for teams that already care about doing it well, and a practical way to keep speed, clarity, and craft in balance.

To learn more about Figma, check out the third edition of Designing and Prototyping Interfaces with Figma by Fabio Staiano.

📘 Third edition of the bestselling book, updated with a new project, refreshed interface, and the latest design trends

🧩 Build adaptive, production-ready UIs with variables, modes, components, variants, AI, and Auto Layout

🔀 Prototype branched flows with conditional interactions and interactive components

Now that we’ve covered how AI can reduce friction inside Figma, let’s look at this week's news, where that same idea shows up often.

👋 And that’s a wrap! We hope you enjoyed this edition ofMobilePro. If you have any suggestions and feedback, or would just like to say hi to us, please write to us. Just respond to this email!

Cheers,

Runcil Rebello,

Editor-in-Chief, MobilePro