Are Roles and Responsibilities a Thing of the Past? | Figma Blog

Product teams are moving away from rigid job boundaries toward more fluid, overlapping responsibilities. Figma’s research, based on 51 interviews and a survey of 1,199 product professionals, found that 64% of respondents identify with at least two roles, while more than a third span three or more. This shift can improve collaboration and speed, but it also creates friction through tool overload and requires teams to coordinate more deliberately.

Roles Are Becoming More Fluid

• Product development responsibilities increasingly overlap across design, product management, engineering, research, data, and marketing.
• 56% of non-designers say they participate heavily in at least one design-related task.
• PMs are prototyping ideas, engineers are contributing to early design decisions, and marketers and content specialists are commenting directly in design files.
• Figma conducted the research with Factworks and Fusion Hill through 51 qualitative interviews and a survey of 1,199 participants.

Design Isn’t Just for Designers

• Non-designer participation in design tasks such as mockups and brand exploration rose by 10% in the past year.
• 70% of product managers create low-fidelity mockups or wireframes, and 59% create interactive prototypes.
• One in four product builders has recently adopted a new design tool; 42% of those who have not yet adopted one plan to do so within a year.
• Cross-functional design work can:
  • Help teams align on ideas earlier.
  • Expose technical feasibility problems before implementation.
  • Reduce back-and-forth and save time.
• Designers can use the time saved for research, strategy, design-system maintenance, and craft.
• The goal is not to eliminate design expertise, but to encourage shared visual communication and earlier collaboration.
• Teams can support this transition by building stronger relationships, establishing a shared vision early, and welcoming contributions from colleagues who are still learning design tools.

Tool Overload Is Causing Friction

• 72% of respondents identify AI tools as the main force changing their roles.
• Tools such as Figma Make, Claude Code, and GitHub Copilot make prototyping and code generation more accessible.
• Notion, Figma Buzz, and Airtable similarly support rapid marketing production and project management.
• Role expansion has led 71% of respondents to use more tools and software.
• Participants use tools across an average of 7.6 out of 16 categories, including spreadsheets, project management, graphic design, and coding assistants.
• Although new tools enable more people to contribute, the growing number of platforms can make workflows harder to manage and reduce the effectiveness of individual tools.

Teams should treat overlapping roles as an opportunity for earlier alignment and broader participation, while actively simplifying their tool ecosystems. Clear collaboration practices—not rigid ownership boundaries—will be essential as product work continues to evolve.