I am not a designer, not by a long shot. But I do think I have an eye for clean and elegant design. It’s hard to have your vision for a product to actually get a designer to bring that vision to life. That has changed, at least according to Google, which released Google Stitch a few days ago. A Figma like design interface that uses prompts to create designs.
With the release of Google Stitch the price of Figma stock tumbled by about 8%. The equilibrium that is the market strikes again. Repricing equity based on new information that came available. The release of Google Stitch in this case.
So I decided to have another AI paid subscription with Google Gemini, so I could see for myself whether the commotion was justified. On X a lot of people are raving about the Google Gemini 3.0 Flash and 3.1 Pro models which Stitch uses.
I thought of my (under construction) services landing page. A page that is ready to convert curious executives into being coached. The page needed a hero, a value prop section, a CTA. Could it be redesigned by Stitch?
I tried it out and was surprised in how bad the first result was.
Over the next two attempts I added a hand-drawn sketch and explicitly told it to follow my layout. It ignored both.
The last iteration I did it was sort of in line with my sketched out version. This time I really stressed I wanted to have the placement of the UI as how the sketch looked.
I cannot see it cleaning out 8% of the Figma market because of the release. It will obviously get better, but the market overreacted here IMO.
Key Insight
I tested Google Stitch on a real page with a real need. It couldn’t create a good enough result. The market repricing of the Figma stock was based on a tool that is clearly not good enough. The quality will get there eventually, no question, but it’s not yet there.