The AI tool (and 5 Figma shortcuts) I wish I found sooner

Hey there! I’m Raika, a Senior UX and Conversation Designer at Amazon. If you’re new here, welcome! You can subscribe to my Secrets to Great UX Design newsletter for actionable ways to create great experiences, grow your career and more… for designers and non-designers.

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OpenAI’s new image generator made WAVES last week—and I’ve been having a blast experimenting with it in my design process.

It’s wild to see how far these tools have come. Naturally, the question on everyone’s mind: Are designers being replaced?

Personally, I don’t think so.

AI excels at repetitive, production-level tasks—but that’s not where the magic of design lives. Great designers don’t just push pixels. They understand human behavior, solve complex problems, and craft experiences that connect with people.

That said, if you’re a designer, it’s definitely time to improve and incorporate AI into your process. YouTube and coworkers have helped me level up in Figma, but lately, I’ve been turning to Perplexity AI more and more.

Perplexity AI + Figma Q&A

Background made by ChatGPT

Whether I’m troubleshooting Figma problems or looking for faster ways to work, Perplexity’s been a game-changer (highly recommend giving it a spin » here).

Now for Figma, these five shortcuts have become second nature to me.

Figma shortcuts

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1. Scale

Select the art board (or component) and press K, then click and drag the corners of the image to scale.

2. Crop

Hold ⌘ Command for Mac (or Control for Windows) while clicking and dragging the corners of the image to crop.

3. Zoom to panel

Select what you want to zoom in on, then hit Shift + 2 to zoom into the selected objects on the canvas.

4. Adjust nested image

Hit Option + double click to resize or move image

5. Temporary comment

This one is great for when you’re collaborating! Hit the Backslash “/” key (next to shift) and type your message.

✨ BONUS: Shortcut panel

Okay had to include the shortcut to the shortcut panel. Hit Control + Shift + ? to view the shortcut panel full of all sorts of shortcuts!

→ What did I miss? Leave your most used/favorite in the comment section! 🦦

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Favorite Quote and Photo of the Week

"You are as old as the risks you take. In many ways, aging is not the process of growing old, but rather the slow death of becoming overly protective, scared, and worried about losing what you have. Youth is found in the energy of going for it, taking the risk, and trusting that you'll figure it out along the way." ― James Clear

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That’s it for today.

Thanks a ton for reading, whether this is your first or 50th time. I sincerely appreciate you. Please let me know if you have a topic you’d like me to write about. Just reply to this email, I’d love to hear from you.

Until next time,
raika