Almost every UX leader knows the pain: your team creates pixel-perfect designs in Figma. Developers receive them. Six weeks later, either your designers have spent the past five weeks marking up their own designs and wiring up thousands of noodles for Figma prototypes, or what engineering ships looks nothing like the initial design.
As one design leader recently told us: "We do these QAs with each team to make sure designs actually look like the Figma was supposed to. Sometimes developers phone it in on pixel perfection. They don't understand that if it's not pixel perfect, the whole point of the design is thrown off."
Handoffs may have gotten better since the days of Illustrator/Photoshop workflows but the numbers still tell a brutal story of inefficiencies:
83% of designers report design-development divergence at least sometimes; 26% say it happens on every project (source)
66% of teams waste 25-50% of their time on design-delivery inefficiencies (source)
63% of teams say features slip to later sprints due to bottlenecks in design-to-code (source)
73% of designers say design delivery inefficiencies decrease team morale (source)
8-16 hours of engineering time are spent manually coding each Figma screen (source)
Based on our estimate from the stats above, for a single product pod consisting of one product designer and five engineers, handoff inefficiencies result in approximately $298,000 in annual productivity loss.
That’s the equivalent to having one well-paid designer on every pod doing nothing but fixing handoff problems all year.
The No Handoff methodology isn’t new, it’s newly possible
Roughly three years ago, UX strategist Shamsi Brinn, introduced the perfect solution to the problem of messy handoffs between design and dev in her blog entitled, “No Handoff: close the gap between product and engineering”. As Brinn put it: "Figma produces an intermediate product that requires translation to become a website or app. The effort that designers pour into Figma is ultimately throwaway work, and unnecessary handoffs are not an efficient use of our time."
The solution Brinn suggested? "The working prototype is the living spec of the project and a shared language for the team. No more translation is needed because everyone understands a prototype."
Instead of treating the symptoms of handoffs, she proposed treating the disease with a new agile working pattern she entitled “No Handoff”. Her three principles for No Handoff are:
Foreground user needs as our northstar
Iterate together
Prototyping is key
Why No Handoff hasn’t been feasible
Handoffs clearly cause pain and Brinn suggested a method she used to not only treat the issue but eradicate the disease, so why isn’t every team practicing “No Handoff”?
While the methodology is spot on, and designers have done a great job of bringing user needs to the forefront of product development; prototyping and iterating together on a level playing field hasn’t been feasible for almost all teams. Designers work in Figma and developers work in code: that’s just been the way it is.
And, no-code solutions like stringing together countless noodles between Figma screens or leveraging Framer or Webflow for prototypes either take too much time or abstract away enough that it doesn’t truly reflect the designer’s intended user experience.
The AI breakthrough that’s made No Handoff feasible
2024 marked a seismic shift. AI-powered coding solutions like Cursor, Lovable, and our own offering, Fusion, didn't just improve the handoff, they empowered designers to eliminate the handoff entirely. These vibe coding solutions enabled:
Designers to create designs in code that developers can actually use in production
Prototypes to become production foundations, not throwaway artifacts
Iterations to happen in real-time on the same medium: code
AI coding solutions are bringing together designers and developers to collaborate in a way they never could before. As one engineering leader recently put it: "Our source of truth needs to be our codebase. If designers can work in a tool they're good at and developers work in a tool they're good at, and they’re both working on the same thing, that's when real collaboration happens. It's a handshake, not a handoff."
Treat the disease, not the symptoms with the No Handoff methodology
The fundamental shift isn't about making handoffs better; it's about eliminating them entirely.
What No Handoff looks like when AI enables designers and developers to iterate together on prototypes that use production-ready code
Here's the impact:
The people, processes, and technology to have success with a No Handoff pilot in your organization
Successfully implementing the No Handoff methodology requires intentional changes across three critical dimensions. Here's how to set your team up for success:
People: Start with AI-optimistic tech-savvy designers and collaborative developers
Any process change requires buy-in from both designers and developers. Throwing prototypes over the wall is the antithesis to No handoff. You need developers to ensure that the underlying code is actually the code they would use - or directly ship - not entirely rebuild.
No Handoff is also dependent, in part, on AI-powered coding solutions. We’ve spoken to developers and designers on both sides of the spectrum: those who are bullish on the power of AI to improve every part of their workflow, and those who avoid it entirely.
In our opinion, when trying No Handoff for the first time here are the type of people you should pair up:
AI-optimistic technically fluent designers
What to look for:
Actively experiments with AI design tools (Figma AI, Midjourney, Claude, etc.) in their workflow
Speaks excitedly about AI's potential to enhance creativity rather than replace designers
Already shares AI-generated concepts or prototypes proactively
Designs with responsive design best practices such as auto-layout in Figma
Comfortable with design systems, tokens, and component libraries
Actively uses AI coding assistants (GitHub Copilot, Cursor, Claude, etc.) in their daily workflow
Speaks positively about how AI improves their productivity and code quality
Proactively shares AI-assisted solutions or workflows with the team
Actively participates in design reviews and provides constructive technical feedback
Communicates technical constraints and possibilities clearly to designers
Consistently leverages the design system and component library
Processes: Start designing and prototyping in production-ready code without ditching what’s working
No handoff is a methodology in and of itself but it isn’t a replacement for agile and it doesn’t mean you have to throw out the workflows your product managers, designers, and developers already have success with.
Start doing
Designing and prototyping in production-ready code
Measuring time-to-market from idea to production
Continue doing
Working in git-based workflows for code commits and review
Getting consistent customer and end user feedback
Leveraging your design system and component library
Using Figma for brand new patterns or very complex creative designs
Stop doing
Wiring up giant Figma noodle prototypes
Writing complex docs describing design and code specs
Technology: Choose an enterprise-ready Visual IDE that allows designers and developers to design and prototype in production-ready code
The big unlock for No Handoff is visual-first AI-powered coding tools like Lovable, V0, and our offering, Fusion, that have brought the power of code to anyone. But, not all are created equal, we’ve written about this and created a scorecard for you in our blog entitled: How to evaluate vibe coding tools for your enterprise, but the summary is you should look for a visual IDE that prioritizes:
Try No Handoff with our Visual IDE: Fusion
At Builder, we provide an AI-powered Visual IDE, Fusion. We also practice what we preach. In the past two weeks a product designer, product manager, product marketing manager, support team member, and demand generation manager at Builder have used our Visual IDE to ship features to our own internal product. In each case, developers have reviewed a PR and shipped with nearly zero code refactoring.
It’s not just built for our fast-moving business, it’s built for enterprise workflows from the ground up. We've helped three out of the five Fortune 5 figure out how they can leverage it in their workflows and we may be able to help you too. Reach out to get a personalized demo.
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