Is design still about the facsimile?

Morning:-)

So had a bit of a chat last week about how design systems and craft are intersecting and what that means for design tooling.

So I thought I’d pop a few questions on here…

Is Design’s role still mostly to maintain a “facsimile” of the product — or has that phase of our profession already passed?

Does Figma make us more powerful as a profession — or more replaceable?

If design-to-front-end-code gets “solved” by AI, where does that leave front-end dev? And where does it leave us as designers?

Is the future of design less about “drawing what should exist” and more about “framing why it should exist”? (or both?)