Hi, Alex here, the human behind Design Buddy, your AI-powered design review assistant. I'm constantly working on refining and enhancing the plugin. Below, you'll find details on each update. Got feedback? I'd love to hear from you at hi@designbuddy.net.




🗓️ Oct 07, 2024: Adobe Express add-on v2


Design Buddy has improved perception of design hierarchy and element properties in Adobe Express. You'll notice sharper feedback on text, sizes, and colors. There is also improved continuity. The add-on now picks up where you left off in later reviews, even after restarting.


Design Buddy add-on for Adobe Express v2



🗓️ Aug 30, 2024: Precize feedback


Improved awareness of hierarchy, elements and their properties. More precize feedback on fonts, sizes, colors, and ability to reference elements by name. The feedback is adaptive, focusing on general aspects for larger selections and precize details for smaller ones. This feature is currently available to all Figma users, coming soon to Adobe Express.


Design Buddy precize feedback



🗓️ Aug 14, 2024: Refined feedback


Significant update to broaden the capabilities and enhance the quality of feedback across various design types:

  • The evaluation guidelines for each design type have been refined to ensure more targeted and pertinent reviews.
  • Illustration and collage designs now receive dedicated feedback.
  • New feedback categories for logos and app icons focusing on scalability and recognizability.
  • "Color" feedback category is replaced with "Aesthetics", covering overall visual appeal, color palette, use of space, and consistency. Color assessment is now a part of this broader category.
  • The design reviews now include more detailed explanations and examples, guiding you through a clearer and more organized review process.

These updates aim to provide you with more comprehensive and design-specific feedback, helping you refine your work across a broader range of design types.




🗓️ Aug 9, 2024: Important UX/UI updates


Several key improvements have been made to enhance your design review experience in Figma:

  • Fresh start for copied elements: Copied designs now begin a new review process, ensuring each iteration receives a tailored assessment.
  • Simplified feedback viewing: The visual change comparison feature has been removed. Now, existing feedback remains visible even after design changes, allowing you to reference previous suggestions while iterating.
  • New "Re-review" button: To evaluate your latest changes, simply click the new "Re-review" button for an updated assessment.
  • UI3 style alignment: The tabs design has been updated to match Figma's latest UI3 style, providing a more cohesive and familiar interface.

These updates aim to streamline your workflow and provide more flexibility in how you interact with Design Buddy's feedback.


Design Buddy Re-review design



🗓️ Aug 8, 2024: Design learning articles


Design Buddy now goes beyond providing feedback in the plugin by offering links to in-depth articles on tips and techniques for the reviewed design type. This addition transforms Design Buddy into an even more valuable resource, especially for beginner designers looking to expand their knowledge. Each review now includes a carefully curated link, allowing users to dive deeper into design principles and best practices relevant to their specific project.


Design Buddy learning articles



🗓️ Jul 8, 2024: Add-on for Adobe Express


Design Buddy is now available as an add-on for Adobe Express. It includes all existing features and expanded feedback for flyers, banners, and social posts. This makes Design Buddy a versatile assistant across various design platforms and project types.





🗓️ Apr 13, 2024: Faster and cheaper reviews


OpenAI has released GPT-4o, which is faster and more cost-effective. In response, Design Buddy has updated its pricing with lower rates, and reviews for all users are now significantly faster. Active users of the 'Starter pack' plan are also upgraded to 'Regular route'.




🗓️ Apr 9, 2024: Specify design type


New "pro" feature. Click the preview box to select the design type directly from a dropdown. This option allows you to specify how Design Buddy should evaluate your design, ensuring more accurate assessments. While Design Buddy automatically identifies design types, this feature offers precize control over the review focus.





🗓️ Apr 5, 2024: Design type identification


Design Buddy now identifies if your selected design is a web app UI, mobile app UI, UI component, website, UI wireframe, illustration, logo, or an app icon and adjusts its feedback to fit each type more accurately.





🗓️ Mar 17, 2024: Before vs. After preview


Now, when you want to review changes made to a design, hovering over the preview screen activates a compare/split view. This allows you to see the before and after modifications directly, making it easier to decide on requesting a new review.





🗓️ Mar 10, 2024: Major update in design review quality


Now, Design Buddy performs visual 'before' and 'after' comparisons for each subsequent review, moving beyond the previous method that compared existing text feedback with the modified design. This enhancement offers a more accurate and in-depth analysis of each design adjustment, significantly improving the review process and feedback quality.





🗓️ Mar 9, 2024: Increased maximum selection size


Maximum allowed selection size has been increased from 2000x2000 to 1920x6000, accommodating the dimensions of an average website landing page design. The original limit was set to improve the quality of review feedback by focusing on smaller areas. This update is intended to make it easier for users to review a whole website page in one go.




🗓️ Mar 5, 2024: Smooth loading and better sticky notes


Made the loading experience better by animating the ellipsis (...) while the design review is happening. Fixed a bug where the plugin still worked with a removed, but cached API key, until it was closed. Changed, saving a review in Figma to create sticky note as a Group instead of a Frame - making it easier to select and move. Also tackled some minor interface issues.





🗓️ Mar 4, 2024: Uninterrupted UX during reviews


Big updates to UX: review in progress won't stop if you click somewhere else, a feature many asked for. Cached reviews show up right away, without extra clicks, complete with a small thumbnail of the reviewed design, for easy navigation to the right place on the canvas.

Feedback accuracy on designs has significantly improved, especially for text in photos that was wrongly flagged for accessibility issues.

Now, there's a button to cancel a review in progress, and a notification pops up when a review is saved as a sticky note. The scroll in tab content resets when switching tabs.





🗓️ Mar 3, 2024: User experience tweaks


Some small improvements to user experience.




🗓️ Mar 1, 2024: Faster design prep with smart selection


Added a loading state until a design is prepared for a review. Added smart selection limits for better performance. Now there is a maximum allowed size of an area that you can select. Made necessary updates for Figma's latest plugin requirements.




🗓️ Feb 23, 2024: Nested feedback fixes and interface polish


Fixed a bug with saving a feedback as sticky note on nested elements and made minor cosmetic changes.




🗓️ Feb 18, 2024: Persistent conversational reviews


Conversational reviews are preserved even after closing the plugin, making it easy to continue where things were left off.




🗓️ Feb 17, 2024: Instant feedback saving on canvas


Now, review feedback can be saved directly on the canvas as a sticky note. Also fixed a minor issue with the 'Save feedback' button.





🗓️ Feb 5, 2024: Enhanced review conversations


Design reviews now build on previous feedback, making the conversation more relevant and continuous.




🗓️ Jan 25, 2024: Design Buddy goes live on FigJam


Design Buddy is now operational in FigJam, besides Figma.





🗓️ Jan17, 2024: Sharper onboarding with SVG upgrades


Upgraded the onboarding screen images to SVG for a cleaner look.




🗓️ Jan 13, 2024: Lively new animation touches


Added subtle animations to the plugin for a bit more flair.




🗓️ Jan 12, 2024: Up-to-date activity in Settings


The Settings now reflect your current activity cycle, updating daily based on the last 30 days of usage.





🗓️ Dec 15, 2023: The official launch of Design Buddy


The start of our journey – Design Buddy is officially live! 🎉


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