AICHE +Figma Integration

The short answer: open any Figma file, click to add a comment or double-click a text layer, press ⌃+⌥+R (Mac) or Ctrl+Alt+R (Windows/Linux), speak for 15-60 seconds, and AICHE inserts the formatted text at your cursor position.

Designers spend more time typing in Figma than most people realize. Component documentation, design review comments, prototype annotations, FigJam brainstorming notes, handoff specifications. The visual work gets done in Figma's canvas. But the communication work, explaining why a design decision was made, what interaction a prototype should demonstrate, or what a component is for, requires writing. That writing happens in comment threads, text layers, and documentation frames that take real time to fill. Voice dictation handles the text while you stay in visual thinking mode, which is where designers do their best work.

1. Open Figma in your browser and navigate to the file you are working on.
2. Click where you want to leave feedback to open the comment composer, or double-click a text layer to edit it directly.
3. Press ⌃+⌥+R on Mac or Ctrl+Alt+R on Windows/Linux to start recording.
4. Speak your complete thought. For comments, include the observation, the rationale, and a specific suggestion. For documentation, explain what the component does and when to use it.
5. Press the hotkey again to stop. AICHE transcribes, applies formatting through Message Ready, and inserts the text.
6. For comments, click Post. For text layers, click outside to deselect.
7. Move to the next element. The review continues without breaking your visual scan of the design.

Design Review Comments with Context

The most common complaint designers have about review feedback is that it lacks context. "Make this bigger" or "I don't like this color" gives the designer nothing to work with. Good feedback explains the problem, references user behavior or design principles, and suggests a direction. Writing that level of feedback for 15 frames takes an hour of typing.

Voice produces better feedback because speaking is closer to how you actually think about design. You look at a frame and your reaction is a complete thought: "This card layout puts the price below the fold on mobile viewports. Users scanning the product grid will not see pricing without scrolling into each card. Consider moving the price directly below the product image and shifting the description to an expandable section." Speaking that takes 15 seconds. Typing it takes 60-90 seconds, during which your eyes leave the design and your visual assessment mode disengages.

Across a full design review with 20 frames, voice dictation cuts the comment writing time from 60-90 minutes to 15-20 minutes. More importantly, the quality of feedback increases because you are spending your cognitive energy on the design analysis, not on typing.

Component Documentation in Design Systems

Design systems live or die by their documentation. A component library with 200 components and no descriptions is a guessing game for every developer and designer who uses it. But writing documentation for each component is tedious enough that it perpetually sits on the backlog.

Voice lowers the barrier. Open a component page, click into the description text layer or frame, press the hotkey, and speak: "This is the primary action button. Use it for the single most important action on any screen. Do not use more than one primary button per view. Minimum width is 120 pixels. The label should be a verb phrase like Save Changes or Submit Order, not a generic word like OK or Submit." That is a 15-second dictation that produces a genuinely useful component description. Across 50 components, voice turns a multi-day documentation sprint into a few hours of focused dictation.

FigJam Brainstorming and Workshop Notes

FigJam is Figma's whiteboard tool for brainstorming, workshops, and collaborative planning. Like Miro, it relies on sticky notes and text elements for content. The same typing bottleneck applies: you think faster than you type, and ideas evaporate while your fingers catch up.

During a FigJam session, create a sticky note, press the hotkey, and speak the idea. The rhythm is fast enough to keep pace with a live brainstorming discussion. Between the facilitator's prompts, you can fill 3-4 sticky notes by voice in the time it takes to type one. This works especially well for design thinking exercises where quantity matters more than polish, and where staying in a creative flow state is the whole point.

Tips for Figma Users

When leaving review comments, enable Message Ready in AICHE settings. Your spoken feedback lands as clean, structured text that other team members can act on immediately. For component documentation, dictate one component at a time rather than trying to batch them. The context for each component is specific, and switching between components keeps the descriptions accurate. When working in FigJam, speak short, focused thoughts per sticky note rather than long narratives. FigJam sticky notes are small, and concise text reads better on the board.

Heads-up: Figma comments support @mentions for notifying specific team members. AICHE inserts plain text, so add @mentions manually after dictation. Speak "at Sarah" or "mention the design lead" as a reminder to yourself, then replace it with the actual @mention before posting.

The pro-tip: during design critiques, dictate your feedback while the presenter is explaining the next screen. Your eyes and ears follow the presentation while your voice captures your reaction to the previous screen. This parallel processing means you can review 15 frames without falling behind the presentation pace.

Result: a design review across 20 frames drops from 90 minutes of typing to 20 minutes of speaking. Component documentation actually gets written because the per-component cost drops from 5 minutes to 60 seconds. FigJam sessions produce more content because participants are not bottlenecked by typing speed.

Do this now: open a Figma file you are currently reviewing, click to add a comment on one element, press your hotkey, and speak detailed feedback that includes what you observe, why it matters, and what you would suggest changing.