The Handoff Mirage

Modern tools like Figma, Sketch, and Adobe XD have revolutionized prototyping. You can build beautiful, clickable demos in days. Stakeholders sign off. Everyone’s excited.

Then the handoff happens.

✅ Figma prototypes with 50 frames
✅ Dev handoff specs with complex auto-layout
✅ Shared tokens, motion specs, color variables

…and then: weeks of confusion, endless Slack threads, and frustrated developers trying to recreate the prototype in real code.

Why the Handoff Breaks

1️⃣ Design ≠ Production Constraints
Prototypes are perfect on canvas — no browser quirks, no device limitations, no performance trade-offs. But production code lives in the real world, with:

• Accessibility requirements

• Legacy CSS constraints

• Browser performance

• Server-side data dependencies

That means a perfectly animated prototype might not map cleanly to production.

2️⃣ Incomplete or Over-Optimistic Specs
Designers hand over spacing, typography, and states — but often forget:

• Empty states

• Error states

• Edge cases (slow networks, partial data)

• Localization (RTL, variable-length text)

In the prototype, everything is “happy path.” But production is never just the happy path.

3️⃣ Inconsistent Design Systems
Teams claim to have a design system, but:

• Components aren’t coded the same as the design system library

• Naming mismatches break collaboration

• Token definitions don’t match between Figma and CSS/JS frameworks

So devs are forced to interpret designs manually, which means they diverge.

4️⃣ Communication Failure
Designers often expect devs to read their minds. Engineers assume designers will consider technical feasibility. Instead of collaborating, they throw files over the wall.

A Real Example

Last year, a team I worked with built a sign-up flow prototype with:

✅ Seamless inline validation
✅ Animated transitions on every field
✅ Dynamic progress bar

…but the backend API was rate-limited, making real-time validation impossible. The devs ended up hard-coding field errors and removing transitions to ship on time.

Stakeholders were furious because “the prototype looked better.”

How to Fix Your Handoff

✅ Collaborate early
Designers and engineers should review flows together during the design phase, not after.

✅ Document edge cases
Add notes for empty states, errors, loading, offline.

✅ Use design tokens
Bridge Figma tokens to code (via tools like Style Dictionary, Tokens Studio, or custom pipelines).

✅ Define production constraints
What is the maximum payload size? Does the backend even support that animation data? Call it out early.

✅ Build shared language
Engineers should understand Figma; designers should understand dev constraints.

✅ Use code-linked prototypes
Tools like Storybook or Chromatic let you preview coded components instead of static screens.

Community Voices

From Reddit r/webdev:

“Figma prototypes are like Disneyland. Production is reality.”
(reddit.com)

From Hacker News:

“The design handoff problem isn’t tools. It’s empathy.”

Final Takeaway

Design handoff fails because prototypes are illusions. They show the happy path while production lives in the real world of bugs, latency, states, and edge cases.

The fix? Shift from a file handoff to a true partnership.

👉 Designers: understand engineering reality
👉 Engineers: share technical context
👉 Both: treat prototypes as conversations, not commandments

That’s how you actually get from prototype to production — together.