Comment by robenkleene

I think your mainly indexing on the word I used "technical", because yes I agree I'd also categorize creating a design system as "technical". But it's technical in a different way than say, creating a glass material in a 3D modeling program, or simulating 3D effects in a 2D image-editing program. So I mean the way the latter is technical, not the former, if there's a better word than technical to use here, I'm all ears (maybe "skilled"?).

The key difference in the specific context of Figma is that a layman without any technical skills can give pretty good feedback on a design system, but say, wouldn't be able to give good feedback on how a 3D modeling material is constructed.

> which apparently using the gradient setting in photoshop is a Big Scary Skill™ that flat design solved

This isn't what I mean, I meant combining layers to create 3D effects like this https://www.reddit.com/r/coolguides/comments/kj9yut/guide_to... i.e., creating the gradient itself isn't complicated, it's composing layers to achieve a specific effect that's complicated (and "technical").