Why Manual Figma Mocking for Legacy Logic is a $200k Anti-Pattern

Your design team is currently burning $20,000 a month playing "pixel-perfect archaeology." In the enterprise world, the standard approach to modernization involves hiring a fleet of UI/UX designers to manually recreate screens from a 15-year-old Java Swing or Silverlight application into Figma. This process is not just slow; it is a fundamental architectural error.

When you treat a legacy system as a collection of static drawings rather than a complex state machine, you lose the "connective tissue"—the business logic, the edge cases, and the data flow—that makes the application functional. According to Replay’s analysis, the average enterprise spends 40 hours per screen just to move from a legacy UI to a high-fidelity Figma mock. For a standard 100-screen internal tool, that is 4,000 hours of manual labor. At a conservative blended rate of $50/hour, you’ve spent $200,000 before a single line of production code is written.

TL;DR: Manual Figma mocking for legacy systems is a massive "Translation Tax." It costs ~$200k for 100 screens, misses 67% of undocumented logic, and leads to the 70% failure rate seen in enterprise rewrites. Replay solves this by using Visual Reverse Engineering to convert screen recordings directly into documented React components, reducing the 40-hour-per-screen manual grind to just 4 hours.

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Top Reasons Manual Figma Mocking is a Financial Drain#

The primary reasons manual figma mocking fails in an enterprise setting involve the disconnect between visual representation and functional reality. Designers are often tasked with "making it look modern," but they lack the context of why a specific button exists or what happens when a database query returns a null value.

1. The "Translation Tax" and Manual Error#

When a designer looks at a legacy screen and draws it in Figma, they are performing a lossy compression. They see a table; they don't see the complex filtering logic, the pagination state, or the specific validation rules tied to the "Submit" button.

Industry experts recommend moving away from manual transcription because it introduces "The Gap." The Gap is the space between what the designer drew, what the developer interpreted, and what the legacy system actually did. Closing this gap manually requires endless meetings, Jira tickets, and QA cycles.

2. The Documentation Gap#

Statistics show that 67% of legacy systems lack documentation. When you rely on reasons manual figma mocking to drive your modernization, you are essentially asking designers to guess the documentation. They are reverse-engineering business requirements by looking at pixels.

Visual Reverse Engineering is the process of capturing the actual execution of a legacy application—every state change, every hover effect, and every API call—and converting that interaction data into structured code and documentation. By using Replay, you capture the "truth" of the system as it runs, rather than a designer's interpretation of it.

3. The $200k Math: A Comparison#

Let’s look at the actual costs of a 100-screen modernization project.

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Technical Reasons Manual Figma Mocking Fails to Capture Logic#

Figma is a vector drawing tool. It is not a state management tool. When you attempt to modernize a complex financial services dashboard or a healthcare patient portal, the "logic" is the most expensive part to replace.

The Problem of "Ghost Logic"#

In a legacy application, logic is often "ghosted"—it lives in the interaction between the UI and the backend, often undocumented. For example, a field might only be editable if three other conditions are met in separate tabs. A Figma mock cannot represent this without hundreds of complex "prototyping" links that are themselves a form of manual coding.

Instead of manual mocking, Replay's Flows feature maps the architecture of the user journey. It sees the transition from

to and generates the corresponding React state logic.

Example: Manual React Recreation vs. Replay Generated Code#

When a developer receives a Figma file, they often write "boilerplate" React that looks like this:

typescript
// The "Manual" Approach: Hardcoded, guessing at props
export const LegacyTable = ({ data }: any) => {
  return (
    <div className="table-container">
      {data.map((item: any) => (
        <div key={item.id} className="row">
          <span>{item.name}</span>
          {/* Developer misses the conditional logic for the 'Status' badge */}
          <span className="status">{item.status}</span>
        </div>
      ))}
    </div>
  );
};

Compare this to the output from Replay's AI Automation Suite, which has analyzed the actual video recording of the legacy system to identify conditional rendering and design tokens:

typescript
// The Replay Approach: Context-aware, documented, and type-safe
import { Badge } from "@/components/ui/badge";
import { DesignSystemTokens } from "@/theme";

interface PatientRecordProps {
  name: string;
  status: 'active' | 'archived' | 'pending';
  lastUpdated: string;
}

/**
 * Generated from Workflow: "Patient Discharge Process"
 * Legacy Source: Silverlight MedTech Module v4.2
 */
export const PatientRecordRow: React.FC<PatientRecordProps> = ({ 
  name, 
  status, 
  lastUpdated 
}) => {
  // Replay identified that 'archived' status requires a specific warning color
  const statusColor = status === 'archived' ? DesignSystemTokens.colors.red_500 : DesignSystemTokens.colors.green_500;

  return (
    <div className="flex items-center justify-between p-4 border-b border-slate-200">
      <h3 className="text-sm font-medium text-slate-900">{name}</h3>
      <div className="flex gap-2">
        <Badge variant={status === 'active' ? 'success' : 'outline'} style={{ color: statusColor }}>
          {status.toUpperCase()}
        </Badge>
        <span className="text-xs text-slate-500">Updated: {lastUpdated}</span>
      </div>
    </div>
  );
};

By using Replay, the developer isn't guessing. The component is born with the correct props, design system tokens, and conditional logic already in place. This is why Replay users see a 70% average time savings on their modernization projects.

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The $3.6 Trillion Technical Debt Problem#

The global technical debt crisis has reached $3.6 trillion. A significant portion of this debt is locked in systems that are "too big to fail" but "too old to maintain." The traditional response—manual mocking and a full rewrite—is why 18 months is the average enterprise rewrite timeline.

One of the biggest reasons manual figma mocking is considered an anti-pattern is that it extends this timeline. By the time the designer finishes mocking 200 screens, the business requirements have changed, and the "new" design is already obsolete.

Modernize Without Rewriting from Scratch#

Modernization should be an evolution, not a "Big Bang" event. Replay allows teams to:

1. •Record real user workflows in the legacy app.
2. •Extract the UI and logic into a Library (Design System).
3. •Generate clean, production-ready React code.
4. •Deploy incrementally.

This approach is particularly critical for regulated environments. If you are in Financial Services or Healthcare, you cannot afford to "guess" at logic. Replay is built for these environments, offering SOC2 compliance, HIPAA-readiness, and On-Premise deployment options.

Learn more about modernizing regulated systems

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Breaking the Manual Cycle with Visual Reverse Engineering#

To understand the reasons manual figma mocking is so pervasive, we have to look at the history of web development. For years, the "Waterfall" method dictated that Design must finish before Engineering starts. But in the era of AI and Visual Reverse Engineering, this sequence is a bottleneck.

The Replay Blueprint#

The Blueprint feature in Replay acts as the bridge. Instead of a static Figma file, a Blueprint is a live, editable representation of the legacy UI that is already mapped to code components.

Component Extraction is the automated identification of repeating UI patterns (buttons, inputs, modals) within a legacy recording and their conversion into a reusable React library.

According to Replay's internal benchmarks, manually creating a design system for a legacy app takes roughly 12-16 weeks. With Replay’s Library feature, that same design system can be scaffolded in a single afternoon by analyzing the recordings of the existing application.

How to build a Design System from Legacy UI

Why "Pixel Perfect" is the Enemy of "Logic Correct"#

Designers often spend hours debating the border-radius of a button in Figma. While aesthetics matter, the logic of the button—what it triggers in the legacy COBOL backend—is what keeps the business running. Manual mocking prioritizes the border-radius over the logic. Replay prioritizes the logic, then allows you to apply a modern Design System over it seamlessly.

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Implementation Strategy: From Video to React#

If you are a Senior Architect looking to move away from the manual mocking anti-pattern, the implementation follows a structured path.

Step 1: Workflow Capture#

Instead of "Discovery Meetings," have your power users record their daily workflows using the Replay recorder. This captures the "happy path" and the weird edge cases that never show up in documentation.

Step 2: Component Synthesis#

Replay’s AI Automation Suite parses the video. It identifies that the "Old Blue Button" is actually the

component. It sees that the "Grid View" is a complex data table with specific sorting requirements.

Step 3: Code Generation#

The system generates TypeScript code that adheres to your organization's coding standards.

typescript
// Example of a Replay-generated Flow component
import React, { useState } from 'react';
import { useLegacyBridge } from '@/hooks/useLegacyBridge'; // Replay's bridge utility

export const ClaimsProcessingFlow = () => {
  const [step, setStep] = useState(1);
  const { submitClaim, validateData } = useLegacyBridge();

  // Replay extracted this logic from the legacy "Wizard" workflow
  const handleNext = async (data: any) => {
    const isValid = await validateData(data);
    if (isValid) setStep(prev => prev + 1);
  };

  return (
    <div className="max-w-4xl mx-auto p-6">
      {step === 1 && <StepOne onNext={handleNext} />}
      {step === 2 && <StepTwo onNext={handleNext} />}
      {/* ... */}
    </div>
  );
};

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Frequently Asked Questions#

Why is manual Figma mocking considered an anti-pattern for legacy systems?#

It is considered an anti-pattern because it treats software as a static visual asset rather than a dynamic system. This leads to a "Translation Tax," where business logic is lost, and costs balloon to over $200,000 for simple screen recreations, while delaying the project by months.

How does Replay compare to traditional UI/UX design tools?#

While Figma is excellent for creating new products from scratch, Replay is purpose-built for Visual Reverse Engineering. It records existing applications and converts them into code and documentation, saving 70% of the time usually spent in the "Discovery" and "Design" phases of modernization.

Can Replay handle complex business logic or just UI components?#

Replay’s AI Automation Suite is designed to identify "Flows"—the logical progression of a user through an application. While it generates UI components, it also documents the state changes and API interactions observed during the recording, providing a roadmap for developers to implement the backend logic.

Is Replay secure for use in regulated industries like Healthcare or Finance?#

Yes. Replay is built for enterprise environments. It is SOC2 compliant, HIPAA-ready, and offers On-Premise deployment options for organizations that cannot allow data to leave their internal network.

How much time can I really save using Visual Reverse Engineering?#

On average, Replay reduces the time required per screen from 40 hours (manual audit, design, and initial coding) to just 4 hours. For a typical enterprise project, this shifts the timeline from 18-24 months down to just a few weeks or months.

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Conclusion: Stop Drawing, Start Converting#

The reasons manual figma mocking persists are rooted in outdated "Waterfall" mentalities. In a world where technical debt costs trillions and the talent gap is widening, you cannot afford to have your best engineers and designers manually transcribing legacy systems like medieval monks.

By adopting a Visual Reverse Engineering workflow with Replay, you eliminate the Translation Tax, close the Documentation Gap, and ensure that your modernization project is one of the 30% that actually succeeds.

Ready to modernize without rewriting? Book a pilot with Replay