4 ways Figma has transformed our design team

Figma helps solve problems and streamlines so much of our work that we’re certain it is here to stay, even if someday we were to all return to the same office. (All images throughout by Mark Peck.)

This article was originally published at Stream on Jan. 26, 2021.

My design team is spread out across the world. We reside in every U.S. time zone along with a presence in Amsterdam. From brainstorms to product launches, our geographical arrangement requires that we are committed to over-communicating with each other and sharing not only our work but also the thinking and reasoning behind many design and operational decisions, helping foster transparency that allows us to operate effectively and efficiently when we don’t have the benefit of all gathering in the same room. While nothing is ever perfect, the system we’ve created for ourselves has worked quite well and we’ve seen individual successes coincide with the completion of larger objectives.

And perhaps no other tool has been as integral to this collaborative process as Figma, the popular design software that last year was valued at over $2 billion. Indeed, every member of our team has created or shared work in some form via Figma over the last year, its impact on our success seemingly growing with each passing week.

I know we’re not alone — countless designers and teams have adopted Figma, especially as remote work has accelerated of late. Still, I wanted to share some of what makes the tool so advantageous, as its features solve problems and streamline so much of our work that we’re certain that it is here to stay, even if someday we were to all return to the same office.

Below are four aspects of the platform that we’re especially keen on sharing, confident your team can benefit from learning more about and perhaps using the tool to help improve design systems and creative output.

1. Auto Layout

Auto layout takes some up-front work but saves time in the end because there is no worrying about button size or boxes expanding when, for instance, more text is added to a form field.

Auto layout on Figma is a way to mirror the way things are done with frontend and backend code but to do that within design software. Using Figma, designers can apply advanced properties to individual elements and then to groups of those elements. They can automatically rearrange themselves or create layouts based upon the properties applied to those elements. (The principles are similar to CSS…