Why Figma is a dangerous tool for designers
It dawned on me today: Figma is a dangerous tool for designers. In the best way. Let me explain.
There are two reasons for this: Accessibility and Proficiency.
I previously attended a boot camp for UX Design (more on that later). Our instructor focused mainly on the fundamentals of good design: methods of research, understanding your user, asking better questions, lots of collaborative discussion and practice. We explored design tools: pencil and paper, note cards and stickies, napkins and markers. Eventually we arrived at digital tools. The three mains we learned about: Sketch, Invision, and Adobe XD.
Sketch and Invision were actually the only two “real” options, being that they were considered much more industry standard. There were a handful out of our 20-ish person class who were rocking PCs instead of Macs, so Adobe XD was more of a “we’ll cover this if you’re interested, and you should definitely look into it because it’s got a lot going for it, but you should definitely consider investing in Sketch/Invision and dig in when you’re able.”
Myself, always the frugal consumer, was aiming to stretch that 30-day Sketch trial as long as I could. So I did.
With my wife’s Macbook in hand, I waited to download, install, and start using Sketch until that 30 day trial would carry me past the end of the course. Invision was free, so I downloaded, installed, and used that all along the way. Once the Sketch trial was over, I considered saving/shelling out the $50 to purchase it with a years’ worth of updates included (actually $99, but we had a discount through the school partnership), but I held off. I had a vector design program on my desktop PC, so I would design there then take my assets over to Invision and prototype that way.
Eventually I tested out Adobe XD. I was already familiar with the Adobe ecosystem, so things were both new and familiar enough to not waste unnecessary amounts of time stumbling around keyboard shortcuts and foreign icons.
I kept looking around at other UX tools and came across a name that just wouldn’t go away: Figma.
I remember this program. I had already signed up for an account some time back.
But wait. It’s browser based? Come again?
Browser based? I’m sorry. That doesn’t make sense. Design tools were deep, complex, computationally intensive programs. They required hundreds of megabytes, sometimes gigabytes of storage space, an installation wizard, a utility manager, an update client, and an online account for updates. Figma doesn’t require any of that?
And to my surprise, yes, it is web based. You don’t need a Mac because it wasn’t developed for Windows or Linux. You don’t need to worry about having a quality rig to keep the lag, freezing, and crashing at bay. You don’t need to clear out space on your hard drive for files and folders. You just need a decent internet connection and a computer that’s mildly more advanced than a potato (yes, there are actual recommended specs, but they’re really not that beefy).
As a matter of fact, since everything is cloud based, I don’t even need to own a computer. I can go to the library and work on UX design case studies from scratch to finished prototype. I can use a friend’s computer and tweak the components after seeing some inspiring designs on Instagram. I can go home to visit my mom for the holidays and pop open her laptop to finish off a screen I didn’t have a chance to finalize before I hit the road.
Figma is accessible. Anywhere.
No more being tied to one machine with all of my files. Oh yeah, did I mention it’s free for individuals? Hey howdy, no more subscriptions and fees. Music to my ears and freedom for my soul.
But I’ve seen browser based apps. They can be crap. Accessibility and frugality mean squat if using the product is a painful experience.
This brings me to the second point: proficiency. Figma is a dream to use.
The walk-through intro wasn’t as good as others, but the tools are such a breeze to pick up and play with, I felt like I’d been using them for years. It’s all organized so intuitively. Browser-based or not, everything for your working project is on one screen. No need to load separate pages for different functionality (I’m looking at you Invision), just click a tab and switch from design tools to prototyping tools to code to pass off to developers.
There’s almost zero learning curve if you’re familiar with basic design tool staples. “V” on your keyboard still brings up the selection tool. Numbered properties can either be typed in or mouse clicked and dragged up and down. Objects snap very thoughtfully, such as aligning with another object or spacing things apart identically to the other objects close by, all with visual rulers that appear/disappear when necessary. Figma even has Adobe-esque Pathfinder tools to unify, subtract, intersect, and exclude vector objects.
Components are snazzy. In short: you make a thing, duplicate it, and all the duplicates automatically adjust to changes made with the original thing. Lots of flexibility here, too. You can make changes to the duplicates (such as text), and that specific property can be unlinked from the master while other properties like color, shape, etc. are still linked. The functionality isn’t brand new, but with the click of a button on the top-center of page, it’s so easy.
You don’t need anything else to design your UI elements. So many little things that add up to a very enjoyable experience.
Figma is your one stop shop for designing, prototyping, and collaborating.
For those who’d like to drop some money on further functionality, you can unlock the number of projects you can have under one account, have a team of designers linked and editing the same project/artboard in real time, and even share assets like icons, entire screens, and layer styles.
The user interface is uncluttered and well organized, making it extremely easy to use. It is so good at what it does. It makes designing in other programs too much hassle to be bothered with. It makes me scoff and proclaim “why wasn’t this a thing before?” to myself and get looks from strangers around me. It makes me want to tinker till the sun sets and the moon rises in the dark of night. Figma really surprised me.
Figma is dangerous because it gives designers access, not only in terms of reasonable pricing and cutting edge features, but in terms of practical execution.
I’ll say it again: you can design on the go.
You can design on your own desktop computer or on your friend’s laptop. You can pause your design session at the office, grab your laptop, and pick up where you left off at the coffee shop on the way home. You can design on multiple personal devices without the worry of being limited to one computer due to licensing issues. You can even design without personally owning any hardware at all. You are only limited by your internet connection.
But then again, Figma even has a desktop app that.
After a single, internet connected sign on to access the files you need, the Figma desktop app lets you unplug from the network and tinker away offline at your leisure. Once you’re back within range of an internet connection, your files sync with the cloud.
What more could you want?
If you’re interested in what else Figma has to offer, head to their website to find out more.
