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Figma is making you a bad designer
If you jump straight into a design tool you’re not using it, it’s using you and it’s sucking your creativity dry.
I was a bit panicked about getting a job out of school. After 2 awesome years of learning about HCI and doing engaging student projects I had totally fallen head over heels in love with design (and my now husband). I had big dreams, great process, strong collaboration skills, and an academic basis for how to think about and communicate design. What I hadn’t learned was a thing about visual design or engineering, which at the time seemed like truly marketable skills. UX designer roles (at least in name) were newer to the industry and few and far between. My professors assured me that it wasn’t going to matter. That my foundational education was going to be the thing that mattered to landing a great job. Being an anxious person by nature, I listened, but I didn’t really hear them. Instead, I began to prepare myself for my job hunt by developing a few scrappy ways of making wireframes and mockups with Powerpoint, the early version of Balsamiq, hobbling along in Illustrator, doing my best to study up on the newest tools.
As predictable as sunrise, my little panic streak was all for nought. Just as my lovely professors has said, knowing how to wireframe or mockup in a…
