Figma is a powerful design tool used in the creative industry. Whether you’re working individually or collaboratively, Figma consists of features that will help you to reach your goals. However, it can be difficult to understand this software if it’s not within your expertise. To ensure success when utilizing this product, it’s best to have an idea of its capabilities beforehand.
Collaboration and seamless workflows have become vital in today’s rapidly evolving UI&UX design services. The cloud-based tool Figma has reshaped the design industry with its streamlined functionality. With its trailblazing features and exceptional benefits, Figma has transformed the design sector on a global scale. In this article we will introduce you to what is Figma, what is figma used for, Figma’s advantages, features, and Do big companies use Figma.
Table of Contents
A Brief History of Figma
Figma first commenced development in 2012, spearheaded by Dylan Field and Evan Wallace. The goal was to create an innovative browser-based platform for users to express creativity. After several years in closed beta, Figma made its public debut in September 2016 and hasn’t looked back since– introducing new tools like Figjam and partnering with Google for Education to bring their products to Chromebooks everywhere. With this kind of activity surrounding it, Figma looks set to become the go-to platform of the future for incoming web designers everywhere.
Since its launch in, Figma has become one of the world’s premier tools for designing interfaces; currently, over four million people use the software. Accordingly, Adobe recognized its potential and made it part of its ecosystem when it purchased the company for $20 billion in September 2022.
What Is Figma Used For?
With an integrated platform, Figma facilitates digital design creation, collaboration, and sharing. By combining various design aspects, the software fosters collaboration and cohesive project building within a unified environment, spanning UI, web, mobile app design, and interactive prototypes.
Figma offers a free plan with unlimited collaborators and three files each for Figma and FigJam. However, if businesses require access to more features or higher storage capacities, then there are paid subscriptions available.
Brainstorming
When beginning a major project, it’s useful to collect your ideas in one place. Drawing out your thoughts can be effective, but online tools are often better suited for this type of job.
Figma offers a variety of beneficial features that allow you to brainstorm easily. With text boxes, shapes, commenting and other options available, Figma provides an efficient way to get the most out of your brainstorming session.
App Prototypes
Figma is an invaluable asset for UI and UX designers to make app prototypes throughout multiple platforms. Through the platform, users can pick a predefined device dimension and preview what their interface will look like on iPhones, iPads and Android devices. Making this kind of process accessible and straight-forward has never been easier.
Designing Website
For businesses that want to drive more revenue and expand their reach, a properly designed website is paramount. However, before launching it, pre-planning needs to occur. Figma is an excellent tool to use if you want to preview web pages as they will look in real life. This allows you to make sure everything looks good prior to making them live.
Advantages of Figma
Real-Time Collaboration
One of Figma’s standout features is its real-time collaboration capabilities. Multiple team members can work on a design simultaneously, seeing each other’s changes in real-time. This fosters seamless teamwork, eliminates version control issues, and accelerates design.
Cloud-Based Access
Figma is a cloud-based tool, meaning you can access your designs from any device with an internet connection. This flexibility allows designers to work from anywhere and collaborate with teammates across the globe, breaking down geographical barriers.
Cross-Platform Compatibility
Whether you’re on a Mac, Windows, or Linux machine, Figma ensures a consistent experience across platforms. This eliminates compatibility issues and empowers designers to focus on their creative work.
Interactive Prototyping
Figma goes beyond static designs by allowing designers to create interactive prototypes. You can define user interactions, transitions, and animations to provide a realistic preview of how the final product will behave.
Component-Based Design
Figma’s component system lets designers create reusable design elements (such as buttons, headers, and icons) that can be easily duplicated and updated across the project. This promotes design consistency and efficiency.
Design Versioning
Figma automatically maintains a version history of your designs, allowing you to revert to previous versions if needed. This safeguards against accidental changes and provides a safety net for experimentation.
Figma is online
Figma offers both Windows and Mac OS desktop versions in addition to the browser-based platform. Users can run Figma either through an application wrapper or within their browser, no matter which version they choose.
Collaboration
Figma’s always-online structure is one of its key benefits. One example of this advantage is the real-time collaboration found in Figma, which allows team members to join a design and edit it concurrently. Additionally, projects will never get out of sync due to the online feature; changes are automatically stored, requiring no file transfers between collaborators or third-party platform involvement.
Vector Editing Tools
Figma offers robust vector editing tools for creating precise and scalable designs. Designers can create shapes, paths, and custom icons with ease.
Prototyping and Code Output
When prototyping, connections, and hotspots can be created on the interface to simulate a user’s flow. To facilitate coding, Figma provides SVG, CSS code, and iOS/Android code generation.
Auto Layout
Designers who are looking to expand their skills can greatly benefit from learning Figma’s Auto Layout feature. In this course, Adi Purdila provides step-by-step instructions on mastering Figma’s Auto Layout in just 30 minutes, making it easier for designers to create and manage their designs. With Figma and Auto Layout, design architects can unlock a new level of sophisticated UI possibilities.
Responsive Designs
Figma ensures that your website looks its best on any device. This is possible thanks to responsive design, which automatically resizes elements for different screen sizes. With Figma, you no longer have to worry about your web pages ending up looking cluttered or messy when viewed on a smaller screen.
Shared Styles and Libraries
Designing across various screens and projects becomes more efficient with shared styles and design libraries. You can maintain consistent colors, typography, and assets throughout your designs.
Plugins
Figma’s plugin ecosystem extends its capabilities, allowing you to integrate third-party tools and automate tasks. From exporting assets to generating Lorem Ipsum text, plugins enhance your workflow.
Comments and Feedback
Collaborators can leave comments directly on designs, streamlining the feedback loop and ensuring clear communication between designers and stakeholders.
Design Handoff
Figma facilitates seamless design handoff to developers by generating CSS, assets, and design specs. This ensures that the design vision is accurately translated into the final product.
What is the difference between Photoshop and Figma?
Photoshop is a tried-and-true photo editing software that has been popular among designers and photographers alike for many years. This program allows users to make changes to photos, such as cropping, resizing, and adjusting colors.
Figma is a web-based app that was released in 2016 to aid users in creating clickable prototypes and mockups of web pages and other digital products through easy wireframing tools.
Do big companies use Figma?
The short answer is yes; Figma is a convenient and broad-based software that companies like Uber and Microsoft have preferred. Let’s see the advantages of Figma for big companies.
Do you want to create professional-looking designs quicker and more efficiently than ever? Figma may be the right app for you. Figma is an easy-to-use design tool that lets you create amazing graphics and illustrations. These are just a few of the many benefits Figma offers:
Figma has the obvious advantage that you don’t have to be a programmer. To build your prototype, drag and drop objects onto a canvas. If Photoshop is something you have tried before, it may be challenging to navigate the interface. Figma is straightforward to use as it only takes one click to add an item.
In fact, you don’t have to worry about compatibility issues when you choose Figma. Figma supports desktop computers and mobile phones, so you can access your files anywhere.
When creating a website, you will often have to resize certain elements. These elements can look messy if viewed on a smaller screen if you don’t take care. Responsive design is essential. Figma makes it easy to forget about all that. Figma automatically adjusts the layout to fit the screen size.
Moreover, Figma can be used on Windows, Mac OS X, and Android. There are no compatibility issues to be concerned about. After you have completed your project design, you can easily share it from your browser window. It’s easy to share your designs with clients without saving them.
You can modify templates to suit your needs with Figma. You can change colors, fonts, and backgrounds to create your own style. Although Photoshop can be intimidating for some, Figma is easy to use. It is easy to learn, even for beginners.
Figma’s best feature is its ability to include many powerful tools. These tools include the Shape, Pen, Text, and Magic Wand. Also, it’s easy to use and has a great feature: you don’t have to save any of your work. After you are done editing, you can instantly preview your changes.
Figma works well across all devices, including smartphones, tablets, desktops, and laptops. Because of these, Figma is our top choice for Adobe Creative Cloud and Figma. It’s easy to use and has many useful features.
Examples of Big companies that use Figma:
Microsoft
Microsoft’s Fluent design system is an excellent example of this. However, Microsoft decided to simplify its design workflows. To make its designers more efficient, Microsoft developed Figma plugins. How Figma help, many amazing plugins were born. Many of these plugins are well-known, but here are a few of them:
- Content Reel is a plugin that allows you find the right content for your layouts
- Themer is a plugin that makes it easy to switch libraries.
- Search and Replace – Figma’s text editor searches for and replaces pages with the selected text.
- Paste To Fill Plugin for copying and pasting images to fill the selected layer
- Button Resizer- Plugin that adjusts button size to label width
- Focus order – a plugin that automates workflows to annotate in terms of accessibility.
Notion
The Notion is a collaboration with colleagues and personal productivity. The problem they had: Now, Notion has become a top-selling app for collaboration and personal productivity. However, 2015 was difficult for Notion, and the startup nearly died. There was no technical stack for the Notion version, which led to insufficient potential.
The ambitions of Simon Last and Ivan Zhao, the creators of Notion, fell apart. They hoped to create, as they stated, “an application that solves people’s everyday problems.”
Figma solved the problem this way; they had to revise and adjust the UX of the application immediately. This required them to spend many nights designing designs in Figma and then transferring them into lines of code.
Notion 1.0 was released 2018 in 2018. Notion’s user experience is so great that it was awarded the title of best UX in history. Notion’s creators claim that Figma, which allows real-time collaboration, has been a key part of their success. The company has more than 1 million users.
GitHub
The GitHub activity field hosts IT projects and co-development. The problem is GitHub hosting is an excellent platform for collaboration where millions of designers, developers, and product managers can work together to solve problems. The company had to deal with the same problem that many others: GitHub employees work remotely.
Hence, it was essential to provide conditions for people to collaborate just as they would when working in an office. It was also necessary to optimize work processes. There was no documentation, and the templates needed to be updated. Designers did not have a single system and re-created the same components repeatedly.
Figma was able to help the company create a unified design system, as well as document its work processes. Figma and its API helped solve the problem of iterations/updates when GitHub users had to make project changes.
The need to search for and install additional software that can update files has been eliminated. The feedback process has been accelerated because all employees can view and edit files in real time with a single link. Figma is a part of GitHub’s culture at the moment.
Zoom
They collaborate via video communications, online meetings. The problem is Zoom currently leads video collaboration. The company’s growth was not without its problems. Zoom employees used several tools, including Invision, Framer, Sketch, and Zeplin, to transfer materials to developers.
The workflow needed to be improved by switching between devices, which led to a slowdown and prevented employees from focusing on the essential things.
Figma solved this problem; Zoom could get all the needed tools in one package. This allowed its team to work more efficiently and progress significantly on their projects. Figma was easy to use, which allowed the company’s designers to improve their skills and learn how to make proper components.
Airbnb
They are an online platform to search for and rent short-term private housing. The problem is a great service that offers a thoughtful UX with an elegant UI. Everything was done to make the user feel at home while they view information about other countries or their places of residence.
AirBnB’s design process was complicated and stressful. They used multiple programs simultaneously, which meant they spent less time designing and more time managing the workflow.
Figma’s impact on. When Airbnb employees began using Figma, it was clear that they had finally found the tool they were looking for. Figma’s browser features, such as faster feedback and the “multiplayer” mode (where colleagues can share files anywhere and with anyone), helped increase productivity and create a sense of unity within the company.
This is a core value of the company’s mission, which has always been about cohesion. Figma was a key contributor to the growth of Airbnb and helped create an open design culture.
Uber
It’s a service that orders trips or food delivery. The problem of Uber does not need a special introduction. This giant is well-known all over the globe and offers many services such as ride, drive, eat, freight, and others. This platform needed a central structure and faced many organizational challenges. Uber wanted to create one structure that would bring together all of its services and ensure compliance. This would allow for efficient collaboration.
How does Figma help uber? Figma is credited with helping the company achieve its current success. Figma’s versatility and ease of use allowed them to speed up the process of creating Base UI, the Uber design system that became the standard for employees. Figma helped Uber achieve centralization and organization in its work environment.
Conclusion
Figma is a vital tool for seamless communication and innovation in these collaborative contexts. With its collaborative capabilities, cloud-based access, and pioneering features, this tool has become a foundational element of modern design workflows. Figma’s future impact on design remains substantial as it advances and innovates.
FAQ
Can we use Google Web Fonts in Figma?
Figma makes use of Google’s large font library when displaying type. The user doesn’t need to install any Google fonts to leverage them in the app as some Web fonts will be part of the stock type selection. This makes for an easy experience when selecting a type for a Figma project.
What exactly is Figma used for?
Figma design allows people to create, share, and test designs for websites, mobile apps, and other digital products and experiences. It is a popular tool for designers, product managers, writers, and developers and helps anyone involved in the design process.
