The following is an article I wrote while I was in BeingPM, a group of Product professionals coming together to discuss everything product.
About two years back, I was getting into product management as an intern. A few seats next to mine was a “designer” working out a few designs in Photoshop. I was still figuring out the whole deal of making a product - an idea, a reality.
Fast forward a few months, I created my first Product Requirement Document for an upcoming update. I observed the customer problems, analyzed competitor’s ways, framed the feature requirements and prioritized them, and curated a milestone plan for the features. Then came the design phase. I was figuring out one step at a time and my mentor implored me on how essential it is for a product manager to identify good UX from a bad one and think like both a user and a designer. As always, to Google, I went.
After reading a lot of articles about the process of UX designing, and the difference between UI and UX, I became familiar with the tools. I searched for the best tools out there, and I came across Figma. “Hmmm. That’s a weird name,” I thought. Although I read a lot of articles and understood what goes into product designing and the steps behind it, I certainly couldn’t think like a designer or imagine what kind of problems users face while using digital products. Just a little expertise is required to know that the ability to imagine the day-to-day problems users face, makes someone a powerful designer.
So that is why the ‘Learn Design’ pilot content that Figma had made real sense to me. It focused on someone like me, a newbie looking to figure out what the heck “Design” is. It comprises of short articles that barely took 5 - 10 minutes to read. They were coupled with exercises to help you get your idea of an app or a webpage on a canvas.
That one week of this course/blog series made so much impact on me. It didn’t make me an expert in UX/UI design. But it gave me what I needed to get started and fall in love with ‘Designing’ (and Figma.)
Figma uses powerful strategies to not only take in the existing market but also expand the market with fresh nodes. They educate the community to genuinely help them expand their knowledge, while not being keen on selling them the product. Creating content that anyone can benefit from, is a very powerful way to build customer trust.
Still … why choose the Figma?
Designing with Figma felt like a hassle-free job with these cherries on top.
- I need not have a powerful laptop to install Figma. I don’t even need to install Figma. Just www.figma.com and voila! I can even design from Linux❤️ !!!
- I need not do everything on my own. Plugin-support, for easing my already small learning curve.
- A wonderful community giving free resources. And now there is a beta community feature to share resources from inside the product!
While we contemplate why users choose Figma over others, the following two factors have minimal to no influence on it
- Very good user experience
- Pricing
Why?
- All the other players have the same minimal user experience. To the point that if you know to use one, you can easily adapt to other tools.
- Figma does have a free tier that is enough for someone like me and those who work solo or with one partner. But so does Adobe XD.
If the beginner-friendly content, community focus, hassle-free signing up, and the small learning curve is the selling point for beginners to choose Figma, what more does it have in store for the professional and enterprise users?
Collaboration
Especially in these times.
When I asked senior designers how they used to work when it was just Photoshop or Sketch, their pain was obvious.
A great deal of designing is, working on feedback from all directions; product managers, developers, customers, testing users, QAs, and even (especially) the support has very valid user pain points. Discussing through mail or chat about different screens and working on them must’ve been a nightmare for both the designers and the stakeholders. Put in the additional work of managing the versions, sharing those files, and keeping everyone up-to-date.
Figma makes this a cake-walk.
- Share the link to stakeholders with appropriate permissions.
- Pinpoint when giving feedback and engage with replies.
- Forget about managing versions.
Once the designs are finalized the designers will provide the developers with the design assets like icons and illustrations to use in the real solution. They export the assets, zip and mail them to the developers. Whenever there is a small change in an icon, the designers have to rework, compile everything, and send it again. This might look simple on paper, but when the number of entities involved increases, so does the complexity of the process. In Figma, you just share the link, and the developers can export the assets themselves.
As the team/product/company grows, maintaining consistency across the product(s) and sharing assets, instead of reinventing the wheel every time, becomes a must. Team libraries are there for them.
Now and then, my friend and I get excited about an idea and get on a file together to brainstorm. In Figma, multiple editors can work on a single file, and the changes reflect in realtime. This works like magic for brainstorming ideas together.
There is also an ‘Observation mode’ for me to mirror my friend’s screen when I’m trying to learn something from his design process. Figma brilliantly points out that this can also be used for user testing, to identify how the user’s mind works when navigating a particular prototype.
These are all brilliant observations of the needs in the market and perfect implementation to solve them.
Verdict
I can write a lot more about how Figma nailed, especially the remote work and collaboration game. But here are the highlights.
- Figma ❤️ community. They engage their community and make honest efforts to help them.
- They actually listen to their users. Their Twitter handles are always looking for new exciting use cases.
- They understand and focus on the remote & real-time collaborative nature of our world going forward.
- Check out this cool game u/solidwhetstone made using just Figma. 🤯 ?!