How We Engineer Feedback at Figma with Eng Crits | Figma Blog

Figma’s engineering critiques (“eng crits”) are designed to gather feedback early, before technical decisions become expensive to change. Unlike formal technical reviews, they are collaborative forums for exploration, brainstorming, and expert input—not approval gates. Figma found that using FigJam’s open canvas made it easier for many engineers to contribute and helped teams avoid late-stage, launch-blocking feedback.

Why Early Feedback Matters

• Engineers are encouraged to share in-progress work, including unpolished ideas and early technical directions.
• Traditional technical reviews often happen after a design has already been developed, making feedback potentially disruptive or launch-blocking.
• Eng crits occupy a middle ground between informal design critiques and formal technical reviews.
• Their purpose is to help teams:
  • Explore novel approaches
  • Get expert feedback on technical designs
  • Unblock projects
  • Improve work through discussion rather than approval

“Lifting Ideas Up” as Teams Scale

• Early-stage teams often share ownership of both the overall architecture and its implementation.
• As teams grow, newer contributors may be limited to executing established plans rather than shaping them.
• Eng crits create a way for more people to contribute without undermining the original direction.
• Figma CTO Kris Rasmussen emphasizes that eng crits are for soliciting feedback early and often, not for deciding whether work is approved.

Why Format Matters

• Synchronous technical reviews tended to focus discussion on a few team leads.
• Asynchronous reviews often produced long, disconnected comment threads rather than meaningful conversations.
• Figma drew inspiration from brainstorms and retrospectives conducted in FigJam.
• FigJam enabled participants to:
  • Contribute simultaneously
  • Share early thinking and inspiration
  • Add screenshots of unfinished work
  • Provide context and prompts
  • Offer feedback without waiting for a single presenter or responding through fragmented threads

Scaling the Practice

• Figma initially piloted eng crits with teams of roughly eight to ten people.
• The collaborative format quickly gained support and was turned into a repeatable process.
• Calendar invitations were later opened to a much broader audience, eventually attracting more than 200 participants.
• Engineers were encouraged to join when they had relevant expertise or curiosity, rather than treating attendance as mandatory.

Anatomy of an Eng Crit

• Figma sends invitations to all engineers working on the editor.
• Invitees are marked as optional so they can participate when a topic is relevant or opt out when it is not.
• Cross-functional collaborators may also attend.
• Participation is driven by relevance and interest, rather than by a formal approval hierarchy.

Figma’s experience suggests that technical feedback works best when it is early, inclusive, and explicitly separated from approval. Teams can adopt a similar model by using a shared visual workspace, inviting contributors broadly, and framing reviews as opportunities to improve ideas rather than gates that determine whether work may proceed.