Figjam | Techlist.io

figmaJul 14, 20212 min readCurated summary

Keeping creativity flowing | Figma Blog

The post argues that creativity and productivity can survive difficult periods when teams make room for play, connection, and personal boundaries. Alek Mackie describes remote-work practices at Shopify that helped illustrators sustain creative energy during the pandemic. The central conclusion is that informal, inclusive human interaction can support serious work rather than distract from it. ## Make Room for Play - Creative work carries serious responsibilities, but occasional fun helps people remain happy, engaged, and inventive. - Figma’s collaborative environment can support harmless practical jokes, such as adding humorous images or fake cursors to coworkers’ files. - Briefly disrupting routine can provide the mental reset needed for a creative breakthrough. ## Design Better Team Activities Effective team-building activities should be: - **Short and easy**, ideally taking less than an hour. - **Free of serious goals or expected outcomes.** - **Optional and casual**, allowing people to observe, leave early, or decline. - **Consensual**, with the team’s interest and boundaries respected. - **Inclusive and accessible**, giving everyone an equal opportunity to participate. Examples include asynchronous creative prompts, watching Bob Ross together while painting in an online MS Paint simulator, and other low-pressure collaborative exercises. ## Create Space for Human Connection - Remote work can reduce interaction to meetings focused only on business outcomes. - Teams should intentionally create opportunities for genuine, non-work-related conversation. - Personal connection and professional effectiveness can coexist and reinforce one another. ## Use Informal Collaboration - Unplanned multiplayer sessions in Figma allow coworkers to work together while chatting, similar to sitting beside one another in an office. - People can collaborate on the same project or work independently while staying connected. - The format should adapt to individual needs: video, audio, written comments, or even silent co-working are all valid options. - Boundaries, workload, and energy levels should determine how people participate. Teams can maintain creativity during difficult times by treating play, connection, and flexibility as legitimate parts of productive work—not as distractions from it.

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Figjam Figma Real Time Collaboration Remote Work+2

figmaJun 15, 20212 min readCurated summary

The five stages of an effective brainstorm | Figma Blog

Effective brainstorming requires more than generating creative ideas: it depends on preparation, inclusive facilitation, focused ideation, and a clear path toward action. Figma recommends creating psychological safety while also giving participants structure, context, and a shared goal. The process should ultimately turn divergent ideas into tangible outcomes. ## Prepare and Plan Ahead - Explain why each participant was invited and how they can contribute. - Share pre-reading, briefs, or collaborative files before the session. - Use short pre-meetings with key stakeholders to gather feedback and address concerns early. - Treat the work before and after the meeting as just as important as the brainstorm itself. ## Make Introductions and Manage Expectations - Begin with an icebreaker, such as drawing an animal or creating collaborator cards, to encourage a creative mindset. - Establish shared rules for participation, including expectations about attention and multitasking. - Clearly explain the brainstorm’s purpose and acknowledge that not every idea will be used. - Facilitators should create an open, inclusive environment where people feel comfortable contributing. ## Generate Ideas - Use adaptable templates as “recipes” rather than starting from a blank canvas each time. - Lower the barrier to participation with prompts such as “How might we…?” or simple warm-up exercises. - Define a “north star” that states what problem the group is solving and what it should produce. - Encourage ambitious ideas by making the session playful, including small rewards for especially creative suggestions. ## Share Artifacts and Outcomes - Move deliberately from divergent idea generation toward convergence and prioritization. - Ask questions and refine suggestions rather than accepting ideas at face value. - Evaluate ideas against the session’s shared goal or “north star.” - Ensure the brainstorm produces useful artifacts and clear tactical direction, rather than ending with a collection of disconnected ideas. The provided text ends partway through the fourth stage, so details of the fifth stage are not included.

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Figjam Figma Slack Design Thinking+1

figmaJun 13, 20212 min readCurated summary

Collaborating and connecting in FigJam | Figma Blog

FigJam evolved from a brainstorming tool into a shared workspace for meetings, research, retrospectives, and team-building during remote work. Figma teams use collaborative files to make contributions visible, preserve context, and reduce reliance on lengthy synchronous discussions. The newly added timer strengthens this approach by helping teams coordinate activities and stay focused together. ## Daily Stand-ups - Figma’s Editor Platform team uses a virtual stand-up template for quick daily check-ins. - Teammates add sticky notes about current work, recent progress, blockers, and issues requiring discussion. - Each file represents one day, creating a historical record that helps the team track progress over time. - The format emphasizes visibility and shared context without requiring lengthy meetings. ## Synthesizing Research Feedback - Figma’s research team replaced spreadsheets with FigJam for organizing and discussing user feedback. - Unlike spreadsheet comments, FigJam allows cross-functional partners to annotate research, ask questions, and identify patterns directly in the workspace. - Team members can independently review reports and add takeaways to matrices before meeting, making group discussions more focused. - Templates help organize findings around user archetypes and other research themes. ## Retrospectives and Inclusive Feedback - Teams use retrospective templates covering successes, improvement areas, shout-outs, and future ideas. - Sticky notes create a low barrier to participation, especially for people who are less comfortable speaking in meetings. - Contributions remain visible and easy to scan, helping teams recognize input across engineering, design, and product. - The timer supports structured facilitation: one team gives participants 15 minutes per topic before moving on. ## Team Culture and Social Activities - FigJam is also used for birthday cards, speed-drawing contests, board games, and informal gatherings. - During the FigJam launch, Figma’s marketing team held a remote drawing session with a cartoon artist and a live llama. - These activities demonstrate that the workspace can support connection and celebration, not just project work. The article recommends combining FigJam’s templates and shared canvas with its timer to run more engaging stand-ups, retrospectives, research sessions, architecture discussions, and social activities.

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Figjam Figma User Research Remote Work+3

figmaJun 7, 20212 min readCurated summary

Inside Figma: how our PM team uses FigJam | Figma Blog

Figma’s product management team uses FigJam throughout the product-development lifecycle, not just for early-stage brainstorming. They rely on collaborative templates to shape strategy, generate ideas, plan roadmaps, run retrospectives, and stay aligned in weekly meetings. The broader conclusion is that a flexible visual workspace can strengthen both execution and team rituals, especially for distributed teams. ## Developing a Product Vision - The team uses a product vision board to define short- and long-term priorities. - The board connects user needs, potential features, and business goals. - Visualizing these elements helps validate strategy and show how individual plans support broader objectives. - FigJam makes it easy to capture rough ideas without focusing prematurely on wording or polish. ## Brainstorming Ideas with Crazy 8s - The PM team uses the “Crazy 8s” framework to generate many ideas quickly. - Participants have eight minutes to create eight possible solutions to a problem. - The emphasis is on speed and quantity rather than detailed refinement. - Afterward, the team shares ideas and discusses which concepts are worth pursuing. ## Building and Visualizing Roadmaps - FigJam supports structured planning as well as freeform exploration. - The team uses a Gantt chart to map projects and build product roadmaps. - A visual timeline clarifies each project’s scope, reach, staffing needs, and resource requirements. - It also exposes conflicts and helps the team identify when priorities need to change. ## Running Retrospectives - Product, engineering, and design teams use recurring templates to review product execution. - Marketing, support, and product education teams apply similar retrospectives to go-to-market work. - Sessions focus on what went well and what could improve, creating visibility across teams. - The team also retrospectives its internal processes to ensure they continue working as the organization grows. ## Staying Connected in Weekly Meetings - The PM team meets weekly in a shared FigJam file to exchange updates and maintain alignment. - Prompts cover difficult problems, exciting or concerning developments, and personal updates. - Cursor chats, stickers, and emotes make remote meetings more interactive. - Figma turned this meeting structure into a reusable template for other teams. Figma presents FigJam as a workspace that can support the entire product process. Teams can start with the provided templates and adapt them for strategy, collaboration, planning, reflection, and remote communication.

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Figjam Figma Product Management Brainstorming+3

figmaMay 16, 20213 min readCurated summary

Inside Maker Week: more than a hackathon | Figma Blog

Maker Week is Figma’s twice-yearly, company-wide alternative to a traditional hackathon. It gives employees across disciplines, teams, and time zones dedicated time to pursue creative projects without requiring technical expertise. The program has produced hundreds of ideas since 2018, many of which became product features, community tools, or cultural initiatives. ## A Maker Culture Open to Everyone - Figma defines “maker” broadly—not just as an artist, engineer, or craftsperson, but as anyone expressing creativity in an authentic way. - The company reinforces this culture during weekly All Hands meetings, where new employees explain how they are makers. - This inclusive definition allows people who see themselves as curators, organizers, educators, or collaborators to participate. ## Maker Week as a Cross-Functional Festival - Maker Week happens twice a year and pauses normal day-to-day work for a week of experimentation and connection. - Unlike many hackathons, which can favor engineering, product, and design teams, Maker Week invites employees from every function. - Projects have included: - Recruiter-created employee baseball cards for candidates. - An intern-built “Name That Figmate” game. - A chemistry lesson taught through baking by data scientists. - The format encourages cross-pollination, shared ownership, and a better understanding of how different teams contribute to Figma. ## From Experiments to Shipped Work - Figma has held five Maker Weeks since 2018, generating hundreds of projects. - Some projects have become externally released products or features, including: - Auto Layout. - Interactive components. - Figma plugins. - The company suggests that FigJam itself may represent the culmination of multiple Maker Week experiments. - Other projects, such as *Figma in Quarantine: The Musical*, have offered glimpses into Figma’s internal culture. ## Featured Maker Week Projects ### Empathy-Building Cards - Research, sales enablement, and brand design employees created cards combining user personas with different characteristics and situations. - The cards help Figmates better understand users’ perspectives and contextualize the challenges they face. - The project was shared with the broader Figma community. ### Figma in 3D - An engineer and product support employee collaborated to create an extension that projects layers off the canvas. - Users can orbit around the design with a mouse, making Figma feel more like a 3D mapping application. - The project explored new possibilities for spatial software. ### User Collaboration Data Visualization - A data scientist and enterprise sales employee built a Mode-based map showing collaboration between users in different countries within the same domain. - The visualization helps organizations understand how teams collaborate across regions and time zones. Maker Week demonstrates that innovation does not have to come only from formal product teams. Figma’s approach recommends creating structured time for broad participation, experimentation, and cross-functional collaboration—while allowing the most promising ideas to evolve into real products or cultural initiatives.

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Figjam Figma Figma Plugins Data Visualization+1

figmaApr 20, 20212 min readCurated summary

Introducing FigJam | Figma Blog

FigJam is Figma’s online whiteboard for collaborative brainstorming and early-stage design. Figma argues that remote work and the shift toward cross-functional collaboration have created a need for more informal, shared online spaces—not just tools for producing finished designs. FigJam addresses this with a lightweight, approachable environment that connects directly to Figma. ## Why Figma Built FigJam - Remote work has reduced in-person collaboration and increased reliance on online tools. - People were already using Figma for activities beyond interface design, including games, icebreakers, meal planning, and brainstorming. - These uses showed that teams wanted a place to share ideas and connect without necessarily designing products. - Figma concluded that these interactions needed a dedicated space where non-designers felt welcome while designers still felt at home. - The product also supports Figma’s broader goal of making design accessible to everyone by involving more people earlier in the design process. ## FigJam’s Role in Early-Stage Design - FigJam is described as a lightweight, easier-to-learn version of Figma for ideation and brainstorming. - Teams can use it to: - Define user problems - Gather inspiration - Explore product ideas - Map user flows - Build and document processes - Multiplayer tools include sticky notes, emojis, drawing tools, stamps, and cursor-based chats. - Shapes, lines, and connectors make diagramming and systems thinking easier. ## Collaboration and Connection - Built-in audio lets teams discuss ideas without switching to a phone or video call. - FigJam integrates seamlessly with Figma, allowing work to move from initial concepts through final prototypes in one ecosystem. - Expressive features such as emojis, stamps, and cursor chats are intended to make collaboration feel warmer, more spontaneous, and more enjoyable. - The product is designed to combine practical functionality with the informal energy of “hanging out” together online. ## Early Users and Pricing - Teams at Stripe, Netflix, Salesforce, Twitch, and Discord tested FigJam during its development. - Discord’s design leadership praised it as a focused, uncomplicated version of Figma suitable for brainstorms, retrospectives, and similar activities. - FigJam was free for everyone through the end of 2021. - Planned 2022 pricing included free and paid plans costing $3 and $5 per editor per month. FigJam’s central promise is to give distributed teams an inviting, collaborative space where product ideas can emerge before formal design work begins.

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Figjam Figma Collaboration Design Thinking+3

figmaApr 20, 20212 min readCurated summary

Coming together at Config 2021 | Figma Blog

Figma’s Config 2021 announcements focus on making design more collaborative and accessible to broader teams. The company introduced tools for brainstorming, safe experimentation, mobile review, live discussion, and large-scale participation. Together, these updates reflect Figma’s shift from a specialized interface-design tool toward a broader collaborative workspace. ## FigJam for Brainstorming - FigJam is a new whiteboard space for brainstorming, diagramming user journeys, and exploring ideas. - It includes features such as emotes and chats to recreate some of the spontaneity of in-person collaboration. - Released in open beta, it was initially free through February 2022, with planned free and paid tiers afterward. ## Branching for Safer Iteration - Branching lets users create independent versions of a file to explore ideas without changing the main design. - Teams can collaborate within branches using Figma’s multiplayer tools. - Completed work can be merged back into the main branch. - The feature is available in beta for Organization-plan customers and is intended to support design-system contributions and large-team workflows. ## Mobile Access and Review - New iOS and Android apps make files and prototypes easier to access from anywhere. - The apps improve the mirrored playback experience, helping designers preview how work appears on actual devices. - The mobile app was launched in beta, with a broader release planned. ## Audio Collaboration - Audio allows teammates to start calls directly inside Figma or FigJam. - It supports live design critiques, group brainstorming, and discussions without leaving the editor. - The feature was planned for Professional and Organization plans. ## Larger Multiplayer Sessions - Figma increased its limit to 500 concurrent users: 100 editors and 400 viewers. - The company planned to raise the limit to 1,000 users across Figma and FigJam, with 200 editors and 800 viewers. - These limits support large presentations, workshops, classrooms, and other emerging collaborative uses. ## Publishing to the Figma Community - Everyone can publish files, templates, techniques, and other resources to the Figma Community. - Users can both discover work from others and share their own contributions. - FigJam templates were highlighted as an early example of this expanded community ecosystem. Figma’s Config 2021 updates recommend a broader model of design collaboration: teams can ideate in FigJam, experiment through branching, review work on mobile, communicate through audio, and share results with the wider community.

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Figjam Figma Design Systems Collaborative Design+3

figmaApr 5, 20212 min readCurated summary

About Figma’s new Starter plan | Figma Blog

Figma’s updated free Starter plan, launched April 21, 2021, prioritizes unrestricted multiplayer collaboration over unlimited shared files. Drafts remain an unlimited personal workspace, while team spaces gain unlimited editors but are limited to three files with three pages each. Figma concluded that removing the arbitrary two-editor cap would better let teams experience real-time collaboration. ## Changes to the Starter Plan - Drafts become a personal workspace: - Unlimited files, pages, and viewers remain available. - Co-editing requires moving a file into a team space. - Team spaces now support: - Unlimited editors. - A maximum of three files. - Up to three pages per file. - Existing files, pages, and projects created before the rollout were not moved or altered. - FigJam was also introduced to all plans with unlimited usage during its beta period. ## Why Figma Removed the Editor Limit - Collaboration is central to Figma’s browser-based product and often the main reason teams choose it. - The previous two-editor limit prevented users from experiencing the full benefits of multiplayer design. - Figma considered simply increasing the editor limit but decided any fixed number would be arbitrary. - The new approach supports teams ranging from two collaborators to dozens of teammates. ## Results from User Testing - 87% of users were excited about unlimited editors in team spaces. - Teams collaborated 29% more after the two-editor restriction was removed. - Users typically worked actively on only two or three files at a time, making the new team-space limits seem reasonable. - Unlimited files remained available in Drafts for personal work. ## Rollout and Additional Options - Figma announced the changes ahead of the April 21, 2021 rollout. - Users received notifications through email and the Figma app. - Students and educators could apply for the Figma for Education plan, which provided Professional-plan features for free. The updated Starter plan was designed to make Figma’s multiplayer experience accessible to teams of any size while reserving broader file capacity for paid plans.

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Figjam Figma Collaborative Design Real Time Collaboration+1