Figma

532 posts

figmaOct 29, 20192 min readCurated summary

Let’s create Figma’s first user conference together | Figma Blog

Figma announced its first user conference, scheduled for February 6, 2020, in San Francisco. The event was designed as an in-person extension of Figma’s growing online community, giving users opportunities to learn from one another, share practical experiences, and build connections. Figma invited the community to help shape the program through speaker proposals and attendee applications. ## A conference built around the Figma community - Figma’s user base had grown from a small beta community to hundreds of thousands of active users worldwide. - The company emphasized that users had always learned from one another through inspiration, knowledge-sharing, and collaboration. - Following the launch of Figma Community, the conference would provide an offline space for users to connect and exchange ideas. ## Community-led programming - The event would feature: - Lightning talks - Workshops - Roundtables - A limited number of keynotes - Sessions could range from 15 minutes to one hour. - Users could submit their own ideas or nominate someone else to speak. - Suggested topics included: - Interesting projects built with Figma - Lessons learned through difficult experiences - Peer discussions - Collaborative activities using Figma - Proposal submissions were due by November 20, 2019, at 11:59 p.m. PST. ## Small, diverse attendance - Figma planned to keep the conference relatively small to encourage meaningful conversations. - The company sought diversity across ability, age, education, ethnicity, gender, race, sexual orientation, and socioeconomic status. - Because capacity might be limited, Figma could use a lottery system to help create a representative attendee group. - Applicants would receive notification after the deadline and have one guaranteed week to purchase a pass. ## Cost and scholarships - Tickets cost $299. - Figma offered scholarships so that financial constraints would not prevent participation. - Attendee applications were also due November 20, 2019. Figma’s announcement positioned the conference as a collaborative event shaped by its users. Prospective speakers and attendees were encouraged to apply and help create an inclusive, community-driven gathering.

Figma Collaborative Design Figma Plugins Figma Community+1

figmaOct 21, 20192 min readCurated summary

Beyond multiplayer: Building community together in Figma | Figma Blog

Figma argues that design is becoming more open, collaborative, and community-driven beyond real-time multiplayer editing. It introduces the Figma Community, where people can publish live files for others to inspect, remix, and learn from, alongside a redesigned workspace focused on team collaboration. The beta is intended to evolve through feedback from companies, educators, governments, and independent designers. ## From Multiplayer Collaboration to Public Sharing - Figma’s multiplayer features helped normalize co-editing and involving non-designers in the design process. - The company now wants to make it easier for designers to share not only finished work, but also the underlying process and methods. - The Figma Community beta provides a public space for publishing files that anyone can inspect, remix, and learn from. ## A Community Built with Customers - Users choose which files to publish on their public profiles. - The initial licensing option is Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International, with more restrictive licenses potentially added later. - Figma describes the release as a multi-month beta designed to gather feedback and discover how organizations will use the platform. ## Use Cases Across Organizations - **Slack:** Publishing UI kits to help partners build better Slack applications. - **Dropbox:** Sharing culture kits for design managers. - **Unsplash:** Providing avatars and visual assets for designers. - **VMware:** Making its Clarity public design system easier to use. - **City of Chicago:** Offering a public design system that citizens can remix with their own identity. - **Lambda School and Stanford d.school:** Publishing free educational templates. - **Independent designers:** Sharing presentation templates, portfolios, tutorials, and source files. - **Square Crypto:** Exploring transparent, cross-company design collaboration inspired by the openness of the Bitcoin community. ## Learning Through Inspectable Files - Designers can publish editable source files rather than only screenshots or finished exports. - David Kulakevich’s Figma artwork demonstrates how viewers can inspect individual layers and learn the techniques behind a finished piece. - This turns community sharing into both a portfolio platform and an educational resource. ## Communities Inside the Workspace - Figma is also redesigning workspaces around the people on a team. - The goal is to make important files and projects easier for team members to discover. - This reflects Figma’s broader view that design files should be organized around collaboration and community, not treated as isolated artifacts. Figma’s recommendation is effectively to treat design as an open, reusable medium: publish useful files, learn from others’ source material, and build shared systems across organizational boundaries.

Figma Design Systems Real Time Collaboration Plugins+2

figmaOct 14, 20193 min readCurated summary

Bringing new life to Figma’s brand | Figma Blog

Figma’s 2019 brand refresh expanded an existing visual language rather than replacing it. The process centered on collaboration, using research and Figma itself to create a brand that could feel both professional and playful. The result emphasized curiosity, vibrancy, honesty, boldness, and the imperfect process of making. ## Evolving an Existing Brand Language - Figma found that its original brand foundations were strong but had been created when the company was much smaller. - The refresh expanded the limited brand guide with additional rules for areas such as blog imagery and illustration. - Existing elements, including geometric shapes, were given new applications while remaining recognizable. - The goal was continuity: the new identity should feel like an extension of Figma’s original character. ## Defining Figma’s Personality - The team treated Figma as a person to clarify how the brand should behave and communicate. - Four personality traits became the main guideposts: - **Curious:** clever, playful, imaginative, and eager to explore. - **Vibrant:** dynamic, confident, energetic, and enthusiastic. - **Honest:** inclusive, empathetic, approachable, and willing to learn. - **Bold:** powerful, unexpected, nonconforming, and authentic. - These traits were intended to let the brand shift between consumer and enterprise audiences, and between reserved and playful expressions. ## Shapes That Represent Collaboration - Figma’s new illustrations use shapes as characters that interact, cooperate, disagree, or simply coexist. - Their positioning creates different compositions and communicates collaboration. - Illustrations vary in complexity: - Simple visuals support learning and clarity. - More abstract arrangements are used when the context allows greater expression. - Basic shapes can combine into complex images, making the construction process visible. - The illustrations deliberately show work in progress, including edited or manipulated elements, rather than presenting only polished final results. - This imperfect quality reflects the messy, evolving nature of design and encourages people to share how they make things. ## A Typeface with Hidden Character - Figma selected **Whyte** by Swiss type foundry Dinamo as its new brand typeface. - The team preferred Whyte’s **inktrap** version, which contains notches historically used in metal type to control pooled ink. - These details are subtle at small sizes but become visible when enlarged, giving the typography an illustrative quality. - The typeface supports Figma’s desired balance between conventional clarity and nonconforming personality. ## Refreshing Figma with Figma - The team created the entire refresh in Figma rather than relying on Photoshop or Illustrator. - Working in its own product challenged the designers to develop new workflows and creative techniques. - Collaboration was central, and Figma’s capabilities sometimes pushed ideas further than initially planned. - The tool became both the subject of the rebrand and the medium through which the new identity was developed. The refresh demonstrates how a growing company can strengthen its brand by extending existing principles, defining a clear personality, and making the creative process itself part of the identity.

Figma Collaboration Typography Illustration+3

figmaOct 6, 20193 min readCurated summary

Customer journey mapping with Figma | Figma Blog

Customer journey maps help teams build a shared understanding of how people experience a process, including emotions, pain points, and opportunities for improvement. The article explains how Lextech uses Figma to research, create, refine, and validate these maps collaboratively. Figma’s component libraries, collaboration tools, version history, and comments make journey mapping more consistent and easier to share with clients and customers. ## When Customer Journey Maps Are Useful - Journey maps visually tell the story of a customer process, such as shopping for a car or purchasing a product online. - They combine process steps with customer emotions and pain points. - A shared map helps people with different perspectives understand research and identify improvement opportunities. - Journey maps are less suitable for highly nonlinear processes with many branches or dependencies; a two-dimensional user-flow diagram may work better. - They may also add limited value when a process is already well documented through other visual methods. ## Building a Journey Map Component Library - Teams can create reusable components and styles specifically for journey maps. - A shared library improves visual consistency and speeds up the creation of new maps. - Global style or component updates can be applied efficiently when the design changes. - Lextech provides a sample Figma file and component library as a starting point. ## Keeping Maps Organized with Tidy Up - Figma’s **Tidy Up** feature helps adjust spacing between journey steps. - It makes it easier to insert or reorder steps without rebuilding large portions of the map. ## Research and Real-Time Collaboration - Multiple designers can work on the same journey map simultaneously. - Lextech also records interview notes directly in Figma, keeping research and map development in one location rather than spreading information across multiple tools. ## Using Version History - Before sending a map to clients, the team manually timestamps a version in the file’s history. - This creates a reliable reference point if the team needs to revisit an earlier state. - Showing how a map evolved can help clients understand how research findings changed the team’s understanding of the customer. ## Gathering Feedback with Comments - Lextech shares rough journey maps with customers to validate research and uncover missing steps. - Comments provide a centralized feedback channel tied to precise locations on the map. - Teams can ask follow-up questions directly in comment threads. - For asynchronous reviews, the team duplicates the file, shares the map as a single-screen prototype, and invites users to comment. - During live reviews, a designer records participant feedback directly in the file. - Separate file copies can prevent earlier comments from biasing new reviewers and make it easier to compare feedback from customers, clients, and other groups. Figma is most effective when journey maps are treated as collaborative, evolving research artifacts rather than static deliverables. Start with reusable components, keep research and feedback in the same file, and validate the map with real users before using it to guide design decisions.

Figma Prototyping Real Time Collaboration Component Library+2

figmaOct 2, 20192 min readCurated summary

Designing for top feature requests, like Smart Animate | Figma Blog

Figma introduced Smart Animate and Drag in 2019 to support more expressive, realistic prototypes. Smart Animate automatically animates matching objects between frames, while Drag lets users control transitions with finger movement. The features were shaped by customer feedback, recurring interaction patterns, and Figma’s effort to integrate advanced animation into its existing workflow. ## New Prototyping Features - **Smart Animate** automatically animates similar objects across frames. - It improves existing transitions and supports interactions such as: - Dropdowns and pop-ups - Button hover states - Tab changes - Moving or disappearing objects - **Drag** allows users to control a transition by dragging with a finger. - Figma provided a product tutorial and help article to explain how to use the features. ## Learning from User Pain - Figma used in-product NPS surveys as an ongoing source of qualitative feedback. - Rather than focusing only on NPS scores, the team categorized comments to identify recurring problems. - Customers wanted: - Simple, smooth animations for everyday interactions - A way to communicate advanced transitions to developers - Auto-animation and drag or slide transitions without relying on other tools - Several survey respondents became early beta customers. ## Identifying Broad Interaction Patterns - Figma collected animation examples from customer conversations and studied interactive interfaces in everyday products. - The team avoided designing Smart Animate around a single use case so the feature would remain broadly useful. - Two major patterns shaped the first release: - **Objects change while the user remains on the same screen:** for example, hover states, expanding menus, or content revealed after swiping. - **Some elements remain fixed while most content changes:** common in tabbed navigation, where content moves and the tab indicator shifts. - Focusing on these shared patterns helped Figma keep the initial scope manageable while addressing many different customer needs. ## Integrating Animation into Figma - Figma wanted Smart Animate and Drag to feel consistent with its existing prototyping tools rather than like separate systems. - Supporting automatic animation required revisiting fundamentals such as layer naming. - Figma updated how objects are automatically named and renamed during creation and duplication. - Layers can now match for animation based on hierarchy, naming, and order, allowing Smart Animate to work with minimal manual setup. Figma’s approach combined direct customer research with pattern-based product design. The practical recommendation is to start with real user pain, identify common behaviors across use cases, and integrate new capabilities into familiar workflows rather than building isolated features.

Figma Prototyping Interaction Design Smart Animate+2

figmaSep 9, 20192 min readCurated summary

How to make background patterns for your next design project | Figma Blog

Namika Hamasaki uses a daily pattern challenge to develop creativity through repetition without producing repetitive results. Her process combines observation, unconventional color palettes, layout grids, geometric experimentation, and Figma components to turn simple ideas into seamless patterns. The central lesson is that consistent practice and attention to everyday details can make creative work easier and more adventurous. ## Finding Daily Inspiration - Inspiration can come from ordinary surroundings, including: - Food - Architecture - Furniture - Nature - Landscapes encountered during a commute - Hamasaki photographs interesting shapes, colors, and compositions for later reference. - Maintaining an inspiration library helps prevent the blank-page problem and provides starting points for new designs. ## Building a Color Palette - The challenge allows her to experiment beyond the brand color restrictions common in professional work. - She often derives palettes from inspiring photographs. - Figma’s Image Palette plugin extracts colors from images and generates a usable palette. ## Setting Up a Grid - A grid helps organize pattern elements and ensures that the final design can repeat correctly. - Hamasaki uses Figma’s Layout grid to establish the structure before placing shapes. ## Experimenting with Geometric Shapes - Complex-looking patterns begin with basic forms such as circles, rectangles, and triangles. - She strategically places shapes on the grid, then experiments with: - Rotating circles or semicircles - Shifting elements - Varying rotation angles - Testing different color combinations - The process is intentionally exploratory, allowing unexpected visual results to emerge. ## Creating Seamless Patterns - Once a design feels successful, Hamasaki converts it into a component. - She turns off the component’s **Clip content** option. - She duplicates and arranges the component across a frame to create a repeating pattern. - Editing elements inside the master component lets her quickly test different layouts across all duplicated instances. The practical recommendation is to establish a regular creative exercise, document visual inspiration, and use simple, flexible systems—such as palettes, grids, and reusable components—to explore many possibilities efficiently.

Figma Graphic Design Design Components Color Palette+2

figmaSep 4, 20192 min readCurated summary

An ode to OpenType: Fall in love with the secret world of fonts | Figma Blog

OpenType features reveal that fonts often contain far more than their default bold, italic, and character shapes. The post describes how these hidden options—such as alternate digits, ligatures, small caps, swashes, and ornaments—can solve practical typography problems while expanding creative possibilities. Figma’s support for OpenType features makes these capabilities accessible across local, Google, and organization-shared fonts. ## Discovering the Hidden Capabilities of Fonts - The author first encountered OpenType features while studying Warnock Pro. - The font included: - Old-style and tabular figures for better integration with text and tables - Small caps for introductions and emphasis - Alternate letterforms with decorative flourishes - Fractions, ordinals, and the numero sign - Stylistic alternates and ornamental symbols - These options were traditionally hidden in technical menus, making them difficult to discover. - The author initially used them enthusiastically and indiscriminately, comparing OpenType features to spices that could transform otherwise ordinary typography. ## Learning When Features Are Useful - Over time, font PDFs were increasingly replaced by online type specimen pages documenting available features. - Fonts vary widely: - Some offer only a single alternate character. - Others provide dozens of features that can make the typeface appear substantially different. - The author gradually learned to use features intentionally rather than simply enabling them because they were available. - Technical terminology became meaningful in context, including: - Tabular figures for tables - Discretionary ligatures for optional letter combinations - Alternate glyphs and stylistic sets for different visual treatments ## Applying OpenType to Design Problems - At Medium, the team selected different numeral styles for different contexts: - Subdued figures for body text - More expressive, headline-like figures and a flamboyant ampersand for pull quotes - Many fonts also include punctuation and symbol variants optimized for all-caps text. - These adjusted glyphs help uppercase designs feel more balanced and cohesive. ## OpenType Features in Figma - Figma now supports OpenType features for: - Local fonts - Google Fonts - Fonts shared within organizations - Users can access additional ligatures, numeral styles, alternate letterforms, and other font-specific adjustments through Figma’s interface. - The feature is intended not only to expose advanced typography controls, but also to make discovering and experimenting with them approachable. Figma’s OpenType support encourages designers to look beyond a font’s default appearance. The practical recommendation is to treat these features as purposeful tools: choose them according to the context, hierarchy, and visual problem being solved rather than applying them indiscriminately.

Figma Typography Opentype Font Features+2

figmaSep 3, 20194 min readCurated summary

How we do design critiques at Figma | Figma Blog

Figma argues that design critiques should be motivating, useful, and psychologically safe—not intimidating or discouraging. After identifying problems in its own critique process, the team redesigned critiques around clear goals and several formats suited to different stages of design work. The result is a more flexible practice focused on unblocking designers, improving quality, sharing context, and encouraging collaboration. ## Improving the Critique Process Figma began by “critiquing critiques” and gathering feedback from its design team. Common problems included: - Overcrowded meetings - Shallow or unactionable feedback - Complex problems squeezed into short time limits - Groupthink, excessive agreement, and reluctance to be honest - Critiques that failed to help designers move forward The team documented issues in a shared Figma file, identified the productive and creative energy in that workshop, and continued iterating through a dedicated Slack channel. ## Goals of Design Critique The team aligned on four primary purposes: - **Unblocking problems and generating ideas:** Helping designers overcome difficult problems or explore early possibilities. - **Elevating quality:** Improving visual design, interaction details, and broader product direction. - **Encouraging consistency:** Reusing established patterns and identifying when new patterns are needed. - **Sharing context:** Keeping the design team informed about company, product, and project developments. ## Standard Critiques Standard critiques are structured sessions in which a designer presents work and receives feedback from peers. They are most useful when the presenter explains the project’s context, goals, and specific questions before discussion begins. - The facilitator keeps the discussion focused and balanced. - Feedback should be concrete, honest, and actionable. - Participants should critique the work rather than the person. - The format works best when the group size and scope are limited. ## Jams and Workshops Jams and workshops are collaborative formats for situations that need ideas rather than evaluation. - Designers work together actively instead of simply commenting on a presentation. - They are useful for early-stage exploration, brainstorming, and complex problems. - The shared activity reduces the pressure placed on one presenter. - Their informal, energetic quality can produce the kind of creative collaboration Figma wanted in regular critiques. ## Pair Design Pair design places two designers together to solve a problem collaboratively. - One designer can explain their thinking while the other contributes ideas and challenges assumptions. - The format encourages deeper discussion and immediate iteration. - It is particularly useful for focused problems that benefit from sustained attention. - Pairing can produce more actionable feedback than a large-group discussion. ## Silent Critiques In a silent critique, participants review work and write feedback before discussing it aloud. - Everyone has time to inspect the work carefully. - Written comments reduce the influence of the most vocal participants. - The approach helps limit groupthink and “+1” feedback. - Discussion can focus on patterns and themes that emerge from the individual responses. ## Paper (“Print-Out”) Critiques Paper critiques use printed screens or designs placed around a room for participants to annotate. - Designers can review work at their own pace. - Feedback is often more detailed and specific than verbal comments. - The physical format encourages participants to engage directly with the work. - It is useful for reviewing multiple screens or flows without a presentation dominating the session. ## FYI Critiques FYI critiques are informational rather than feedback-driven. - A designer shares work mainly to provide context or visibility. - Participants are not expected to solve the problem or offer extensive critique. - This format avoids turning every design review into a decision-making meeting. - It helps the team stay informed while preserving critique time for work that needs active input. ## Principles for Effective Critiques Figma’s recommendations emphasize adapting the format to the work and creating a constructive environment: - Define the purpose of the session in advance. - Invite only people who can contribute relevant perspective. - Share context and specific questions before asking for feedback. - Match the critique format to the project’s stage and needs. - Use a facilitator to manage time, participation, and focus. - Encourage direct, respectful, actionable feedback. - Avoid groupthink and uncritical agreement. - Separate critique from final decision-making when appropriate. - Keep sessions focused enough that participants can engage deeply. - Treat the process as something to continually evaluate and improve. The practical recommendation is to stop treating critique as a single meeting format. Teams should establish clear goals, experiment with methods such as workshops, pair design, silent reviews, and FYI updates, and regularly assess whether critiques are genuinely helping designers feel inspired, challenged, and empowered.

Figma Product Design Slack Collaboration+1

figmaAug 27, 20192 min readCurated summary

How Microsoft built plugins to improve their workflow | Figma Blog

Microsoft uses private and community Figma plugins to integrate its Fluent design system into everyday design work. These tools reduce repetitive tasks, provide approved content, and make it easier to manage hundreds of product-specific libraries. The broader conclusion is that customized tooling helps large design organizations improve consistency, accessibility, and efficiency while giving designers more time for creative work. ## Integrating Approved Design Content - Microsoft created an internal version of **Content Reel**, a plugin that inserts approved text strings, avatars, and icons into designs. - This replaces generic placeholder content and reduces the need for designers to search for or request approval of assets. - The approach can be adapted by other organizations to provide company-specific, reusable content. ## Switching Between Product Libraries - Microsoft maintains hundreds of Figma libraries, with different products requiring distinct themes and styles. - Jackie Chui built **Themer** to let designers quickly switch between product themes such as Work and Outlook. - The publicly available version swaps published styles from different libraries, reducing the manual effort required to adapt designs across products. ## Automating Repetitive Design Tasks Microsoft designers built plugins to eliminate routine work and support more creative problem-solving: - **Find and Replace** searches for text on a page and replaces it like a standard text editor. - **Paste to Fill** turns a copied image or image URL into a fill for selected layers. - **Button Resizer** adjusts button dimensions to fit their labels. - These tools reflect Microsoft’s broader investment in the Figma platform as a foundation for extending its design workflow. ## Making Accessibility Part of the Workflow - Tiffany Chen, part of Microsoft’s Modern Input and Accessibility team, develops tools intended to make accessibility more visible during design. - Her work challenges the common practice of treating accessibility as a final-stage addition. - Embedding accessibility support into design tooling can help teams identify and address inclusive-design concerns earlier. Microsoft’s example shows that plugins are most valuable when they are tailored to an organization’s real processes. Teams can improve consistency and productivity by connecting Figma to approved assets, design systems, automation, and accessibility checks.

Figma Design Systems Accessibility Figma Plugins+2

figmaAug 15, 20192 min readCurated summary

Tackle accessibility in your designs with these useful plugins | Figma Blog

Accessibility should be integrated into the design process so products do not exclude users with visual or motor impairments. Figma highlights four plugins that help designers evaluate color contrast, simulate color blindness, and plan keyboard focus order. Together, these tools make accessibility issues easier to identify and address before implementation. ## Color Contrast and WCAG Compliance - **Able** analyzes two selected objects and checks whether their contrast meets WCAG AA or AAA standards. - It updates dynamically as selections change and provides: - Text/background previews - Color-swapping controls - Simulations of different types of color blindness - Statistics showing how many people are affected by each condition - **Contrast Checker**, created by Stark, displays the contrast ratio between selected objects. - It provides contextual previews based on whether a layer contains text and shows: - AA/AA+ and AAA/AAA+ ratings - Contrast requirements for different font sizes - An indication of whether text larger than 18 points meets the relevant standard ## Simulating Color Blindness - **Color Blind** creates canvas-based simulations rather than only previewing colors in a separate interface. - It duplicates selected design elements and organizes them into named groups representing different types of color vision deficiency. - This lets designers inspect how an entire interface may appear to users with varying visual perceptions. ## Designing Keyboard Focus Order - **Focus Orderer** helps designers document the order in which a browser should move focus between interactive elements. - Designers can: - Add focus points to selected elements - Reorder them by dragging in the plugin interface - Automatically renumber annotations on the canvas - Tab through elements to test the intended navigation flow - The plugin connects accessibility planning directly with the design-to-development process. Designers should use these plugins alongside the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) to catch accessibility problems early. Teams can also explore Figma’s Plugin API to build custom accessibility tools.

Figma Accessibility JavaScript Wcag+3

figmaAug 11, 20192 min readCurated summary

How to wireframe | Figma Blog

Wireframes are simple blueprints for websites and digital products that clarify structure, functionality, and user experience before visual details are finalized. Their low-detail nature encourages feedback from designers, developers, stakeholders, and users without distracting them with colors or branding. The article recommends choosing the appropriate fidelity, keeping visuals deliberately simple, and using wireframes to communicate and iterate on ideas. ## What Is a Wireframe? - A wireframe represents the skeletal framework of a digital product, similar to a building blueprint. - It shows the shape, layout, and structure without defining final visual details. - Wireframes should be understandable to the entire team, including designers, developers, stakeholders, and users. - Because they are not treated as final designs, they support usability research, stakeholder feedback, and rapid iteration. - Their simplicity keeps discussions focused on functionality and user experience rather than aesthetics. ## Types of Wireframes ### Low-Fidelity Wireframes - Low-fidelity wireframes use basic layouts and high-level interactions. - They are typically grayscale and represent UI elements with simple shapes, lines, and placeholders. - Pen and paper can be sufficient, though tools such as Figma make sharing and updating designs easier. - They are useful for exploring ideas quickly before investing in detailed design work. ### High-Fidelity Wireframes - High-fidelity wireframes develop the low-fidelity structure with more realistic visual elements. - They may include colors, graphics, branding, typography, textures, shadows, images, and copy. - Designers can move from low-fidelity wireframes directly to prototypes, or treat high-fidelity wireframing as an intermediate step. ## Best Practices for Creating Wireframes - Keep aesthetic elements simple, generally using grayscale rather than full color. - Use no more than two fonts to establish information hierarchy. - Create hierarchy through font size, weight, and styles such as bold or italic. - Represent images with boxes or rectangles, often marked with an X. - Represent video placements with a box and a play-button triangle. - Focus on communicating layout and function instead of producing polished visuals. ## Designing for Different Screens - Wireframes should account for the practical contexts in which a design will be used. - Consider how layouts adapt between desktop and mobile devices. - Plan for both portrait and landscape orientations when relevant. - Different screen sizes and orientations may require separate wireframe versions. ## Practical Recommendation Start with a low-fidelity wireframe to test structure and interactions, gather feedback, and refine the concept. Add visual detail only when the layout and user experience are sufficiently clear.

Figma User Experience Prototyping Responsive Design+2

figmaAug 8, 20192 min readCurated summary

5 utility Figma plugins to speed up your workflow | Figma Blog

Figma highlights five utility plugins designed to eliminate repetitive design tasks and make workflows more efficient. They support responsive frame testing, component duplication, text manipulation, bulk replacement, and selection of similar layers. A keyboard shortcut tip further speeds up plugin access. ## Viewports - Resizes frames to common device dimensions. - Requires constraints to be configured on elements beforehand. - Displays estimated global market share for each device viewport. - Future versions were expected to include desktop sizes. ## Component Cloner - Duplicates master components, selected instances, or both. - Useful for testing variations such as icon colors and building icon sprites. - Removes the manual work of recreating components and their instances. ## Nisa Text Splitter - Converts lines in a text box into separate text objects. - Supports reordering, including alphabetical or reverse order. - Can also merge multiple text boxes into one. ## Find and Replace - Finds and replaces text throughout a Figma document. - Can also search and rename layers by name. - Supports case sensitivity and matching anywhere, at the beginning, at the end, or across the entire string. - Particularly useful for large copy or content revisions. ## Similayer - Selects layers based on chosen matching properties. - Can match attributes such as fill, stroke, border radius, and drop shadow. - Extends Figma’s native “Select all with same…” functionality while reducing repetitive clicks. ## Faster Plugin Access - Press `⌘ + /` on Mac or `Ctrl + /` on Windows to search the menu and launch a plugin by name. - Press `⌘ + ⌥ + P` on Mac or `Ctrl + Alt + P` on Windows to run the previous plugin. These plugins are practical additions for reducing repetitive work in Figma. Designers can adopt them immediately, while developers interested in creating similar tools can consult Figma’s Plugin API documentation.

Figma User Experience Web Development Figma Plugins+1

figmaAug 7, 20193 min readCurated summary

The birth of Inter | Figma Blog

Inter began as Rasmus Andersson’s attempt to solve a practical problem at Figma: Roboto was difficult to read at the small sizes common in user interfaces. Designed specifically for computer screens and released as open source in 2017, Inter evolved from a limited Latin character set into a long-term typeface project adopted by organizations including GitHub and Mozilla. Andersson’s experience also illustrates that building a complete type family—especially across many writing systems—is a project measured in years, not months. ## Why Inter Was Created - Figma had used Google’s Roboto as its primary typeface. - Roboto worked for both headings and body text, but its small-size readability was inadequate for Figma’s text-heavy interface. - A month-long research project still identified Roboto as the best available option, prompting Andersson to design a new alternative himself. - Inter was intended exclusively for computer user interfaces and was offered freely to the public. ## A Typeface Project Larger Than Expected - Andersson had only limited prior experience, mostly with hobby and display typefaces. - He initially estimated the project would take about a year. - He later realized that fully developing Inter could require five to ten years of continued work. - A complete typeface family must account for more than 150 recognized writing systems, each with different letterforms, spacing conventions, and structural requirements. ## Starting with Latin Characters - Andersson began with the Latin script because it was the system he knew best. - Within the first year, Inter covered roughly 200 of the most common Latin characters. - Greek, Cyrillic, Arabic, Hangul, and other scripts were recognized as substantially more complex extensions rather than simple additions. ## Using Roboto as a Foundation - To expand Inter quickly, Andersson initially borrowed Cyrillic and many Greek glyphs from Roboto. - This led to Inter being dual licensed during that period. - Over time, he recreated the borrowed characters individually so they matched Inter’s visual style. - Roboto’s relationship between lowercase height and capital-letter height was especially useful as a design reference. ## Proportions for Screen Readability - Andersson examined the proportion between a lowercase letter’s x-height and the height of capital letters. - Roboto’s balance was similar to that found in typefaces such as Apple’s San Francisco, Akkurat, Graphik, Aeonik, and Helvetica. - These proportions had become common in modern grotesque typefaces because they remained effective and readable across interface contexts. Inter’s development demonstrates that successful UI typography depends on deliberate choices about scale, proportions, glyph coverage, and long-term iteration. For teams designing text-heavy software, a typeface optimized specifically for screen use can be more valuable than a general-purpose font, but building one requires substantial ongoing work.

Figma Open Source Typography Typeface Design+2

figmaAug 4, 20193 min readCurated summary

How to run a design sprint | Figma Blog

Design sprints help teams solve complex problems quickly by combining alignment, ideation, prototyping, and user testing within a fixed timeframe, typically five business days. The method emphasizes one clearly defined challenge, a small cross-functional team, and rapid validation of ideas. Effective preparation is essential: the better the brief, research, agenda, and logistics, the more productive the sprint will be. ## What a Design Sprint Is - A structured process for solving major problems through: - Designing - Prototyping - User research - User testing - Usually runs for five business days with clear goals and deliverables. - Follows six phases: - **Understand** - **Define** - **Sketch** - **Decide** - **Prototype** - **Validate** - Teams may adapt the framework based on their existing knowledge, timeline, and goals. ## Origins of the Google Design Sprint - The methodology was developed at Google to strengthen UX culture and design leadership. - It draws from: - Traditional UX practices - IDEO - Stanford’s d.school - Business strategy - Psychology - Its modern form is flexible and can be tailored to different organizations and challenges. ## Preparing the Sprint Preparation should take roughly as much effort as the sprint itself; teams should reserve planning time before the workshop begins. ### Write a Focused Brief - Define the problem, goals, deliverables, agenda, and methods. - Include relevant project background and existing research. - Focus on one major challenge and frame it as a specific question. - For example, replace “Make our homepage more shoppable” with “Redesign a user flow to increase conversion.” ### Assemble the Right Team - Keep the group to approximately five to seven people. - Include people responsible for implementing the outcome afterward. - Typical participants include: - UX designers - User researchers - Product managers - Developers - Relevant leaders - Larger organizations can divide participants into smaller teams working on the same problem. ### Create the Agenda - Use the six sprint phases as the basic structure. - Adjust the time allocation according to the team’s knowledge and objectives. - For example, a team familiar with the problem may shorten **Understand** and spend more time prototyping. ### Prepare Visual References - Gather screenshots, competitor or inspirational examples, data, research summaries, and other relevant material. - Make these references easily accessible throughout the sprint, whether in a presentation or another shared format. ### Compile User Research - Existing and exploratory research gives the team evidence to guide ideas. - Research can reveal: - What users want - How they currently use the product - Which behaviors or experiences need to change - This information provides the foundation for the **Understand** phase. ### Schedule Lightning Talks - Invite internal presenters or outside experts to provide focused perspectives. - Talks should generally last 10–15 minutes. - Useful topics include customer-support findings, competitive analysis, and product-performance data. - Presenters can join remotely by audio or video if necessary. ### Set Up the Workspace - Choose a bright, flexible space that supports creativity and collaboration. - Ensure there is room for whiteboards, visual references, and rearranged furniture. - Changing locations during the week—such as working from a café or park—can add variety. ### Plan an Icebreaker and Supplies - Use an icebreaker to help participants become comfortable and encourage creative thinking. - Prepare all necessary workshop supplies before the sprint begins. A successful design sprint depends on disciplined scope, the right cross-functional participants, useful research, and thoughtful facilitation. Teams should treat planning as a core part of the process rather than an administrative task.

Figma User Experience Prototyping Design Thinking+3

figmaJul 30, 20192 min readCurated summary

Behind the Plugins: Jackie Chui, UX Designer @ Microsoft | Figma Blog

Jackie Chui, a UX designer on Microsoft’s PowerApps team, combines design and coding to build tools that make designers more efficient. After exploring Figma’s API during a 2018 hackathon, he developed numerous plugins, including Find and Replace, Paste to Fill, and Button Resizer. His work reflects Figma’s broader goal of bringing designers and developers closer together through extensible design tools. ## From LEGO Building to UX and Code - Chui’s childhood interest in inventing with LEGO later translated into a passion for UX design. - He learned coding alongside design so he could build and test the products he envisioned. - He finds inspiration by studying other people’s work and connecting ideas across projects. ## Exploring Figma’s API - Chui began experimenting with Figma’s platform more than a year before the interview. - His first plugin project came from Microsoft’s 2018 OneWeek Hackathon, where his team explored accessibility features for design tools. - Discovering API functions that could simulate user actions sparked his interest in plugin development. - He praised Figma’s official API as easy to use and stable. ## Plugins for Faster Design Work - His most anticipated community plugin was **Find and Replace**. - Other projects included: - **Paste to Fill** - **Button Resizer** - Numerous additional productivity tools for Microsoft and the wider Figma community - His goal was to help designers work faster and smarter while encouraging others to build their own tools. ## Building Figma Plus - Chui’s proudest project was **Figma Plus**, which began as browser-only Chrome extensions. - Community feedback revealed that users wanted the tools to work in Figma’s desktop application. - Working with Mirko Santangelo and Ahmad Al Haddad, he expanded the project into a complete platform featuring: - Its own API - A plugin store - A publishing process - The project’s development prepared the team to participate in Figma’s official plugins beta. ## The Future of Design and Development - Chui expects designers and developers to work more closely as design tools increasingly bridge the gap between their workflows. - Because Figma became Microsoft’s primary design tool, building on its platform was a natural way to improve his team’s process and contribute to the broader community. - His plugins were scheduled to become publicly available with Figma’s plugin launch on August 1, 2019. Figma’s plugin ecosystem demonstrates how designers with coding skills can extend their tools, automate repetitive tasks, and create shared solutions for the wider design community.

Figma User Experience Accessibility Plugins+3