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Figma

Score8.9 out of 10

1,380 Reviews and Ratings

What is Figma?

Figma, headquartered in San Francisco, offers their collaborative design and prototyping application to support digital product and UI development.

The design tool for essential collaboration

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Figma to design and prototype user experiences across our entire product suite of e-commerce systems. From product catalogue & PIM, CMS and marketing through to storefront, checkout and customer service - every aspect of the service design is regularly reviewed, optimised and improved and Figma is the tool that allows us to visualise the future before we commit to building anything. This gives us confidence with usability testing that we’re building the right thing and then the engineering teams can review, estimate and plan based on the scope defined in the Figma files. Without Figma, these tasks would be very difficult. AI tools offer more intuitive prototyping however Figma is still winning at being a canvas editor that maps out messy problem spaces and acts as a communication tool to foster alignment in complex cross functional teams.

Pros

  • Canvas editing
  • Team wide design system libraries
  • variables and tokens setup
  • Commenting for review and refinement
  • Sharing prototypes for feedback and approval

Cons

  • Interactive prototyping with form fields
  • Figma make performance slow and laggy
  • Figma make quality of outputs does not match competitor vibe code products
  • AI design generation for canvas

Return on Investment

  • Cut engineering delivery time

Usability

Alternatives Considered

v0 by Vercel and Lovable

Other Software Used

v0 by Vercel, Atlassian Confluence, Microsoft Teams

Figma, our go to UI design tool

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Figma to create user interface designs and prototypes for quick usability studies. Figma hosts our entire design system and keeps our brand consistent across all of our products. The business problem it addresses for us is that it allows us to create consistency across our products, and also allows us to create quick yet high fidelity prototypes for our impromptu usability studies.

Pros

  • User Interface designing
  • Component creation
  • Prototyping
  • Developer Handoff

Cons

  • Variables and Tokenization
  • More customizable frame system

Return on Investment

  • Quick usability studies through prototyping.
  • Configurable system allowing us to change designs quickly.

Usability

Alternatives Considered

Sketch and Adobe XD

Figma is a great tool - with a caveat.

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Figjam and Figma regular are everyday tools for design, collaboration and user-flow documentation. We use it variably for design documentation and collaboration Our preferred medium is always Confluence or Sharepoint for any final documentation. Business problems : Alignment over a strategy, execution of designs in our apps, incorporation of feedback into the designs, ability to live collaborate for faster problem resolution.

Pros

  • Figjam collaboration.
  • Figma design documentation.
  • Presentations.

Cons

  • Figjam is still not as flexible as Miro.

Return on Investment

  • Better alignment within the team.
  • Time and $$ saved in discussions.

Usability

Alternatives Considered

FigJam, Miro, LinkNotions and Notion

Other Software Used

Microsoft 365

A revolutionary tool

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Figma from the ideation stages, when we need to experiment with concepts through wireframes and other low-fidelity deliverables, through flow design and up to the final design deliverables within the squads, where delivery includes navigable high-fidelity prototypes for business teams and documented deliverables for developers, in the process we call handoff.

Pros

  • High fidelity prototypes
  • Handoff for developers
  • flow design
  • rapid prototyping focused on initial concepts

Cons

  • Prototypes capable of handling databases
  • Ability to populate information in an automated way
  • generate higher quality source code for development teams

Return on Investment

  • The whole team understands what needs to be done
  • Higher quality deliveries
  • Possibility to test ideas before bringing them to life

Usability

Alternatives Considered

Adobe XD, Adobe PhotoShop and Adobe Illustrator CC

Other Software Used

Affinity Designer, Anthropic Claude, Atlassian Jira

A great UX/UI Design Collaborative Tool

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

FIGMA is a multi-tool that I use for my daily job: UX/UI Development (embedded UIs), UX/UI Conception (new features / new interfaces), Presentations (for all levels, from regular to top management), Prototypes and Workshops (brainstorming sessions, team integration, general discussions, etc). Since I manage complex developments with many different stakeholders, FIGMA allows me to integrate them by using the same base resources (from the Designers) to translate for different functional languages (software, product management, engineering, top management, etc). It could improve its presentation creation tools (usually exporting makes it too large) and access policies (creation of teams to facilitate large projects access levels) but it is manageable.

Pros

  • UX/UI Design
  • Prototyping
  • Discovery/Brainstorming

Cons

  • Presentations (not native, but has amazing potential)
  • Access Management
  • Versioning / Change Logs

Most Important Features

  • UI Design
  • Collaboration
  • Fast Prototying

Return on Investment

  • Reduced design time
  • Allowed a greater, global integration
  • Provided a technical input for devs

Alternatives Considered

Adobe XD, Sketch and Adobe Illustrator CC

Other Software Used

Microsoft 365, Microsoft Powerpoint Online, Microsoft Excel