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Why Figma Wins

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Re: Why Figma Wins

#101

Post by uxcolumbo »

vosper wrote: post #31

We use Figma at work, and while it’s a nice tool I think it’s easy to fall (or maybe we just fell) into a kind of uncanny valley. The designs we get are close to realistic mockups of our actual UI, but are often not 100% there, and it’s the little deviations that can be quite distracting. Engineer: So are we changing the nav icons as part of this story, too? Designer: Oh, no, ignore that. I didn’t have our real icon…

Possible solution to that problem:

Have a plugin which could turn the unfinished modal for example into a wireframe look & feel and then when you have the right icon, turn it off again.

I remember back in the days Expression Blend had some functionality to apply sketchy lines style (based on Bill Buxton's book - Sketching User Experiences).

Also, the prototyping functionality is still rather basic. Axure is much more powerful and ideal for the early sketching and testing phase.

But I'm sure Figma will have more sophisticated prototyping features in the future.

Re: Why Figma Wins

#102

Post by mmcconnell1618 »

One issue with using realistic mockups is that reviewers expect the actual product to match. Take the extreme case of Steve Jobs where he would compare Macromedia Director mockups down to the pixel with the actual products and complain if they weren't perfect.

https://books.google.com/books?id=390ISyA-CUEC&pg=PA49&lpg=P...

Re: Why Figma Wins

#103

Post by andybak »

I went for a long period of time - after discovering Figma and thinking it was wonderful - of being unable to use it because I could never remember what it was called.

I remember emailing colleagues, googling for "online vector editor" etc.

To be honest I'm not sure it has sunk in even now. I just haven't needed it for a while.

Re: Why Figma Wins

#104

Post by cm2012 »

vosper wrote: post #31

We use Figma at work, and while it’s a nice tool I think it’s easy to fall (or maybe we just fell) into a kind of uncanny valley. The designs we get are close to realistic mockups of our actual UI, but are often not 100% there, and it’s the little deviations that can be quite distracting. Engineer: So are we changing the nav icons as part of this story, too? Designer: Oh, no, ignore that. I didn’t have our real icon…

Here's the thing: higher ups, more often than not, have no imagination. If your mock-up is not explicit and realistic, you'll get complaints and worries that it's not polished or that not a lot of work went into it.

Re: Why Figma Wins

#105

Post by frosted-flakes »

andybak wrote: post #103

I went for a long period of time - after discovering Figma and thinking it was wonderful - of being unable to use it because I could never remember what it was called. I remember emailing colleagues, googling for "online vector editor" etc. To be honest I'm not sure it has sunk in even now. I just haven't needed it for a while.

You must have thought it was just a figment of your imagination, eh?

Re: Why Figma Wins

#106

Post by pests »

gridlockd wrote: post #94
markdown wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Engineers are talking to designers. We really do love to pump ourselves up, don't we? My grandpa was an engineer who built bridges. I wouldn't dare call myself an "engineer" for slicing up a design, authoring markup and CSS, and sprinkling in a JS plugin or two.

Building a bridge isn’t anywhere near as complex as maintaining a javascript build pipeline.

If this is humor it really got me.

Because software development in the real world is hard. Hard computer science is hard. We're still in the infancy of the profession and have a long ways to go. I could honestly see it comparable to bridge building or rocket science.

Then reading again and seeing "javascript build pipeline" just made me LOL. Cause that's rocket science too.

Re: Why Figma Wins

#107

Post by uxcolumbo »

cateye wrote: post #17
paulsutter wrote: post #4

I wish Figma would add page formatting and links so that it could be used as a wiki also. Figma is on a much better track to make a good product than Notion.

That sounds a lot like https://www.axure.com/ which was quite popular 10 years ago.

Axure beats Figma when it comes to wireframing and prototyping.

Building enterprise apps means dealing with a lot of forms and grids and making these fully interactive is easier in Axure.

Re: Why Figma Wins

#108

Post by pfooti »

mrpigeonpants wrote: post #28
corytheboyd wrote: post #12

Not a comment about Figma really, but it has unfortunately become a trigger word for me. These are my observations from working with tech startup companies as a software engineer. Software solutions will never fix problems that are caused by people. Sketch, Figma, whatever the next design tool is. Google Docs, Quip, Notion. Trello, Pivotal Tracker, GitHub/ZenHub, Jira. I've gone through tool-switching fatigue with al…

> Designers are frustrated because the systems they built are ignored. Designer here. My experience has been that Figma has done the opposite. It's created a lot of consistency with shared component libraries and standardized type / color styles. Also, the fact that engineers can jump into Figma and inspect CSS has been immensely helpful. In the design world, Figma is like the equivalent of getting a robust IDE with…

I love getting figma files as mocks for things i need to implement. I love grabbing CSS from the figma, and I love that the design system allows the designer to not only export CSS, but export it in a way that has annotations (all the colors I get from my designers are annotated with "brand red 300 weight" as a comment, so I can use the right mixin.

Furthermore, I can also, when I'm building out the first-form HTML implementation of the mock, right-click and copy-as-svg the whole component, which makes for a nice stand in while I work on the rest of the code. It is great.

Re: Why Figma Wins

#109

Post by 542458 »

cm2012 wrote: post #104
vosper wrote: post #31

We use Figma at work, and while it’s a nice tool I think it’s easy to fall (or maybe we just fell) into a kind of uncanny valley. The designs we get are close to realistic mockups of our actual UI, but are often not 100% there, and it’s the little deviations that can be quite distracting. Engineer: So are we changing the nav icons as part of this story, too? Designer: Oh, no, ignore that. I didn’t have our real icon…

Here's the thing: higher ups, more often than not, have no imagination. If your mock-up is not explicit and realistic, you'll get complaints and worries that it's not polished or that not a lot of work went into it.

Yeah, this is very real to me. Even after explaining what a wireframe is, I’ve had execs very confused why I’m proposing the UI look like black lines on white background. And not just just execs - I’ve had devs try to implement wireframes as-is as well!

Re: Why Figma Wins

#110

Post by BoiledCabbage »

memexy wrote: post #89
cynusx wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It sounds like Figma reduces friction in the collaboration process by clever use of cloud based and browser coordination. It's not innovative but it's a good application of existing technology to the design space. Out of curiosity, what do you consider innovative?

Good question. Do you have a definition we can work with? I tend to focus on theoretical innovations like mathematical theories so my definition is often at odds with what most people think is innovative.

Innovation is also applying existing concepts in new scenarios.
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