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Making Figma better for developers with Dev Mode

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Re: Making Figma better for developers with Dev Mode

#121

Has anyone else worked with teams where their entire idea of "product" was to create 100s of designs in Figma, and then just hand them to developers? What started this mentality?

I'm curious what you'd prefer, a requirements document? Powerpoint slides? Photoshop files with a grid layer?

The best designer I ever worked with did full HTML/CSS mockups but even those had to be rewritten into the development framework of choice.

To me Figma is a step up from the other ways I used to get designs.

Re: Making Figma better for developers with Dev Mode

#122

As a developer, the "one big bulletin board" visual model that Figma promotes is one of the worst steps backwards in UX I have ever had to deal with. I am constantly zooming in and out and scrolling around trying to find anything. I hate it so much.

I rarely use Figma but wanted to add that your experience isn't universal. I maintain one giant notes.txt file which I treat as my mental palace, finding sections within it by searching for "# keyword". This allows me to work as a 10x or 100x developer by avoiding bookkeeping chores like categorizing my notes, so more like a search engine. Figma might be targeted at designers who want to work fast also. But I do agre…

Have you ever considered going for Markdown? # is used for defining headers in markdown.

Re: Making Figma better for developers with Dev Mode

#123
post #42

I ran a design team, and many really struggled with Sketch -> Figma transition, and took a long time. I welcome many of the new features. It's great for designers who are more technically oriented, though enterable input fields would be nice. I do wonder how non-technical designers are going to feel. The learning curve is definitely going higher. I'm worried about the rather pricey per / seat cost. There are far more…

I know quite a lot of non-technical designers and many aren't too happy about what one might call design engineering.

Design systems, tokens, modules, over the top consistency/reuse, the programmatic approach to design is experienced by some as a major buzzkill.

Re: Making Figma better for developers with Dev Mode

#124

As a developer, the "one big bulletin board" visual model that Figma promotes is one of the worst steps backwards in UX I have ever had to deal with. I am constantly zooming in and out and scrolling around trying to find anything. I hate it so much.

I rarely use Figma but wanted to add that your experience isn't universal. I maintain one giant notes.txt file which I treat as my mental palace, finding sections within it by searching for "# keyword". This allows me to work as a 10x or 100x developer by avoiding bookkeeping chores like categorizing my notes, so more like a search engine. Figma might be targeted at designers who want to work fast also. But I do agre…

> This allows me to work as a 10x or 100x developer

What do you mean here? That this note taking method makes you 10 to 100 times better at your job?

I do something very similar except different files. But unstructured and rely on search to find things. Optimizes for writing. But this one trick makes you a 100x developer?

Re: Making Figma better for developers with Dev Mode

#125

As a developer, the "one big bulletin board" visual model that Figma promotes is one of the worst steps backwards in UX I have ever had to deal with. I am constantly zooming in and out and scrolling around trying to find anything. I hate it so much.

We use figma quite extensively as a reference for our current project. The disgners constantly move stuff around, so the links to them, in tasks, break and point to nothing. Which is a major pain in the ass indeed.

So yeah, 100% agree that the "big bulletin approach" is a negative.

Re: Making Figma better for developers with Dev Mode

#126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like the PPT - it is more like a wireframe! Yes, similar to the photoshop days. I forgot all about those. Has been almost 10yr since I had that happen! PPT doesn't bother me because it's very "what we need" not "how we need it" so I don't have to worry about the specifics and instead can focus on (and ask questions about) the intent of the feature.

I think you misunderstood. It was a powerpoint with images in it, not a wireframe. It show how site navigation worked, which was a huge improvement... minus having to dig the images out one at a time. :D At least they didn't use document links with absolute paths. Macs don't have have a C:\Documents and Settings\Clueless\ folder. Encountered that a few times in my career.

i would consider even powerpoint lucky compared to an excel file with a bunch of images or even the design being made out of cells, rows and columns... yes, you read that correctly lol.

for all that trouble it still beats getting `design.jpg`

Re: Making Figma better for developers with Dev Mode

#127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I rarely use Figma but wanted to add that your experience isn't universal. I maintain one giant notes.txt file which I treat as my mental palace, finding sections within it by searching for "# keyword". This allows me to work as a 10x or 100x developer by avoiding bookkeeping chores like categorizing my notes, so more like a search engine. Figma might be targeted at designers who want to work fast also. But I do agre…

> This allows me to work as a 10x or 100x developer What do you mean here? That this note taking method makes you 10 to 100 times better at your job? I do something very similar except different files. But unstructured and rely on search to find things. Optimizes for writing. But this one trick makes you a 100x developer?

I think they mean 100x better than they'd be without it, not 100x better than a "1x developer" (whatever that means anyway).

Re: Making Figma better for developers with Dev Mode

#128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right Click the icon > Copy/Paste as > Copy as SVG We use that and just paste it into the codebase. I've also used a bulk export plugin that autonames things. Would have to lookup the plugin name if you're interested.

Or even better, cmd + /, type “svg”, press enter, done

Excellent! Thanks for the tip. I always forget that quick menu is there.

Re: Making Figma better for developers with Dev Mode

#129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This allows me to work as a 10x or 100x developer What do you mean here? That this note taking method makes you 10 to 100 times better at your job? I do something very similar except different files. But unstructured and rely on search to find things. Optimizes for writing. But this one trick makes you a 100x developer?

I think they mean 100x better than they'd be without it, not 100x better than a "1x developer" (whatever that means anyway).

It's still hard to believe that a note-taking trick makes you 10-100x better as a dev, for any definition of better.

Re: Making Figma better for developers with Dev Mode

#130

As a developer, the "one big bulletin board" visual model that Figma promotes is one of the worst steps backwards in UX I have ever had to deal with. I am constantly zooming in and out and scrolling around trying to find anything. I hate it so much.

As a MacOS user, zooming on a touchpad is painful.

I'm not sure if this is related to your gripe, but FYI, you can use the pinch to zoom gesture on the trackpad in Figma. I find that it works quite well.
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