Why Figma Wins • Hacker News Board

Re: Why Figma Wins

#111

Post by httpsterio » Sat, Jun 20, 2020, 11:20 PM UTC

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…

You're mixing up wireframes and mockups. Wireframes should be used for exploration of ideas and generally laying down different ideas in their simplest form and mockups (high fidelity, in this case) would then be built based on the existing components or displays new features and views.

If the modal in your case doesn't support a feature, it would be caught during the wireframing, before anyone has invested too heavily into any particular design.

Also, if the mockup resembled the actual UI but still differs ever so slightly, it's a sign of an inexperienced designer. Either they haven't properly made the actual functionality clear and the visuals are confusing (should it differ from the current features or not) OR the team is in need of a design system which would be used as a basis for all design visualisations and implementations.

Re: Why Figma Wins

#112

Post by Aeolun » Sat, Jun 20, 2020, 11:21 PM UTC

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…

Our designers have solved this by making anything that’s still in the mock up phase completely black/white.

Anything that’s actually ready uses the primary/actual colors. It’s actually pretty great apart from 80% of the design being grey at any point in time.

Re: Why Figma Wins

#113

Post by uxcolumbo » Sat, Jun 20, 2020, 11:22 PM UTC

My concerns with these cloud only solutions is that you lose control and you are locked in. See what happened to creatives in Venezuela when Adobe had to cut off access because of some trade sanctions.

If you're a freelancer I'd rather use native apps that have a perpetual license, like the Affinity apps.

If you're part of a bigger team and need collaboration features or easier hand off to engineering teams then yes I think Figma is great.

Re: Why Figma Wins

#114

Post by httpsterio » Sat, Jun 20, 2020, 11:24 PM UTC

karaterobot wrote: post #87

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…

We use a shared Figma component library, which gets implemented as a shared Storybook library for front end developers. In theory, this means the designers are designing with components which are already represented in code, and as long as they update the library with any new or modified components, it should be straightforward: a change in the Figma library represents a change that needs to be reflected in Storybook…

There actually is proper version control for design! Abstract being the most fully featured, although only Sketch was supported the last time I checked. But yeah, in my case design debt is usually mainly born during exploration or when designs have a tight deadline and I don't take the time to organise my files and creating reusable components. I often end up with duplicates that I have to manually fix from there on out.

Re: Why Figma Wins

#115

Post by httpsterio » Sat, Jun 20, 2020, 11:28 PM UTC

vosper wrote: post #71

gfodor wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course it’s leaky, but obviously the cases where engineers built the right thing on the first try because of the clear design are harder to measure. Also, look! Engineers are talking to designers.

> obviously the cases where engineers built the right thing on the first try because of the clear design are harder to measure. That's a fair comment. > Also, look! Engineers are talking to designers. I think most good teams have had engineers talking to designers since well before Figma :)

I think it helps enormously if the designer responsible for the designs understands about the tech used in building it. I don't think that every UX designer needs to be a full stack developer as well, but when you have the ability to actually talk about the tech, you can also translate the design into something that non-design folks might understand.

I often ended up sitting next to one of the developers, working along-side with him, helping him on the technical issues (reading Stackoverflow and github issues on various repos for example) while he helped me with the designs by challenging and testing as we were wireframing ideas. Kinda like aöpair programming, but for designers and less siloed.

Re: Why Figma Wins

#116

Post by httpsterio » Sat, Jun 20, 2020, 11:31 PM UTC

pests wrote: post #106

gridlockd wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

With the latest SpaceX, JS is literally being deployed into space. So, rocket science, literally.

Re: Why Figma Wins

#117

Post by httpsterio » Sat, Jun 20, 2020, 11:33 PM UTC

uxcolumbo wrote: post #101

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…

What does RP exactly do that you can't do in Figma? With the right plugins and component libraries, I dare say that Figma is definitely more powerful than Axure's offering.

Re: Why Figma Wins

#118

Post by jczhang » Sun, Jun 21, 2020, 12:06 AM UTC

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…

Eh, that line of questioning should be handled by designers at the very beginning or even before sharing designs and can be addressed more generally for all of their designs before sharing any specific one.

Re: Why Figma Wins

#119

Post by imjared » Sun, Jun 21, 2020, 12:07 AM UTC

_nvs wrote: post #16

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.

Fun fact: Figma recently announced link/URL support I totally agree and have been moving my spec work from Notion to Figma too!

At a high level, how are you spec'ing in Figma?

Re: Why Figma Wins

#120

Post by shwoopdiwoop » Sun, Jun 21, 2020, 12:07 AM UTC

tambourine_man wrote: post #82

Does anyone actually like using Figma? Honest question. I’ve use it for collaboration a few times but found it painful. I’d much rather have used Photoshop and screen sharing if given the choice. I understand that this solution doesn’t scale though.

Not in a hundred years could I imagine going back to Photoshop for doing product design. Figma is a joy to use. Photoshop is a slow, clunky thing of the past in this particular field of design.