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Why Figma Wins

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Re: Why Figma Wins

#91

Post by SenHeng »

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…

That’s not figma’s fault, that’s a team communication and workflow issue. We have that at work too and the solution is to communicate. Have a big red box with text saying the modal is not ready, or simply don’t have a modal until it’s ready. Better stick, create placeholder components and use those. Replace when ready.

Re: Why Figma Wins

#92

Post by vvpan »

I do not work on a Mac or want to. So anything that praises Figma over Sketch I upvote. You might think that it's a shallow position but when a company decides to limit their product to only one platform there is a price they have to pay.

Re: Why Figma Wins

#94

Post by gridlockd »

markdown wrote: post #85
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.

> 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.

Re: Why Figma Wins

#95

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: Why Figma Wins

#96

Post by corytheboyd »

giovannibonetti wrote: post #88
corytheboyd wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've encountered this as well. I am a proponent of just using low fidelity shapes for mocks instead of high fidelity renderings of what it should actually look like. If you put enough work into the design system, and implemented it well for use in code, all you should NEED is a low fidelity shape telling you where to put existing components, and how to string them together. Everyone already knows what a modal looks l…

A few days ago I was searching for a cloud native, low fidelity mock up tool, and liked https://gomockingbird.com/ I have no affiliation with them.

I'll check it out, thanks for sharing! Looks promising from one one minute scan.

In a similar vein (also have zero affiliation) I discovered https://whimsical.com today, which also has a few other promising looking tools like flow diagrams, post-its etc.

Re: Why Figma Wins

#97

Post by gridlockd »

satvikpendem wrote: post #42

Figma approaches design from an engineer's perspective. They have features like auto layout [0], swapping elements in a list, scaling multiple elements at once while preserving each aspect ratio, and so on. Can you imagine that if designers before this wanted to move an element in a list, they would have to move every single one instead of having some drag and drop swap functionality? That if they wanted to dynamical…

Soon enough it will be so complicated that designers will refuse to use it and its users will just become frontend developers.

Just like what happened to HTML and CSS.

Re: Why Figma Wins

#98

Post by feiss »

markdown wrote: post #85
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.

> 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.

Computer engineering is a science that shares common habilites and tasks with those your grandfather had. Maybe a website is more similar to build a garage than a bridge. And maybe building an operative system is like building a skyscraper...

Re: Why Figma Wins

#99

Post by open-source-ux »

scrollaway wrote: post #36
tenaciousDaniel wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a developer who has to dip into design files every now and then, so maybe my opinion isn't the most reliable. But I just don't really see a huge difference between Sketch and Figma. The major difference is that you can design online (which is admittedly a very big diff). But the UI itself doesn't really seem to set itself apart that much. Can anyone here lay out a few major differences that I might be missing?

At a high level, that's about it, and it is huge . Sketch is macOS only. Hell, this page comes up when you google "sketch for ": https://www.figma.com/sketch-alternative/

"Sketch is macOS"

I recently came across a Windows-only app called Lunacy which offers Sketch file import and editing for Windows users (I haven't tried the app).

The published Sketch file specification [1] is what allows Figma and Adobe XD (and Lunacy) to import Sketch files. Ironically, neither Figma or Adobe XD publish their file formats.

I think where Figma is pulling ahead of Sketch (in terms of usage behaviour) is that it is being used by more than just designers. In fact, Figma is beginning to encroach (possibly unintentionally) on digital whiteboard tools like Miro and Mural.

[1] https://developer.sketch.com/file-format/

Re: Why Figma Wins

#100

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

While the things pointed out in the article are true, I think all of those points are actually second to the fact that their engineers are top of the tops. I first learned about Figma from this blog post featured on HN, https://www.figma.com/blog/how-we-built-the-figma-plugin-sys.... I immediately thought how much I'd want to work there if I lived in the area.

The fact that a startup took so much time to build things with intention, the fact that they tried multiple, months-long paths before settling on a solution, and the technical details of their solution were so well thought out - I was incredibly impressed.

My point is you probably could have given the exact same business plan to 99 other companies, but without the engineering talent, and importantly the engineering culture, they would not have been nearly as successful.

Kudos to the whole Figma team, I'm envious of what you've built.

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