Figma Design

My top 3 highlights for Figma design are: 1. Prototyping- It offers a good variety of fun animations and transitions for prototyping, which gives a good essence to the client of how their end product will look like, how the website/app will be moving and the overall flow of the tool 2. Collaboration features - UI/UX is a domain where you simply can't work alone, you work as a team. This collaboration feature is a blessing as the whole team can be on the same page, see the updates in real-time and can even make changes or add their inputs as well. 3. AI Integration - This feature is new, but it's growing on me. Figma is leveraging the use of AI in their tool, which helps with brainstorming sessions and much more research related work. However, since AI is a new feature, maybe we need more in-depth understanding of this.

Requires no download or setup of a desktop app because it's primarily browser-based. This makes sharing prototypes with stakeholders dead simple - just click the link. The default communications settings are appropriate - sharing the file, getting notifications when tagged, and so on are intuitive right out of the box. Collaboration by commenting directly on the design element is easy and makes getting your point across with less context possible. This is particularly important when presenting designs in a meeting or collecting lots of feedback, like during a critique.

The general layout of the functionality itself. The way you can save and organise projects is very useful. The collaboration with other teams and being able to work on projects at the same time and communicate is fantastic. Not to mention the new tools Figma has recently rolled out such as Site, Buzz and FigJam which are all absolutely brilliant and allow us to not only prototype, but deliver a seamless experience to our stakeholders. The flexibility of the plugins is also a welcomed addition and really helps achieve things much faster than it previously took.

Firstly, not a huge fan of the free version - as the provided features are very limited like only 2 people can collaborate and only 1 project is allowed and to get a better hold of the tool one is kind of forced to get the paid version so a few more features can help the user to understand the tool and decide their vendor accordingly. Secondly, Figma design needs good stable internet connection- so a good feature is also a problem that though you can access it anywhere but with an internet connection which unfortunately you don't find everywhere. And lastly it goes crazy once your file becomes heavy it doesn't do well with large data and it starts lagging

Since the product is browser based, it can have issues with load times and performance, especially with more complex mocks. As far as I know, there is also no offline functionality, which can hinder productivity for folks who are on-the-go or experiencing wifi outages. The navigation in a complex file structure can be tricky. While there is a tabulated outline in a side panel, clicking on each linked tab can drop you into a giant frame, rather than deeplink you to a specific point within that frame. You may have to wander around a bit to find the design you need.

Sometimes I create a new Figma file just to make some quick changes or review something. I don't necessarily want to save it but it goes straight into my drafts. This makes it clutter pretty quickly sometimes. Especially if I'm just downloading Figma files online to review.