Figma

Vorteile

Being in the industry for a decade, we were using a variety of tools for UX/UI Design. But Figma has conquered our minds with the next most impactful features: collaborativeness, ease of use (thank you components), cross-platform approach.

Nachteile

Managing files could be significantly improved by adding folders and tagging. Projects are not enough.

Vorteile

I can't believe software this good is available for free. Figma provides every single feature you need to create great user interfaces, advertisements, documents, and any other design you could possibly want to create completely free. We use the paid version of Figma which allows a large number of collaborators as well as a few other high-end features. While there is a bit of a learning curve, Figma is surprisingly easy to learn for non-designers with just an hour or two of video tutorials (I used Udemy). Once you understand how to manipulated elements of your design, even a design newbie can churn out some pretty incredible designs very quickly. This software is a godsend for marketing teams. With traditional creative suites like Creative Cloud, you end up going back and forth with a designer - in Figma, anyone can pop in and contribute their thoughts in real-time. Our marketing design team has moved to doing the majority of their work in Figma now and it's been unreal.

Nachteile

A few challenges have popped up with Figma. First, when you begin collaborating on designs in the cloud, there are times where you end up sharing a file with someone who doesn't have a Figma account. I would be nice if files could be more intuitively shared online with people who don't have a Figma account - especially if those people could drop comment pins on designs. Another con would be that because it is cloud-based software that's doing some pretty heavy lifting, it does tend to be more sluggish than running on-premises software with a high-end computer. That said, it's a minor annoyance and something that's probably worth not having to spend thousands on high-end hardware.

Vorteile

The thing that I like the most about Figma it's the cross-platform support: You can use Figma on your Mac, pc, linux or even a browser. The second thing is the cloud service. Every changes you made it's updated automatically and every person on the team can see what you are changing in real-time

Nachteile

The thing that I like the lest about Figma it's the fact that it's not battery-efficient on the Mac compared to alternatives and it does not work well on browser. Moreover it's not very easy to use.

Vorteile

I really like the prototyping functionalities, the overlay and swap interactions are super helpful and have definitely saved me a lot of screens. The Smart Animate functionality is also really useful for drag interactions and such, it really adds an extra dimension to prototypes!

Nachteile

Pasting is the first thing that comes to mind when I think about frustrations when using Figma. Pasting rarely has the expected result, it ends up somewhere entirely different from where you thought it would end up.

Also selecting a component from a library is a bit of a hassle. It costs me quite some clicks to insert a component. Being used to the efficiency of the plugin Runner in Sketch, this is definitely a downside.

Vorteile

The multiplayer aspect of Figma is a HUGE plus to the efficiency of the team. We're able to work remotely very easily. It being cloud based completely negates the need for multiple files. Even creating a design system library was a breeze

Nachteile

Figma has been in the market for a few years now. Yet, there aren't enough applications integrating with it. There is also a lack of plugins due to limitations from their API's