The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly about Figma

When putting together a roundup of UI design tools, it’s difficult to know which one is more accurate for your work and team dynamics.

I’ll tell you the good, the bad and the ugly things about Figma and the reasons for choosing Figma over other tools.

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The Good

Here are the three best things about Figma,

Web-Based Platform
Shared Library
No MacOS Exclusivity

Web-based Platform

“Figma lives in the browser which means it’s always available wherever you are.” Figma Website

First, a story on how awesome these words are. A night after having dinner with my boyfriend, I was robbed and couldn’t access my computer the next day. I was very worried because there I had a deadline the very next day.

Luckily, I had another computer at hand. All I needed to do is log in into my account, opened my file, and started to work! No linking libraries, no downloading plug-ins, and not extra efforts.

I was amazed!

Now I understand the power of having Figma run in a browser. This feature is not to be underestimated.

Shared Library

Working with libraries saves you time, gives you consistency, and allows everybody in the more consistently. It can be tedious to maintain the whole team up to date with the current library if you don’t have the right tools.

With the Professional version of Figma you can easily share your library with the rest of the team.

In the end, everyone uses the same library.

No MacOS Exclusivity

You may use it on any browser regardless of the OS you are using.

Have I said this enough?

The Bad

There are a few things that you should consider when moving to Figma. Not a deal breaker for me, but they have been for others,

Wi-Fi Dependency
Importing SVGs
Privacy

Wi-Fi Dependency

You will need WiFi in order to access your workspace. No problem for me because I also have a WiFi addiction.

Fortunately there is a desktop application of Figma. You can keep working offline on the file and once you have WiFi is will update your work.

Keep in mind that you need to keep Figma open for it to sync.

Importing SVGs

This is a mess.

For each SVG file imported to Figma, a bunch of layers are created. That means a lot of re-work on cleaning up each component.

Privacy

Since Figma is a web-based application, all the files are saved on the cloud. Some organizations consider this risky and prefer to have everything local.

You can expand your security options by getting the enterprise membership for you organization.

I marked it as a Bad thing because I couldn’t convince some people to migrate to Figma because of this.

The Ugly

Real-time collaboration can be a bliss or a curse.

Figma is a wonderful collaborative tool. You work real-time with your design team and the rest of the stakeholders and even the clients. This has made our iteration process faster.

For example, the image below shows how I can see my co-worker, Daniela, do her thing remotely.

But, it can feel like micromanagement.

It started to bother me somewhat I was being watched at random hours of the day. Sometimes, after a meeting, somebody would ask why I was not working on the changes we talked about. This can be stressful.