Final month, I attended Figma’s annual person convention, Config, in San Francisco. With over 10,000 members of the design group attending in particular person, the power and pleasure across the bulletins and the way forward for product creation was palpable. As an analyst, I had the chance to talk with members of the Figma management staff in addition to many audio system and customers. Figma’s person group is enthusiastic, and never nearly all of the cool Figma schwag out there on the occasion. It’s clear that this group shares a typical drive and function to make use of design as a drive for good. I say this as a result of matters like accessibility and ethics confirmed up in most conversations I had. Designers really feel a duty to place merchandise out into the world which have a optimistic impression on people and on society. On the identical time, key challenges of their workflows stay, reminiscent of determining the way to drive deeper adoption of design methods and the way to inform a compelling story and facilitate gathering suggestions from stakeholders. With these targets and challenges in thoughts, listed here are my key takeaways from the occasion.
New Options Allow Design System Work And Storytelling
Figma’s new AI options obtained quite a lot of consideration on the occasion and within the protection that adopted (try my colleague David Truog’s weblog for extra on these). So I’m going to share my tackle two different bulletins that caught my consideration:
- New options aimed toward enabling adoption of design methods. Whereas most of the key components for getting groups to undertake a design system are disconnected from know-how — like having a enterprise case and creating a powerful group of design system customers — Figma has a key function to play in making it simpler for groups to undertake a system. At Config, the corporate launched Code Join, which surfaces part code from an organization’s design system in Figma’s Dev Mode as a substitute of autogenerated code snippets. Since most firms have an present design system, that is promising in serving to drive adoption throughout design and growth, significantly given the variety of builders utilizing Figma — one-third of Figma customers, in keeping with the corporate. Figma additionally introduced that it’s labored with Apple and Google to make iOS 18 and Materials 3 design kits (together with elements and instance display mockups) simply out there in Figma. The latter was one in all many options that CEO Dylan Discipline demoed aimed toward making it simpler for customers to get began constructing experiences in Figma, on this case by leaning on extremely adopted open-source design methods. My take? Whereas know-how can assist allow design system adoption, it have to be accompanied by different key components like creating a powerful person group and governance practices. When attempting out these new options, firms ought to contemplate how they’ll allow a extra holistic method to driving adoption.
- New product: Figma Slides. Each designer I spoke with on the occasion was excited to strive Figma’s new product for creating and delivering interactive shows. Whereas most of the options demoed, just like the template picker and grid mode, really feel like merely a nicer-looking Microsoft PowerPoint function, others make it clear that this product was purpose-built for designers. Examples embrace the power to embed a playable prototype in a slide and options just like the “alignment scale” to get fast reactions from presentation attendees on designs. Figma’s additionally included an AI function to assist customers alter the tone of textual content in a presentation to be extra skilled, for instance. My take? Storytelling is a crucial ability for immediately’s designers, and Figma Slides will speed up designers’ means to take action whereas encouraging collaboration in the way in which Figma has at all times executed greatest.
Figma More and more Focuses On Accessibility However Has An Alternative To Do Extra
As an analyst that covers digital accessibility, I’ve at all times been interested in how Figma will ship on its imaginative and prescient of “make design accessible to everybody” within the extra literal sense of 1) making the craft of design accessible to designers with disabilities and a pair of) enabling Figma prospects to create accessible designs. I used to be excited to additionally get a pulse on how Figma’s person group is approaching this work. Right here’s my observations after attending Config:
- Designers care about accessibility — quite a bit. Accessibility confirmed up in most talks I attended on the occasion. That’s common for a design convention; it’s been clear for years that designers really feel a duty and drive to assist the organizations they work for do higher on this space. Our information exhibits this, too. The issue is that they usually aren’t making an efficient enterprise case, so I used to be significantly excited to attend a chat by designer and cofounder of Divinate, Tregg Frank, on this subject. In his speak “Pitching accessible design like a professional,” he suggested fellow designers that it’s crucial to talk the language of the stakeholders to whom you’re promoting accessibility. He reminded the viewers to imagine good intentions and keep away from shaming folks into agreeing with you. Join accessibility with elevating craft, buyer loyalty, model threat, and different ideas that your leaders care about and to which they’re held accountable. And also you be taught what these issues are by way of empathy for the folks you’re employed with. At Forrester, we’ve written quite a bit about the way to make the enterprise case for inclusive design, and I beloved how successfully Frank communicated to the Figma person group on why that issues.
- Figma focuses on design methods as the way in which to assist firms design accessible experiences. After Config, it’s clear to me that the corporate sees enabling groups to use and drive adoption of design methods as the way in which that it helps different firms create accessible merchandise. And sure, options like these mentioned earlier on this submit will assist there. In a approach, that is good, as a result of most firms acknowledge the facility of a design system in scaling accessibility greatest practices and labored onerous to make sure that their design system components, like elements, are accessible. However regardless of elevated adoption of design methods, the state of accessibility continues to be not nice if we take a look at research such because the WebAIM Million. My take? As probably the most broadly adopted design device, Figma has a chance to do extra to maneuver the needle on enhancing the state of accessibility. For instance, I’d like to see Figma proactively nudge its customers to deal with accessibility considerations — issues like scanning for and flagging violations when a designer marks a file as “prepared for dev.”
- Figma’s AI function bulletins have optimistic implications for accessibility. Figma customers had been most enthusiastic about new AI options like “seek for related” — a visible search function that locates designs in a staff’s Figma recordsdata just like a body, picture, or screenshot that they supply, which might even be a hand-drawn sketch. “Rename layers” was one other crowd favourite, and it does precisely what it says. These options are interesting as a result of they straight tackle long-standing ache factors for designers. As one Figma chief instructed me, “It’s the issues folks know they need to do however hate to do.” However these and different AI options the corporate introduced, like the power to create a design by getting into a immediate, additionally assist customers who inherently wrestle to make use of design software program — like customers with higher mobility challenges — create experiences. The “white canvas downside” that Figma CEO Dylan Discipline spoke about within the day one keynote is actual, much more so for customers who wrestle to make use of design software program within the first place. My take? Whereas I’m certain accessibility wasn’t the first use case that Figma had in thoughts when creating its AI-powered options, I’m excited in regards to the potential to open entry to design applied sciences and the design course of for extra folks.
Get In Contact
If you wish to hear different Forrester analysts’ takes on what occurred at Config, try current weblog posts from my colleagues AJ Joplin and David Truog.
If you happen to’re a Forrester consumer and wish to dive deeper into any of the matters mentioned above, arrange a dialog with me. You can too observe or join with me on LinkedIn.