Figma is just like Minecraft for me. It’s like a designer version of Minecraft. I would like to show you 5 things that I do with Figma. They’re not simply about designing a logo, graphics, user interface, or other design, but they are something I do quite often even I am not working.
1. Clipboard Saver
I use Figma as my clipboard saver. If you are using Macbook, you’ll find that taking screenshots is a very easy task. What I do is that whenever I found something I like, such as visual references or some ideas for my desktop research, I would just screenshot everything and then put them into Figma.
Figma is a good place where you can organize your ideas and all the reference you found, no matter it is text or image, video, or website, you can do a screenshot and directly put the link there. What I usually do is that I like to put a post-it on all these references and write down what I think about them. So later in the design process, I can just organize all my ideas and categorized them into a better order, or present them to my teammates directly.
2. Host Workshop & Retrospective meeting
The other thing I like to do with Figma is to host a workshop. If you know Figma, it has a whiteboard called Figjam. You can host virtual workshops with people around the world. Even everyone is working from home, you cannot meet your client or your teammate. You can still do a lot of online workshops. Everyone was like staying in the same place in the same universe because you can see people’s cursors around you. It makes it easy for us to exchange ideas simply by posting virtual sticky notes.
One thing I like about Figjam is that we can give virtual high-fives. It connects people online even we are not meeting each other. We can play games and we can also find a lot of really useful templates in Figjam as well. Even you want to do a retrospective meeting, you can definitely do it on Figjam and give interactive feedback to your teammates.
👋 High-five Instruction captured from the Figjam page:
- Shake your cursor left and right
- From here, bump your cursor against another collaborator’s high five cursors to start high-fiving!
- High five hand will fade if you no longer move your cursor
3. Create Portfolios and CV
I believe you have your portfolio and CV as a designer (or a future design/ even art student!), They need to be updated all the time if you keep creating new design, or have any new experiences. My very old portfolio and CV are created in Adobe Photoshop (nightmare!) and Adobe illustrator a long time ago.
After I meet Figma. I didn’t want to use them anymore because of my MacBook performance, it just doesn’t work well and loads for a long time. What I did with Figma is that I put all my working results, my portfolio, and also my CV on Figma.
The benefits are:
1. I can view Figma files anytime I want even on mobile or iPad
2. I can do better versioning control, no more final_final_final_final.pdf
4. Create Slides
I also like to create slides on Figma. If you know me, you will know that I really, really hate PowerPoint (Sorry). I understand that sometimes is better to use Microsoft PowerPoint if you need to cooperate with your clients as not all the clients know how to use Figma or other design tools. Powerpoint would be an easy option for them to use.
But as a designer, I still enjoy creating presentation decks with tools like Figma, Keynote, and InDesign because we know all the shortcuts and all the tricks. There’s also better typesetting to design, to make everything perfect. It is not simply about ‘I don’t like Powerpoint’ but definitely a key to improve work efficiency.
5. Plan your space
The final thing I do with Figma is that I use it to plan my studio. I measured all the sizes regarding my studio space, and I put it on Figma, like a simple graphic illustration/ floor plan. Then I put the references on how did I want it to look next to the floor plan. Yeah! The studio is now well planned and all the furniture I bought fits into my lovely space. It helps a lot when I was planning my studio, my home, and my room even I have no idea about interior design. I will say it is one of the best tools I’ve ever seen in my design career.
6. Co-operation is the key
A long time ago when I’m still using Sketch or other tools, I cannot cooperate with other designers. We need to pass our design documents by email, by uploading them to the drive, and then some waiting/delay if we want to work together. We also have a lot of problems in controlling the file's version. So seeing Figma as a tool that all the designers, developers, project managers, and clients can co-operate, we can all throw our ideas on each other, organize and do research/workshop together. There is so much more fun in design than ever!
I am excited to see how Figma will evolve in the future and see more functions coming with it, looking forward to how it goes. 😊
I hope today’s articles give you some inspiration on how you can use Figma. If you have other cool ideas about how you use Figma apart from design, feel free to leave a comment and start a discussion. Thank you for your time. See you next time!
