The Effective Use of Figma

Figma is a very popular design tool for mobile apps and websites. It has a user-friendly UI and amazing features. It supports team projects and collaborations and super cool features while working with a team, like audio call and texting.

Figma

Most people who use Figma are ignorant of the cool features it has. What is being effective if you don’t maximize the use of the features?🤷‍♂️. I’ll be listing and explaining some of these features that can help you use Figma effectively.

1. Prototyping
2. Styles (Color, Text, Effects, Layout grids)
3. Plugins
4. Components; variants

Prototyping

Prototyping is a feature in Figma that allows a user create animations and interactions between objects, which are called Flows. Prototyping works by linking different frames with elements. Users can then click the linked elements and navigate through the mobile app or web page design.

Prototyping example

Styles

Styles in Figma is a feature that helps users to create a set of properties of an object, that can be reused across your designs. You can create styles for colors, texts, effects and layout grids, cool right? Styles are created for each property by clicking the ‘four dots shaped in a square’ at the top right corner in their various panels. Which after you click the ‘+’ button a create a style.

Different styles in some panels

Plugins

Plugins are third party software or modules in another software. Figma plugins allows additional functionality from other software. You can use plugins to customize your experience or create more efficient workflows in Figma design or FigJam files. There are more than 500 different plugins available on the Figma plugins library.

To use a Figma plugin, locate the Figma community in the files menu and search using the keywords of the additional functionality you want, then click install. After installation, head back to your file and right-click on the work area and locate the plugin.

Figma Community for Plugins

Components

Do you need consistent use of elements in your design? Well Figma has a feature called Components. Components are elements in Figma that helps when it comes to speed and consistency. When components are created, they can be duplicated and used anywhere you want in your design. The main component is called Master Components. And changes made to the master component reflects throughout the duplicates in your design, cool right?

Components are also used to create Variants of an element. A variant is an individual component within a component set. Variant properties and their values allow you to define the attributes of your variants.

These are the features I selected to write about, although there are other cool features like:
- Auto Layout
- Multiplayer Collaboration
- Sharing & Commenting

Thank you for reading! ❤
Please do well to send claps👏.

References:
1. Figma Help Center
2. Tom, Horner. “6 reasons why we made the switch to Figma.” A List Apart: For People Who Make Websites, 16 July. 2020, alistapart.com/article/writeliving.

Author: Godstime Olukaejor.

Please do well to send claps👏