10 Figma Plugins That Offer Realistic Content for Your Designs
When it comes to designing interfaces, Figma is one of my favorite tools because of the amazing community it hosts. Thanks to this community, you can find plenty of resources on Figma that will make your design process a lot more efficient. With Figma, I especially appreciate having plugins that allow you to incorporate realistic content such as names, addresses, avatars, and stock photos into your designs. This is especially important if you want to test your interface with users in a more effective way.
Lately I have been working on the design of an earthquake app and some Figma plugins have been a big help. Although the list could go on, in this article I will share the 10 Figma plugins that I have recently been using to design my prototypes with more realistic content.
If you want to boost your workflow too, make sure to check out Figma Community for a great collection of plugins, templates, icons, UI kits and illustrations that grows bigger each day.
1. Mapsicle
If you are tired of taking screenshots of maps for your designs, Figma Community has a plugin just for that. With Mapsicle, you can easily place maps in your prototypes. And the best thing about it is that it allows you to adjust the location, zoom level, and even map style.
To install Mapsicle, click here.
2. Storyset by Freepik
Storyset is a valuable resource for free and high-quality illustrations. I especially found it very useful when I was looking for illustrations to use on the onboarding screens. The plugin offers many concepts that you can choose from, and you can edit the colors and backgrounds as you wish.
To install Storyset, click here.
3. Content Reel
Content Reel is a must-have plugin if you are designing on Figma. With this plugin, you can easily insert random data such as name, address, phone number, and avatar into your designs. I find it especially practical to find all these different types of content in one place.
A useful tip: Do you need to add the same content to multiple layers? Just select all of the layers and apply the content you want in random order.
To install Content Reel, click here.
4. Dating
Calendars are an essential part of most apps and websites, and as designers, we have to have them in our prototypes quite often. Dating is a plugin that will save you a lot of time when you need to include date input in your mockups.
To install Dating, click here.
5. Phosphor Icons
Phosphor Icons is a great collection of over one thousand icons. It offers a broad variety and the option to choose among different styles of the same icon, which is especially practical and time-saving when you are designing a navigation bar.
To install, click here.
6. Pexels
Pexels comes in handy when you need images for your prototypes. It offers millions of free and high-quality images.
To install Pexels, click here.
7. Unsplash
Unsplash is another great plugin where you can find high-quality images to insert into your designs.
To install Unsplash, click here.
8. Blobs
Sometimes you need random shapes, or blobs, to use in your designs, and it can be a pain to create them with a pencil tool. Figma Community has a plugin called Blobs that allows you to create blobs with various complexity and uniqueness. The shapes are added in SVG format, so you can adjust their size without worrying about pixelation and give them whatever fill color you want.
To install Blobs, click here.
9. Chart
Chart allows you to create 16 types of charts with real or random data. With this strong plugin, you can copy-paste or import data from sources such as Google Sheets or Excel and have customized charts in your prototypes.
To install Chart, click here.
10. Get Waves
This plugin generates SVG waves for your designs. You can adjust the complexity and type of curves, or just generate a random wave with the dice.
To install Get Waves, click here.
Final Remarks:
I believe that designing our prototypes with realistic content can impact the effectiveness of usability tests during the early stages of the design process and help us make more-informed decisions. So I try to make use of the plugins I mentioned earlier in my designs as much as possible.
When it comes to resources, the Figma Community is like an endless sea waiting to be explored. It grows larger with new gems every day, and it offers designers so much value with its plugins and collections. So be sure to check it out and share your discoveries with us here!
I hope you enjoyed this article and learned about a few Figma plugins that you hadn’t discovered yet.
