What’s in my Figma toolkit? Plugins and widgets I use
As the main design software for designers, Figma has thousands of growing plugins, UI kits, and widgets available for the community to explore and add into their everyday toolkit. While designing, you might notice processes that you wish you could make more efficient which is where using Figma community comes in handy. Though with thousands of plugins at your disposal, it’s hard to know which one is the best to use. It’s all about trial and error. There are plugins out there that didn’t do what I anticipated, was made to be paid, and some that just didn’t feel valuable to my process. That’s why I wanted to share with everyone which community resources I use, are free to use, and potentially you could consider adding into your everyday process!
My holy grail plugin list
When designing everyday, there are a couple of plugins that have become so ingrained into my design process that I can’t imagine living without. You can think of my design process as the typical double diamond model, so I won’t be including creative and fun plugins, but functional and reliable ones.
- Lorem Ipsum by divRIOTS
- Insert Big Image by Yuan Qing Lim
- Unsplash by Unsplash
- Stark — Contrast & Accessibility tools by Stark
- A11y — Focus Order by Microsoft
Lorem Ipsum
When you’re creating different iterations and design concepts, it becomes a pain when you do not have placeholder text readily available to use, even if it is temporarily. Instead of grabbing lorem ipsum from website generators, I use the Lorem Ipsum plugin because it’s quick and easy. You can easily adjust the # of sentences you’d like to add in just 1–3 clicks! Leaving lorem ipsum text across my designs also helps me and my team know where copy is needed.
Insert Big Image
If you’ve ever had to insert big images into Figma, you’ll have realized that the quality drops and is not retained. Yuan Qing Lim created this plugin to help retain the original resolution of bigger images which has become a staple to my process. Whether it’s adding full screen captures of websites or just large screenshots, I am able to see the added images crystal clear. When I’m trying to do a full scale audit, it becomes a pain when images are blurry and others have a hard time seeing what you are explaining.
Unsplash
Adding images into Figma got 10x better with the introduction of Unsplash’s own plugin. Instead of going directly into your browser, searching for an image on Unsplash, downloading the image, and inserting it into Figma. You can do all that without leaving Figma’s software. I spend less time browsing for the perfect picture and I can pull in a placeholder image immediately to illustrate the purpose of a design.
Stark — Contrast & Accessibility tools
When designing, it’s easy to get carried away with neglecting accessibility. Accessibility is something a designer should always keep in mind and I do that using Stark. You can assess contrast levels to see if they pass WCAG standards and utilize the other accessibility tools that Stark added over the years: Alt-Text, Touch Targets, Focus Order, Landmarks, Headings, and Accessibility Notes. I primarily use the contrast and vision stimulator options as we have an accessibility expert on our team to help make our products accessible from the start.
A11y — Focus Order by Microsoft
Created by the Microsoft design team, this plugin lets you add a number to your focus order, along with notes. My team normally separates out this process from the Figma files as we use Confluence as our main documentation tool. This plugin helps us to quickly create an image of how the focus order should be. I can select a layer and click add which adds the number and an annotation sheet. The nice thing about this is that the focus order is placed around the entire layer so you know exactly what element(s) is being talked about. This makes it clear to our development team what the DOM structure should be.
My holy grail widget list
With the introduction of widgets in the recent years, I have only built up a list of three. Widgets are used for more collaborative use cases and are elements that can be seen by anyone in your Figma files (if you were curious about the difference between widgets and plugins).
- Jira by Jira
- Lil todo by Jordan Singer
- Sticky note by Gabriele Malaspina
Jira
Within every Figma file I create, I include an overview page that introduces the project, the why, and additional notes that would be useful for a designer, PM, or dev to look at without searching for all that information. In the corner of every overview page, I attach a simple Jira ticket and this widget allows me to link the ticket directly into the design files. It makes all projects easy to track and makes a fantastic breadcrumb.
Lil todo
It’s hard to keep track of different tasks related to a specific design even when you can use the comment feature on Figma. I find that using lil todo in my design playgrounds with action based sentences help way better. I know exactly what I should do and how to continue my process. It’s also easier to locate compared to just crossed out text or comments on a canvas.
Sticky note
Unlike FigJam, Figma does not have sticky notes that are readily available to use. For a good couple years, I had been manually creating sticky notes that looked different each time. Creating notes was a lot easier when I started using this plugin. I could quickly change colors and increase or decrease the font size. I didn’t have to spend time making a sticky note anymore and that actually saved me a bunch of time. I can’t believe I lived without this for the longest time. Making annotations and notes have never been easier!
Last thoughts
The Figma community is amazing and filled with resources that you should definitely take advantage of. The people who create these resources free to use are heroes in my eyes. I’m always looking for more resources to use, so if you have any that are integral to your process, let me know, I’d love to also give it a try. This list of mine will probably change in another couple of years, but these are my staples at this very moment!
