Comment by dostick
6 days ago
Figma is one of the worst evils of capitalism. Considered a leader in UIUX design software while its own UIUX is abysmal, full of amateur level mistakes, inconsistencies and bad patterns. We have now a generation of designers that take Figma’s UX as an example to learn from and implement in their designs. To be a good designer today you have to learn to actively reject what Figma teaches you.
what else you could expect - Figma was born out of founder’s need to find a proof of concept test case for real-time collaboration JavaScript engine they created. They stumbled on this idea. Back then everyone used Sketch and wanted better prototyping and interaction design, and Figma appeared with its real time collaboration as major point which you used once just to try and never again. For occasional demos and in large organisations maybe it is useful, but with your average design team size is one person it’s not a problem to solve first. And yet despite having this real time collaboration you still couldn’t collaboratively present your design. You have to shout all the time “and now, what screen you’re on, what do you see?, yes click on that button on the left”. It shows how to this day, the UX is not at the table at Figma. They focus on opening offices all over the world and courting big clients. Because need growth, IPO.
Figma was first to employ an army of customer support “yes men” with sole task to answer in support forums and defuse frustrations this way, thus allowing Figma instead of fixing embarrassing bugs for years, to divert development resources to products nobody asked for, to fuel that growth.
Figma has became a product for investors rather than designers. And doing that it poisoned the design community, normalised bad UX and business practices.
About collaborative presentation, can't you click on the user icon (usually top right) for whoever's leading and figma will follow the screen to their cursor?
I distinctly remember that it's possible in Miro, and I'm pretty sure figma too. I think the problem you bring up has been pretty much solved.
I was referring to prototype viewing, not the design community
That makes a lot of sense, my bad. I didn't pick up on the presentation part, even after I included the term in my comment. "Present" directly took me to sharing your screen.
Yes you can.
I disagree. Designers are not dumb and understand tools and UX pretty well. There is a reason why it became so popular.
I would like to know about design tools that are so much better than Figma. I am trying to actively avoid it because it’s Thiel company but it is pretty hard.
Don't know what you're on about. I use Figma to design UI/UX all the time and have found great value in the RTC features. In fact like you say, I was using Sketch before (and tried Framer for a while), but Figma's collaborative features have been invaluable and so we use it for everything.
Jumping from "I don't need the features this popular software provides" to "Figma is one of the worst evils of capitalism" is a ridiculous leap.
> and now, what screen you’re on, what do you see?
There's a "follow me" feature to see what other users are doing. It's been around for several years.
I was referring to prototype viewing, Not about viewing the design itself.
Why do many people not understand this? It's bloated. And doesn't do it's core competency (hint UI/UX design) well.
> to divert development resources to products nobody asked for, to fuel that growth.
Isn’t the growth proof that those products ARE what people want (whether or not they ask for it)?