Why we switched to Figma

Having a fully remote team and your partners thousands of miles away, represents a challenge to start a Design process where many stakeholders need to be involved in every part of it. As a company, we have been growing enormously over the last years and it was a priority for us to have a tool that could be as powerful as the tools we were already using but with a strong collaborative feature that could boost our performance and quality as designers. This is where a tool like Figma helps companies like ours to get things done faster and better.

How the switch impacted our workflow and productivity

One of the most incredible things about switching to Figma was the ability to centralize all the design documents of a project in one single space, which allowed  the team and stakeholders to reach them out easily. This was a tremendous hint for us to keep an accessible and easy way to share our work and process in real time.

The way Figma stands out at the top of the Design Hill has made a work environment more collaborative and effective on remote bases. With that five starts feature, we can go over Design way faster than working individually, as well as we can share comments, and rapidly test and move forward with the Design.

The benefits of switching to Figma

Besides the productivity benefits, you will have a happier and more connected team. And we cannot ignore the benefits of having a joyful environment and how it impacts creativity, quality and outstanding results.

What you need to know before migrating from Sketch or Photoshop to Figma

The big challenge is that you won’t find (yet) a migration button anywhere so you will need to be patient enough to run a fully functional migration. 

Start with a plan: get aligned with your stakeholders and team members to decide wisely when and how to start migrating your work to Figma. Take enough time to explore where the Design is in the roadmap, why you need to migrate to Figma, and how you can create or update the current workflows.

Include ALL your team: when it comes to Figma we are not only talking about Designers, we talk about a collaborative and supportive team of Product Managers, Developers, Analysts, Content Strategist and so on. Knowing how the migration would impact their work can be decisive on how to proceed.

Organize your work: teams, projects, files and pages are different layers that you can have on your side when organizing your work. Think about the future and how the migration process will evolve in your daily work. Remember that is not just a move, it’s a progressive execution that will shape the best outcome for all on your team.

Onboard your team: last but not least, you will need everyone to get used to Figma. Start with tips and trick sessions, mentoring, best practices and involving Figma experts in your team to help everyone who needs a quick hand with something.

As a team, you have to get aligned on getting used to the additional and wonderful features that Figma has to help you to create the best version of the project during the migration process. You will find new and better ways to build your stuff and rock it in the way. 

Tips for getting started with Figma, including keyboard shortcuts and Plugins

This is one additional thing that we love about Figma: Plugins. Thanks to the vast community that Figmas has built, the number of useful plugins is huge and you cannot ignore these:

• Autoflow: it helps you to create user flows and connect screens, steps, or interactions. 
• Unsplash: Search a stock picture from Unsplash free to use the library.
• Lorem Ipsum: Easy to use tool to add Lorem Ipsum as you want. 
• Iconify: Import more than 100 icon sets containing over 100,000 icons.
• Contrast: Contrast makes it easy to check the contrast ratios of colors as you work

Inside of the keyboard tricks we recommend getting used to:

• control+G: Show/Hide Layout grids
• ⌘+\ : Show/Hide the Figma interface
• K: To scale elements without messing with the proportion of the internal elements. 
• ⌘+G: Group things at the speed of light. 
• ⌥+⌘+K: Turn any element into a Component
• ⌘+K: Add a useful hyperlink to any text

If you are also considering the switch, we hope this blog can help you to make a smooth transition.

Are you looking to boost your UX/UI Design team? Let's talk, at Zemoga we can empower your team with our tech capabilities and 20 years of experience working with top global brands.