What is special about Figma? Collaboration. Community. Nothing more.<p>They started as an Illustrator clone, than moved to copy Sketch functionality.<p>Then COVID happened. Check the stats. A lot of teams before that used it because it was free.<p>My company workflow used a mix of Sketch and our own DS/Library management solution. Sketch literally committed a suicide by not providing collaboration functionality.<p>Browser hype is all good, but you have a memory limitation. And nothing beats a native app responsiveness.<p>I skipped Figma for another reason: It is cloud only app.
Yes you can save a file for backup, but you cannot edit or view your work.<p>I have witnessed the demise of my favorite tool Fireworks in the hands of Adobe.
In one point in time we used Inkscape which is working with SVG by default. I can open my designs from 2008 without any problem.<p>UI/UX designers are waiting for a tool like Blender to emerge and liberate them for falling again into another trap.<p>Let's hope that after this fiasco the solution will finally emerge.
Re. Figma's tech moat, Figma has a solid engineering blog that will probably interest folks here because they've had to invent new approaches. Here's some of my favorites:<p><a href="https://www.figma.com/blog/rust-in-production-at-figma/" rel="nofollow">https://www.figma.com/blog/rust-in-production-at-figma/</a><p><a href="https://www.figma.com/blog/multiplayer-editing-in-figma/" rel="nofollow">https://www.figma.com/blog/multiplayer-editing-in-figma/</a><p><a href="https://www.figma.com/blog/realtime-editing-of-ordered-sequences/" rel="nofollow">https://www.figma.com/blog/realtime-editing-of-ordered-seque...</a><p><a href="https://www.figma.com/blog/webassembly-cut-figmas-load-time-by-3x/" rel="nofollow">https://www.figma.com/blog/webassembly-cut-figmas-load-time-...</a>
Although Adobe covers a broad portfolio of design professions, it seems like UI & interaction design is also quite important, given this acquisition. Figma owns like 99% of this market, nobody uses anything else.<p>I was one of those who stayed with Sketch quite long, but then also jumped the ship. Mainly because of Figma's fascinating performance (Sketch is super slow) and much better prototyping features.<p>But I think Adobe also sees that Figma folks are the true masters in WebAssembly front ends. Maybe one of the best on this planet. I cannot think of any other WASM project being so good and so dominant in the market.<p>Anyway, I do share the pessimism of the design community. For us it's a disaster, comparable only to Adobe acquiring Macromedia back in the day, followed by messing up or killing all of its great products.
It's of course understandstable that the founding team would take the exit. The fact that they have the strongest & most technologically advanced product, loved universally by designers and software engineers alike, only makes it more devastating.
> Designers are not like engineering or marketing teams that love hopping to the sexy new product. Design products are complicated; it isn’t “fun” to try out a new vector graphics editor. It is weird that all designers suddenly wanted to move to Figma. It would be like half the world’s sales teams quit using Salesforce overnight.<p>They may not necessarily <i>like</i> moving to another vector graphics editor, but many <i>can</i> move relatively easily. The hardest part is adjusting your workflow. Salesforce-based sales teams build up and rely on a large amount of data that is hard to migrate and ever-changing. Many designers could just try Figma for their next design, without affecting other projects.
Am the only one who /dislikes/ figma because of its horrific performance? It's a design app and yet it seems to take up more RAM and CPU power than most games and, frankly, much more complex apps.<p>If Adobe buries Figma and a competitor comes about that can make a responsive application that takes an /appropriate/ amount of RAM and processing power I'd be over the moon.
Adobe's UI design app 'Adobe XD' is one of the few Adobe apps to trail behind their competitors: Sketch and Figma.<p>Figma is also much more than just a UI design tool. You can create virtual whiteboards, brainstorm sessions and virtual classrooms - far ahead in collaboration features compared to Adobe XD and Sketch. Figma is even encroaching on the territory of apps like 'Miro' (a popular online collaborative whiteboard tool).<p>Adobe also has single Adobe ID sign-on for their products. I assume Adobe ID will integrate into Figma as some time in future. Will they force Figma users to switch to Adobe IDs?<p>Adobe's plan for Figma shows if you can't beat a rival, you buy the competition.<p>(<i>An aside</i>: 'Procreate' on the iPad is a digital painting app where, once again, Adobe is chasing the competition with their own digital painting app called 'Fresco'. Adobe's app has failed to dent Procreate's massive popularity.)
It’s a shame. Does anyone think Adobe will carry on the front end work that made Figma so good? Or will they just let the tech stack rot and die like every other product they own.
> Designers are not like engineering or marketing teams that love hopping to the sexy new product<p>Little chuckle at this as someone working in marketing technology space<p>I'm surprised by the valuation myself. I wonder if a company like Microsoft or Apple was ciricling Figma for an acquisition. That sort of competition would certainly rattle imo an uninspiring Adobe.<p>I'm stil dissappointed by the acquistion... to the point I shed a tear. I really dislike Adobe. But, I'm positive something new will appear.<p>Maybe a company like Apple should acquire Sketch, pump some money into and go head to head with Figma Adobe. I didn't mind Sketch tbh
To me, Figma is a as big as it is because it's a good product that is accessible.<p>Sketch only runs on Mac, GIMP is a completion for Photoshop, Illustrator comes with a hefty price tag. I've tried others like Inkscape/Krita but either the UI are complicated, or my installs keep breaking for no reason.<p>Meanwhile you can open Figma everywhere(even though sometimes buggy - but a refresh fixes it most of the time). It's performant enough. And its UI/UX is simple enough that most people can get around relatively quickly. Not to mention its free tier.
As the recipient of designs on the engineering side, I've never liked Figma. I don't have a touchpad or a scrollwheel on my mouse, so the scroll UX is hostile. I think there's definitely still room to find a middle ground between Figma and Invision.