14 comments

  • Christian BehrensChristian Behrens, over 6 years ago

    So how does Figma scale when projects grow bigger?

    Most of my projects are complex interfaces for industry-scale productivity tools, with dozens of pages in Sketch, loads of artboards, and hundreds of symbols in the library. My workflow with Sketch and either Zeplin or InVision/Craft deals with this quite well, and I can really see how these tools became more mature and stable over time. Moving over to Figma as the new kid on the block, I'm a bit afraid things will become less stable again once a project grows beyond the simple mobile apps that are always used in Figma's demos and tutorials. Any real-world insight on this topic would be great!

    8 points
    • Brent RiddellBrent Riddell, over 6 years ago

      I've been using Figma for a while and recently tried to push it a bit with a shared library of 20 or so components and found it does indeed not cope well with a lot of stuff managed across multiple projects at this point (sync issues, performance problems, bugs). The shared library is in beta though. But with the testing I've done I'd say it's cool for small projects not for anything large scale at this point, especially if you're attracted by the shared library features like I was. However, it's currently free so I'd suggest you try some stress tests of your own to make up your own mind, results may vary :) Overall I'm very excited about the potential of Figma and hope to one day replace a lot of my current workflow with it (Sketch, Dropbox, Craft, Zeplin, etc).

      3 points
    • Tyrale BloomfieldTyrale Bloomfield, over 6 years ago

      My team has been in it fully for 2 weeks now. Things are going very well. 30+ projects, 20+ files in each project, 40+ frames/artboards in each file, 50+ components in each file with no worries.

      We are a large scale app on 3 platforms and I would gather are pushing Figma, but we haven't seen any issues. Even when all 5 of us are in the same file reviewing the work.

      0 points
  • Shea LewisShea Lewis, over 6 years ago

    I also got my hands on a beta for figma, and was highly unimpressed. Prob got to beta a bit to quick. But Ill for sure have to check it out again since they have gotten it a bit farther.

    2 points
  • Nick SloggettNick Sloggett, over 6 years ago

    I find it very odd to point out van life in the same breath of online-only tooling?

    1 point
  • Giulio MichelonGiulio Michelon, over 6 years ago

    How is this supposed to be an alternative to Invision? I don't see the option to present mockups

    1 point
  • Ivan C.Ivan C., over 6 years ago

    I got really excited when I read this article this morning! I'm going to try it eventually, but one thing that's stopping me from using it are the plugins. I heavily rely on Zeplin and auto-layout as part of my work flow.

    If Sketch can turn its software into a web-based collaboration app, it's game over.

    1 point
    • Sam SolomonSam Solomon, over 6 years ago

      I have a difficult time understanding why web-based collaboration for design is such a big deal. When collaborating on a Google Doc I have a difficult enough time writing with co-workers cursors in the same file. Forget about designing a new feature.

      I also like being able to CMD + TAB through applications.

      5 points
      • Tyrale BloomfieldTyrale Bloomfield, over 6 years ago

        Yep, it's not for everyone. We freaking love the collaboration in Google Docs and now Figma. Be sure to give it a try on a real project before you cast too much judgment. I felt the same way until I jumped in.

        Re: CMD+Tab, Figma has a wrapped app like Slack originally was, so you can CMD+Tab all day long with that one.

        3 points
      • Andrew Richardson, over 6 years ago

        To me it's less about "real-time" collaboration and more a solution to the pain of version control, accessibility and a single source of truth for projects. There's one link for a project. No more V2, V3, V4 at the end of files and sending out new PDFs to every stakeholder whenever the smallest iterations are made it is just updated.

        A single source of truth becomes incredibly valuable when you are dealing with systems of scale, like UI Kits or Libraries, which is something that Sketch does very poorly. If you want to iterate on a design system you got to deal with the overhead of ensuring everyone is using the same Sketch file as their starting point, with Figma that's completely trivial as the next time they start all their symbols are updated if they where changed.

        The value of Figma grows the more remote or your team is as well.

        Lastly you can download the native app which runs quite well and makes CMD + TAB a thing again :).

        2 points
      • Ivan C.Ivan C., over 6 years ago

        Correction, more web-based than collaboration.

        I would love the ability to log into sketch from any platform whether PC or Mac to design.

        In terms of collaboration, I had one project where a designer and I were making updates to the same interface/sketch file. Maybe more of a version control feature than a live collaboration feature would be useful.

        1 point