Take a look here, might explain some of the slowdowns (especially with Figma):

https://twitter.com/marcedwards/status/1151351810835140608

Paying $29 for a thin layer of plastic seems like a bit too much. You can get the same exact thing from AliExpres for below $1.

Is it?! O_o ... good to know!

it will never happen

It most likely wasn't very clear from my post. But I'm all in Figma as well! I made lots of templates for mobile app design, as well as a plugin for the newly introduced plugin store.

I used that kind of language because I found the parent post absurd (suggesting that the change or the hype around Figma is happening only because of hipster designers that are using it just to be different)

When I used to be a little punk I really liked graffiti, skateboarding, street art, and hip hop culture in general. Now that I'm slightly bigger but certainly older punk these things never let go. And I always wanted to keep the spirit and style of the culture somehow in my professional career. Thus translating it into my personal logo/brand felt like a good way of doing it.

Yeah, sure. Because people would rather sacrifice their productivity and all the work they did in Sketch, relearn everything, update processes, just so they could say they are using Figma. Especially hipster designers at Twitter, Microsoft, Airbnb, Github ...

I understand. It might be quite hyperbolic when it is presented like this, but I'm sharing the same sentiment. I've been a very early adopter of Sketch (even back when Sketch was two different apps), I've made lots of templates, libraries and content. I even sold some stuff. It helped me grow as a designer quite a bit and I'll be forever grateful for that!

But over the years I got the feeling of a sinking ship. There were too many bugs, plugins that were breaking my experience constantly, crashes, and even lost work. And this haven't changed much in the recent years (or so I hear from my teammates). So while big things are coming I'm quite skeptical. I was just burned too many times.

While in case of Figma, most (not all), but most of the stuff they worked on made sense. They had a clear roadmap. It had (has) bugs, but they were not as critical.

When I think about it I just lost confidence in Sketch, and got a feeling that they are seriously behind. In terms of performance, plugin ecosystem, hand off, and design systems (ui libraries).

Hey, I've been designing mobile apps my whole career and I always struggled with getting rid of my bias. Designing for the phone I'm currently using, or what ppl in my social circle are using, or for the latest devices on the market.

But often the reality was that, the most common phone was completely different. That is why I made a plugin, that is displaying various artboard presets, but with market share right next to it.

For me personally, it is about the ecosystem. You need a ton of other software to make the best out of it (quite ironic in a thread about plugins). Zeplin for handoff, Abstract for versioning. You are also locked down on one system (macos).

With Figma being open to anyone who has a computer, we've been able to share the designs in a format we prefer, with the whole company, while having feedback at one centralised place.

though I'm biased, I've made a plugin for the release of the store