
- Collaborative figma figjamcrooktechcrunch full version#
- Collaborative figma figjamcrooktechcrunch license#
“Like figuring out what to build in the first place.” That continuity from brainstorm to finished product opened up the opportunity for Figma to build a whiteboarding tool that was a logical extension of what it was already doing. “Before you place a single pixel on canvas, there’s a lot of things that happen as part of the design process,” says Yukhi Yamashita, Figma’s VP of product. The fact that people had been whiteboarding in Figma all along was evidence that the line between whiteboarding and the company’s traditional domain had always been blurry. Did that leave Figma with room to create something that didn’t feel redundant? After all, other digital whiteboards such as Miro already existed. How do you make it so that you’ve got great tools for that? I think that’s a need that everyone has, whether they realize it yet or not.” The first part of the design processĮven if Figma users needed something to help them collaborate on ideas in rough form, it wasn’t a given that they’d turn to Figma for it. “And everyone needs to run their meetings better.

In October, it rolled out a major upgrade, which-since it lets third-party developers add new features in the form of widgets and plugins-could take the app to places that might surprise even its creators.įigma is already done thinking about FigJam as a response to the pandemic moment. “Everyone needs these spaces to congregate in and to get people talking,” says Field. But it seems to be serious about its future.
Collaborative figma figjamcrooktechcrunch full version#
To ramp things up quickly and get plenty of feedback, the company announced that the full version would be a free beta for the rest of 2021.Įight months later, Figma isn’t disclosing much in the way of stats relating to FigJam’s success so far, such as how many users it’s racked up. “Then the pandemic hit.” With Figma users abruptly deprived of actual physical whiteboards in conference rooms, Figma had the incentive it needed to put other projects aside and build an equivalent in virtual form.ĭylan Field It unveiled the results-which it dubbed FigJam, a great name-at its online Config conference in April 2021.


“We never quite prioritized it,” says Figma’s cofounder and CEO, Dylan Field.

It’s the start of a lot of work that we’re going to be doing in the area of collaboration and community.”įigma has raised a total of $83 million from investors like Index, Sequoia, Kleiner Perkins and Grelock, according to Crunchbase.And for a long time, there it stayed. “This is just the scaffolding of what’s to come.
Collaborative figma figjamcrooktechcrunch license#
That said, Field says the company is using this closed beta period to learn more about what the community wants around different license types.Ĭommunity is free and is not meant to drive revenue for the company, but rather offer further value to designers using the platform. On the other hand, organizations can publicly share their design systems and philosophy on their own page.įor example, the city of Chicago has set up a profile on Figma Community for other designers to follow the city’s design system in their own materials.Īs far as remixing design files goes, Figma is using a CC4 license, which allows for a remix but forces attribution. Individual designers can set up their own public-facing profile page to show off their designs, as well as intra-organization profile pages so other team members within their organization can learn from each other. With Figma Community, designers and even organizations can share live design files that others can inspect, remix and learn from. Other designers can’t see how it went from a blank page to an interesting design, and are left to merely appreciate it without learning anything new. Field told us that he sees a clear desire from designers to not only share their work, whether it’s on a portfolio webpage or on social media, as well as a desire to learn from the work of other designers.Īnd yet, when a creative shares a design on social media, it’s just a static image. Figma is a design tool that works like Google Docs, with multiple designers in the same file, working alongside one another without disrupting each other.īut that’s just the base level of the overall collaboration that Figma believes designers crave. In a crowded space, with competitors like Adobe, InVision, Sketch and more, Figma differentiates itself on its web-based multiplayer approach. (Figma Community is launching in a closed beta for now.) Today, that vision is brought to life with the launch of Figma Community. “What if there were a GitHub for designers?” mused Dylan Field, early on in the lifecycle of Figma as a company. Figma, the web-based collaborative design tool, is taking a note from the engineering revolution of the early aughts. As designers grow both in sheer numbers and within the hierarchy of organizations, design tool makers are adapting to their evolving needs in different ways.
