“Collaboration tools like Figma promise streamlined workflows and collective creativity, but there’s a darker side: too many opinions, endless edits, and a loss of individual vision. In this piece, we explore whether Figma’s collaborative power might actually hinder great design by inviting too many cooks into the kitchen.”

“See when teammates and invited guests last visited your Figma files, helping you track engagement and keep projects moving forward.”

Mal and Akbar discuss ways to bridge the gap between designers and developers.

At Config, Figma shared a roadmap to make Figma work better for freelancers and agencies. Last week, they launched the first step towards this commitment. Now, you can transfer work to your clients on Pro plans. In the process, you can keep a copy of the work for yourself, and clients can remove collaborators when accepting a transfer to avoid accidental upgrades.

“Now in Dev Mode, new statuses like Edited and Completed make it easier to communicate what’s changed and ready — supporting a more fluid development process.”

“When it comes to design handoff, communication is key. As designs change, designers need to be able to iterate while still providing clarity to developers about what’s new and what’s ready to build.”

Changes to sharing and access settings ​“to create a more consistent sharing experience and give you clearer visibility into and control over content permissions,” being released through mid-June. New team access terminology, clarified UI for inheriting project access by the team members and child file access by the project members, a dedicated prototype share dialog, a branch’s audience and role, and a central place for sharing other forms, views, and artifacts of the file. (Pre-Config cleanup for something new?)

“Effective product development hinges on a well-defined process and seamless team communication. However, implementing these concepts can be more challenging in practice.” AMA discussion hosted by the team of advocates — Lauren Andres, Akbar Mizra, Mallory Dean, and Anthony DiSpezio.

A few less-known and undervalued tips from Mal on working with comments in Figma. Personally, I had no idea that comments can be added to a selection or can contain images! I’d also suggest enabling the ​“Only current page” filter to keep a list focused.

Last week at Zoomtopia 2023, Figma announced its Figma for Zoom app, enabling teams to collaborate on Figma design files or use a FigJam whiteboard via Zoom. Users will no longer need to share their screens or switch tabs, instead gaining increased interactions and face-to-face collaboration. Zoom users will be able to install the new Figma for Zoom app from the Zoom marketplace on October 16, 2023.

“In this livestream Hanju Kim and Marvin Messenzehl from RTL+ dive into the file to understand the intricacies of designing for a wide array of platforms while maintaining impeccable structure and facilitating seamless collaboration.”

New research from the Figma’s Insights team: ​“In a recent study we commissioned from Forrester Consulting, researchers found almost 9 out of 10 respondents experienced some type of barrier in the product development process, with 60% reporting either a lack of alignment across teams, difficulty making decisions, or lengthy development cycles. These barriers aren’t necessarily new, but have been amplified by three major forces at work: 1) More people involved, 2) More distributed work, and 3) More work in progress.”

On collaboration: ​“One striking finding from Forrester’s study was that the most successful teams collaborate more and also see improving this collaboration as critical. According to the study, successful teams want to improve feedback on work in progress, get more people involved earlier, and increase cross-team collaboration.” On that note, see upcoming events by Friends of Figma for anyone who regularly facilitates meetings and cross-functional collaborations.

You can now collaborate on Figma and FigJam files directly in Google Meet.

Week 2 of the Little Big Updates is all about collaborating more creatively. #5: Embedding MP4 and MOV video files directly in FigJam. #6: A new look for the embedded content in FigJam. #7: Camera selection and better audio/​video effects in the Photo Booth widget. #8: 300+ new emojis in the emoji picker after upgrading to Unicode 14.0. #9: When you stop following a spotlight in a Figma or FigJam file, a new reminder will appear prompting you to rejoin your teammates while the spotlight is still active.

Christine Vallaure recorded a comprehensive guide to setting up, connecting, and updating libraries.

Include is a tool built by eBay to make annotating for accessibility easier — easier for designers to spec and easier for developers to understand what is required. The intent is to have accessibility considerations included during the design phase of any project and to help with the designer-developer collaboration.

A simple FigJam widget to easily visualize upcoming events and deadlines from the Figma team.

Amazing intro video of the 5x faster comment replies in the updated mobile apps. See also the comparison of performance before and after this release.

So many great ways to warm up the room in replies to Femke. I’d love to try This or That, play two truths and a lie, draw blind contour portraits, or look for common ground with my team.

I hope this is the first step to batching all comments into a daily digest for lower-priority files 🤞