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Jackie Zhang writes about approaches to enhance team communication through logically structuring Figma files, labeling and annotating your designs, and hooking up all your files in a single FigJam flow. I particularly like the last recommendation and going to try it on the next project.

This tweet by the design company R/GA made rounds last week. I definitely enjoy seeing all the pushback in the replies. In my Figma files the ratio of participating designers to non-designers is somewhere between 1:5 and 1:20, depending on the project — a night-and-day difference from the old days.

“Tune in to learn about some new features across FigJam and Figma that’ll help teams collaborate better and turn their big ideas into real products, faster. From creative new ways to jam together and drive decision-making in FigJam, to some long-awaited features in Figma, turning ideas into action just got easier — and more fun.”

Collaborate on Figma and FigJam files directly in Microsoft Teams.

Attach Figma and FigJam files to any Google Calendar event.

Respond to questions and review work in Figma and FigJam from anywhere via comments on your phone or tablet. Download now for iOS or Android.

“Over the last year, we’ve created a write-ahead log that makes our system more reliable than before. 95% of edits to a Figma file get saved within 600ms, which means that as the teams that use Figma scale, their work can scale with them. We wanted to share exactly how we got to that sort of reliability, but before we get started, we’ll need to provide some context on how exactly Figma’s multiplayer editing works.”

Graeme Fulton looks into the difference between ​“open design” and ​“open-source design tools”, the new opportunity for an era of open-source design amidst Adobe ⨉ Figma, and how designers can be a driving force behind open-source itself. Sketch’s open file format is something we’ve always taken for granted.

An interesting comment from Rasmus Andersson on how the design team at Figma works. Many people get anxious when collaborators or viewers appear in their files in the middle of work. There must be a better way than moving files between private Drafts and public files. (Personally, I’d love to see something similar to the git push command developers use — privately work on changes, then when you’re ready send them to the public file. This would obviously affect multi-player collaboration, but sounds like an interesting challenge to think about.)

“In this episode, Figma Designer Advocate Chad Bergman and Product Manager Jacob Miller will dive into the architecting a healthy culture of collaboration, branching best practices, and the nuances of contribution!”

“You can now review, respond, and leave feedback to comments from your phone or tablet.”

Fantastic thread on why collaboration features in XD or Sketch would never match Figma: ​“In short, Adobe would have never caught up to Figma. It’s genuinely easier and cheaper for them to use Figma’s architecture to rebuild all of their existing applications than to try to make any of their existing apps as delightfully multiplayer as Figma.”

“In this panel, four industry-leading femmes (Anna E. Cook, Shell Little, Alexis Lucio, and Tolu Adegbite) discuss the practice of inclusivity and accessibility in design. They dive into what it means to integrate accessibility into designs, inclusive design thinking, the tools designers can use to empower their work, and the different roles designers take on in inclusivity practices.”

In this live stream, Figma’s Cristen Torrey, Director of Product Research, and Andrew Hogan, Insights & Analysis Lead, dive deeper into the recently launched collaboration report. They go behind the scenes of the research, answer questions, and help identify what you can do to make your next meeting, day, or week better.

Post-it notes are great for gathering and organizing feedback. (I often use comments as to-do’s, but also copy a post-it note from FigJam to my Figma files for higher visibility and questions.)

Figma is a natural place for the design team to get together, play, interact, and bond. Love this story about building a culture at Meesho Design: ​“While we brainstormed multiple ways and ideas to resolve this, we noticed that it was collaboration over Figma and struggles with Auto-Layouts that would create immediate bonds between us designers.”

A cool collection of free stickers for Figma and FigJam.

The team at Figma talked to 50+ designers, PMs, engineers, researchers, and writers about collaborating with other members of their team, and discovered five specific behaviors that can make or break your team’s vibes.

One of my favorite widgets is now available for Figma. See the video demo.