Double Glitch is building on the powerful cursor-tracking technique I shared in the previous issue with a new tutorial for creating an interactive glowing card using a resource file he published in the community.

In a follow-up to the above interview, Niko and Garrett share what it means to establish a ​“prototyping culture” in your company and why it matters. ​“Prototyping creates an interactive experience that brings the product to life, revealing interactions that might be overlooked in static designs. When integrated into the product development process early, it saves engineering time and streamlines workflows. Adopting a prototyping culture fosters innovation.”

Double Glitch presents the video tutorial on cursor tracking technique as the first part of his series on advanced prototyping in Figma. You might remember his demo of this effect from a few months ago. A smart way to achieve the effect with a grid of interactive components!

Ridd interviewed Nikolas Klein and Garrett Miller from the prototyping team at Figma. Together, they provide a behind-the-scenes look at everything that led up to the advanced prototyping release at Config 2023. For a few takeaways on two types of prototypes and the use of variables, see this thread by Ridd.

“Prototyping in Figma allows us to create realistic designs to test on real users, but there’s a lot that goes into taking designs from static to something that looks functional. Join our team for a Q&A focused on bring your designs to life with prototyping and user testing.”

“In Figma, scroll position defines how individual objects behave when you scroll past them. There are three types of scroll positions: scroll with parent, fixed, and sticky. In this tutorial, we’ll focus on sticky scroll and see how we can use it make our prototypes even more dynamic.”

A short tutorial from Figma on using variables, interactive components, and conditional logic to build a prototype. These advanced features help prototype faster, reduce memory usage, and minimize maintenance time.

Miggi shows how to incorporate video prototyping into your designs and make interactive presentations. ​“Using video in Figma prototypes can create a more realistic experience, and add a level of polish when testing designs. We will dig into some real-life examples and walk through the many ways you can interact with, and use video to drive your interactions. We’ll cover aspects of video prototyping such as adding video to the canvas, previewing and adjusting video on the canvas, state management and video continuity across frames, and advanced interactions like ​“when the video hits”.

Christine shows how to use a Scroll To action to seamlessly connect navigation on a single-page website, create horizontal scroll effects, and scroll in multiple directions.

Ridd shares a few repeatable steps to start prototyping with variables — creating the variable you need, assigning the variable to the UI, testing the connection, and setting up your triggers.

Dave Williames made a next-level prototype using variables. The experimental pixel art editor uses over 40 variables to draw on a 16×16 grid with 16 colors, add frames, and play them with adjustable speed! Absolutely mind-blowing.

Molly shows how to add real interactions to your prototypes. Variables make this slide show really easy to make.

Mini-series showing how to use variables for advanced prototyping on a few example projects by the Design Pilot YouTube channel.

“In this Study Hall, learn how to apply the use of variables in your prototypes with the assistance of variable modes and conditional logic to create a more realistic shopping cart prototype that uses real math.”

…and one more list, but for advanced prototyping!

Miggi on using sections in Figma for prototypes and how to preserve the state of a given flow.

Sam Gordashko collected resources on variables and advanced prototyping for the Design System University community, based on topics designers often struggle with.

Niko shares how advanced prototyping came from a vision in June 2022 to reality at Config 2023. The team had to ship variables, multiple actions, expressions, and conditionals simultaneously to make it happen. This release is a huge achievement and the team should be celebrated for it.

Designer advocate Ana Boyer demonstrates the new advanced prototyping features by building an e‑commerce experience.

Miggi covers the different ways that variables can be added when creating prototypes, and how you can use them to make them more dynamic and with fewer frames. We cover all of the currently available variable types: booleans, numbers, strings, colors, and even discuss how to bind string variables to interactive components.