<aside> 🫂 Interview Objectives: Better understand how everyday Figma users juggle between Figma and other third-party messaging platforms. (Bonus! What are the pros/cons of the current methods of communication and collaboration that is being used?)

</aside>

Ellie Paik (college student, product designer/illustrator @ Crosstown LA)

• What is your history with Figma?
  • How long have you been using Figma? In what context did you use Figma for initially?
  • Ans: Been using Figma since senior year of high school, started using Figma for wireframes. Used it solely for app design, than realized you can use it for slide decks. Currently only uses Figma for app designs, does not use it for vectorized illustrations.
• What is your current relationship with Figma?
  • What do you currently use Figma for?
  • Ans: Sometimes quick mockups, but otherwise solely for presentation slide decks.
• Walk me through your experience with using Figma within a team.
  • Ans: Making a slide deck with a team. Collectively decide on branding designs/styles first. Likes that you can leave text paragraphs outside of the art boards.
• How did you communicate with the members in your team?
  • Did you use any third party messaging platforms?
  • Ans: Write comments off to the side as text paragraphs, doesn’t use comments (tedious to use). iMessage.
• Did you find yourself facing any obstacles switching in and out of Figma?
  • Ans: No obstacles, but annoying that it’s not on the same platform. Figma doesn’t seem like a place where she can write lengthy messages.

Vivian Li (college student, digital product designer/developer @ New York Times)

• What is your history with Figma?
  • How long have you been using Figma? In what context did you use Figma for initially?
  • Ans: Started using Figma during sophomore year of high school, used it for graphical assets (used it for research papers, poster designs, logo design, vector art, as an Adobe suite alternative).
• What is your current relationship with Figma?
  • What do you currently use Figma for?
  • Ans: Still uses it for everything, “Figma is the universal tool.” Uses it for infographics, slide decks, mood boarding, but also prototyping & web design.
• Walk me through your experience with using Figma within a team.
  • Ans: Likes the live collaboration features, likes the following/focus features (a big pro for remote work especially), likes the live chat option.
• How did you communicate with the members in your team?
  • Did you use any third party messaging platforms?
  • Ans: Typically yes. If it’s live collaboration, almost always on a live call. If it’s asynchronous, would use the chat features (only if the other party is attentive, but not for long periods of time). Rarely designs and texts people at the same time. Leaves a lot of comments and longer texts through third party messaging platforms. iMessage and Slack.
• Did you find yourself facing any obstacles switching in and out of Figma?
  • Ans: “The designs that I do happens at such slow rate, that I don’t really find any obstacles.” Either live or fully asynchronous.

Steven Sun (college student, digital product designer @ Roblox)

• What is your history with Figma?
  • How long have you been using Figma? In what context did you use Figma for initially?
  • Ans: Been using it for two years now, been using it especially frequently during the last year for personal projects (UIUX, prototyping, slide deck designs, smart animations). Started off with Adobe XD.
• What is your current relationship with Figma?
  • What do you currently use Figma for?
  • Ans: Opens Figma everyday. Uses Figma more for UIUX than slide deck designs. Much more convenient for organizing layout of text and assets.
• Walk me through your experience with using Figma within a team.
  • Ans: Usually he is the one responsible for creating a Figma project file than works independently asynchronously. Chats with other team members through live calls, comments on the project file (usually for critique sessions), and text boxes on the file. Frustrating when working on the same task at the same time (especially prototyping).
• How did you communicate with the members in your team?
  • Did you use any third party messaging platforms?
  • Ans: iMessage and sometimes Zoom’s chat function.