Figma Stakes Claim as the Future Tool of Creative Work
An outsiders view of Figma's Config 2021 announcements
TL;DR
Figma is (although not explicitly) aiming to take over collaboration and communication for creative work in the enterprise
Old competitors (i.e. design tools) will fade out of focus for Figma, as they try to compete with the tech titans like Slack, Confluence (Atlassian), and Microsoft for worker mindshare
In the near future, I think Figma will create integrations with existing work tools (Zoom, Intercom, Segment, etc) to let users reimagine meetings, documentation, deck building, and more on their new product, FigJam
When I talk to people about how fast work skills are changing, I often point to Figma as an example:
Designing products used to be a mostly solitary task, with intermittent presentations. With Figma, everyone can participate throughout the design process. Any school, certificate, or bootcamp not teaching collaborative design is letting their students fall behind
Figma at its core is simply an online tool that allows lots of people to design things together. However, with its announcements at Config 2021, it’s clear they are staking their claim as something else - the communication infrastructure of modern technology companies.
In this post I’ll explain why I think Figma is gearing up to go toe-to-toe with Slack, Atlassian, and Microsoft, and how they could win.
Designing things vs. Making Designs
Figma is a design tool, but it’s also more than a tool for designers.
At its core, design is about intentionally crafting something to achieve a desired end. In a modern tech company, people with the title ‘designer’ tend to design flows and buttons and graphics (etc). However, everyone who makes strategic decisions has to design too.
Executive teams design org charts. Sales professionals design sales funnels. Customer support leaders design support guides for their team. Researchers design research plans. I’m sure by now you catch my drift.
On top of that, these types of ‘design’ activities require input from many stakeholders and subject matter experts. That’s what makes Figma so powerful, it allows many people to partake in creative activities together.
So while Figma started as a tool for designers designing product designs (😂), at its core I believe they are more focused on the verb of ‘design’, rather than the noun.
In other words, Figma wanted to build something to help people figure out what to create, rather than to help them create a specific kind of thing.
The 3 Big Announcements
You can watch the announcements here, but in my opinion there are 3 announcements that really matter.
Multiplayer
This is the big one that signals future direction. How many 500 person design teams are there? How many 500 person product orgs? Not all that many…
But what if your intentions are to have everyone in the company on Figma? Then, all of a sudden 500 simultaneous users makes a lot of sense. In fact, it’s 100% necessary.
Figjam
But how do you get an entire org on Figma? The CFO is definitely not interested in setting up components and layers for a new landing page.
Well, we can use the same key functionality that makes Figma what it is, and use it to make a different kind of tool that’s useful to anyone who has ever used a whiteboard. Figma now has something for everyone in the org.
Branching
This is the final big piece. With branching (and I assume some sort of version control that goes along with it), you can now have a type of collaborative software that evolves with you as you work.
It can show how your thinking has progressed over time, and let teams come together to collaborate and break apart for individual work. This type of version control and branching is critical for software engineering, and now design, but wouldn’t this be helpful for any type of creative work?
Things like, creating hiring plans for the next fiscal year? Mapping ideas and progress towards quarterly goals? I think so.
Put it All Together…
So what does this all mean? Here’s how I see it:
Old: Figma is a tool for designers working collaboratively
⬇️
New: Figma is a tool for everyone working collaboratively
You read that right. Soon CEOs, customer support agents, salespeople, engineers and yes, designers too will be in the same Figma workspaces together reviewing new marketing plans, sharing agendas for meetings, and voting on what new food to add to the cafeteria menu.
New Kid (read: competitor) on the Block
So who’s not excited about this new direction from Figma? There are three categories of companies that are probably not feeling great after watching Config 2021.
Design Tools
Examples: InVision, Adobe
Status: 😳
This one is pretty obvious, but if you’re competing for market share with Figma as a collaborative design tool, you might be feeling a little queasy now. Figma is moving fast to bring the whole company onto their platform and that means it’s harder for them to adopt your product, and easier to switch to theirs.
Collaborative White-boarding Tools
Examples: Miro, Mural (and presumably other products that start with ‘M’?)
Status: 🤬
I really don’t know how you compete with Figma here. They just launched a new product that has all your features, plus integrates deeply into the workflows of creative talent. Time to call an emergency board meeting?
Workplace Communication and Documentation Tools
Examples: Slack, Confluence (Atlassian), Notion, Microsoft Teams
Status: 🤔
Rather than competing for the same spend, Figma is going to be competition for worker mindshare. I highly doubt companies will choose only one of Slack or Figma, but Figma is going to try to take a lot of workplace communication off of Slack and documentation off of tools like Confluence.
Think about it like this - why would you communicate over Slack about a project when you can do an audio conversation while working on a Figma board? Why create documentation on your own in Confluence or Notion, when you can do it with your whole team in Figma? That might sound like a stretch, but it feels compelling to me.
Final Thoughts
After catching Config2021, I feel like Figma is taking a big leap here and staking a claim as the de facto tool for creative work. I say this not because, of things they said, but because of where my mind wandered after watching the announcements.
After watching, all I could think about was about integrations with FigJam.
Figma feels like a great place to do all sorts of creative work. Now imagine what FigJam could do for you if you could bring in data and features from existing work tools:
With a Zoom integration, all-hands meetings could stop being boring presentations, and instead have attendees write questions to presenters, publicly share ‘kudos’ with teammates, follow along slides at their own pace
With an Intercom or Zendesk integration, you could share what tickets were the most interesting, ideate on new ideas to improve process, track changes in ticket types and rates over time, all in one workspace as a group
With a Google Analytics or Mixpanel integration you could track campaign and user data and tie that to new creative you launched, promotions you’ve run, and track new ideas you’d like to try out next
Perhaps these are good ideas, perhaps not. In any case, I think Figma is one of the most important companies to watch for anyone interested in the future of work. Kudos to the team there for what they’ve accomplished 👏
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