A couple of years ago, amidst the boom of new design and prototyping software, I was pretty reluctant to fight on the Figma/Sketch cold war. I was working on a relatively small design team and, after years helping to design products, well sold on the idea that software is not the important bit, instead the people, the processes and the thinking behind what we do is what delivers the good results (which we know end of the day is true… but everything else helps).

幾年前，在一片新的設計和原型軟件的繁榮 ，我很不愿意在FIGMA / 素描冷戰對抗。 我當時只是一個相對較小的設計團隊，在多年的產品設計工作后，我廣為接受，認為軟件不是重要的一環，而工作背后的人員，流程和思想才是可以帶來良好結果的想法(我們知道一天結束是正確的……但是其他所有方法都會有所幫助)。

So no, I didn’t want to change Sketch for anything, we had our library and our processes and not only our issues were not going to to be solved by any new piece of software (if anything it would create a whole new project for us to migrate all our designs to a new system), but also I was personally not keen on what Figma was selling. I was pretty sceptical about it.

所以，不，我不想改變素描什么，我們有我們的圖書館和我們的流程，并不僅是我們的問題是不會被任何新的軟件來解決(如果有的話，將創造一個全新的項目我們將所有設計遷移到新系統上)，但是我個人并不熱衷于Figma銷售什么。 我對此非常懷疑。

But why was I so sceptical:

但是為什么我如此懷疑：

• I thought of it as a web service. It didn’t look like the rest of the apps that live in my computer, it had more of a website feel to it, and I perceived it as less stable and reliable because of that. I saw Figma as a more casual piece of software.

  我認為它是一個Web服務 。 它看起來不像我計算機上其余的應用程序，它看起來更像一個網站，因此我認為它的穩定性和可靠性較差。 我把Figma看作是一個比較隨意的軟件。

• I frowned upon online-only. Most of us are lucky enough to enjoy a permanent decent stable connection (if we ignore for a moment our COVID times) but despite that the idea of working on something complex on the cloud was unfamiliar to me, and me and my team feared that would mean not having access to anything when offline.

  我皺眉只在線 。 我們大多數人都幸運地擁有一個永久的體面穩定連接(如果暫時忽略COVID時間)，但是盡管我對在云上處理復雜的事物的想法并不熟悉，但我和我的團隊仍然擔心這樣做表示離線時無法訪問任何內容。

• Sketch had already got me. I was committed to it. You make a tool a core part of your process and your craft, you spend lots of time learning its perks and you’ve got a nice example of how the effort heuristic makes you overvalue something.

  素描已經吸引了我 。 我致力于這一點。 您將工具作為過程和Craft.io的核心部分，花費大量時間來學習其優點，并且有一個很好的例子說明了啟發式工作如何使您高估某些東西。

• In-tool collaboration in a small team felt like a nice to have. I didn’t miss the interactivity between us as designers. And if at some point we needed we could always use Abstract to keep better control of our working files. I had never used it but I knew it was there in case we needed it if our team grew.

  在一個小團隊中進行工具內協作感覺很不錯。 我沒有錯過我們作為設計師之間的互動性。 而且，如果需要的話，我們總是可以使用Abstract來更好地控制工作文件。 我從未使用過它，但是我知道它在那里，以防我們的團隊成長時我們需要它。

My situation changed last year when I got a new role and became part of a much bigger, scaled up design team. I joined in when they were migrating to Figma from Sketch and Abstract. They were doing so for multiple reasons, some of them being the performance problems of Abstract but also seeking a more interconnected system (and probably the design community’s pressure was another trigger there).

去年，當我擔任新職務并加入規模更大，規模更大的設計團隊時，情況發生了變化。 當他們從Sketch和Abstract遷移到Figma時，我加入了。 他們之所以這樣做是出于多種原因，其中一些是Abstract的性能問題，但也正在尋求一個更加互連的系統(可能是設計社區的壓力是另一個觸發因素)。

So we started to explore and discover how to work with it. Learning it took a matter of hours, pretty easy coming from Sketch and having used other software where the idea of resizable ‘frames’ rather than just groups or artboards was as well present (the prototyping tool Principle, for example). But learning the basics wasn’t where the biggest value laid, there was way more to it.

因此，我們開始探索并發現如何使用它。 學習這花了幾個小時，從Sketch上獲得了相當容易，并且使用了其他軟件，在這些軟件中，可調整大小的“框架”(而不只是組或畫板)的想法也很普遍(例如，原型工具Principle )。 但是學習基礎并不是最大的價值所在，還有更多的途徑。

I don’t want to list Figma’s features and talk about how great it is, but instead I would like to mention what it meant to me and the sort of opportunities and challenges it presented me and my peers during the few months I’ve been wielding with this tool:

我不想列出Figma的功能并談論它的強大之處，但我想提一下它對我的意義以及它在我幾個月以來給我和我的同伴帶來的機遇和挑戰。一直在使用此工具：

設計工具的民主化 (A democratisation of the design tool)

From my honest experience, I’ve rarely seen anyone in any other role (other than designers) open my Sketch files, and when they did I wish they have never done it. These files were mine and only mine, they were a representation of my process and how I wanted to organise things. It was my organised chaos.

從我的誠實經驗來看，我很少見過任何其他角色(除了設計師以外)打開我的Sketch文件，而當他們這樣做時，我希望他們從未這樣做過。 這些 文件是我的，也是我的，它們代表了我的流程以及我如何組織事物。 那是我有組織的混亂。

This changed with Figma. Now everybody had access to our designs and was able to comment and review them, both people with design backgrounds as well as other roles in the company. This made all of us think about how we wanted our work to be seen by others so they could make sense out of it.

這隨著Figma改變了。 現在，每個人都可以訪問我們的設計，并且能夠評論和審閱它們，包括具有設計背景以及公司中其他角色的人員。 這使我們所有人都在思考我們希望別人如何看待我們的工作，以便他們可以理解。

Where and how to direct people to and what to ‘hide’ from the rest of the employees becomes a skill by itself. The same goes with contextualising explorations and outputs. Running testing sessions with other designers on that structure may become a very insightful thing to try, too.

在何處以及如何將人們引導到其他員工以及從其他員工“隱藏”什么本身就成為一種技能。 情境化的探索和輸出也是如此。 在該結構上與其他設計師進行測試會議可能也變得很有見識。

復雜的相互聯系的生態系統 (A complex interlinked ecosystem)

Everything is connected in Figma, specially since the links feature was released. Rather than files in a folder (within a folder and enclosed in yet another folder), you get a structure that you can interlink and organise at will. This means that if you start a project and it has dependencies in another one, you can link to it. Or that you can refer to specific explorations done on a specific point on one of your artboards and give a quick access to them (yes, you can link to any element of the page). It’s a complex order that you have to own with your team to get the most of it for you, your peers and your organisation.

萬物在Figma中已連接，尤其是自發布鏈接功能以來。 您將獲得一個可以隨意鏈接和組織的結構，而不是文件夾中的文件(在一個文件夾中，而在另一個文件夾中)。 這意味著，如果您啟動一個項目并且該項目在另一個項目中具有依賴項，則可以鏈接到該項目。 或者，您可以參考在一個畫板上的特定點進行的特定探索，并快速訪問它們(是的，您可以鏈接到頁面的任何元素)。 您必須與團隊一起擁有一個復雜的訂單，才能為您，您的同事和您的組織獲得最大的收益。

That means being able to link to other sources or dependencies within the tool, but maybe Figma doesn’t need to be the go-to place to get around the project. Companies rely on other software such as Notion, Confluene and Jira for that. But it can be at least a source of truth for design matters.

這意味著能夠鏈接到工具中的其他源或依賴項，但是也許Figma并不需要成為解決該項目的理想之地。 公司為此依賴其他軟件，例如Notion ， Confluene和Jira 。 但這至少可以成為設計問題的真理來源。

您自己的(產品)結構 (Your own (product) structure)

More people getting through the designs of a product within a complex interlinked environment requires guidance. A comprehensive structure that allows employees to find what they’re looking for (without losing themselves on the wrong files or wasting time looking at blue sky explorations) and new joiners to begin to understand the company’s product.

需要更多的人在復雜的互連環境中完成產品設計。 全面的結構使員工能夠找到所需的內容(不會迷失在錯誤的文件上，也不會浪費時間查看藍天探險)和新加入的員工開始了解公司的產品。

As prompted by other designers within my company, avoiding the Conway’s law was an important bit to bear in mind. Your product architecture is more stable and recognised by employees than the company’s team’s feeble structure.

根據公司內其他設計師的提示，要避免遵守康威定律是一個重要的考慮因素。 與公司團隊的脆弱結構相比，您的產品體系結構更穩定并受到員工的認可。

通過設計工具進行測試 (Testing from your design tool)

There’s an obvious benefit to this: not having to pay and rely on other third party software (Marvel, Invision) to upload your prototypes to (and where you usually have to further work on polishing the prototype).

這有一個明顯的好處：不必付費并依靠其他第三方軟件( Marvel和Invision )將原型上傳到(并且通常需要在這些地方進一步完善原型)。

With COVID in the scene, it means having a Figma link you can send out to participants and that helps them set up the interview, easing this way the job of the tester (either yourself or somebody else). A wizard-style introduction.

在場景中使用COVID，這意味著您可以將Figma鏈接發送給參與者，并幫助他們進行訪談，從而簡化測試人員(您自己或其他人)的工作。 向導風格的介紹。

In conclusion, a few months after starting with it we’re till figuring out how to use it. But the social and structural aspect of it makes the challenge more interesting and collaborative.

總之，在開始使用它的幾個月后，我們一直在弄清楚如何使用它。 但是它的社會和結構方面使挑戰變得更加有趣和協作。

It’s clear that Figma and what it represents came up at a time where design teams had become way bigger and with that a new set of needs emerged. So despite the will to become software agnostic as teams and as individuals, we can’t ignore the structure within the tools we use and how they define our processes and ways of working, enabling us to better navigate new setups.

顯然，在設計團隊變得越來越龐大并且出現了新的需求集的時候， Figma及其代表的想法就出現了。 因此，盡管有意愿成為與團隊和個人無關的軟件，但我們不能忽略所使用工具的結構以及它們如何定義我們的流程和工作方式，從而使我們能夠更好地瀏覽新設置。

This is my first post, I’d be very keen to hear feedback from you, reader. I hope I will put some more thoughts together in the future and hopefully not only about tooling but on experiences and thoughts in regards to our craft.

這是我的第一篇文章，我非常希望聽到讀者的反饋。 我希望我將來能有更多的想法，不僅希望關于工具，而且希望有關于我們Craft.io的經驗和想法。