Figma has been on fire lately. In June 2021, it raised $200 million in Series E funding, valued at $10 billion, and became a unicorn as a design tool.

The article links: www.forbes.com/sites/alexk…

Figma has now replaced Sketch as the dominant UI/UX design tool internationally.

Source: Figma really sweet, Europe and the United States market accounted for more than half of the exaggeration

However, Figma is still difficult to promote in China, mainly due to the network (wall), price ($12/ month) and information security (foreign companies).

But the design of the tool is good, and there are plenty of interactive details to learn, in addition to functional innovations.

I’m going to use Sketch today to sort out some useful interaction details in Figma.

Source: Figma really sweet, Europe and the United States market accounted for more than half of the exaggeration

Directory:

  1. Hide uncommon functions

  2. Text boxes are automatically selected

  3. Invisible slider

  4. Double-click on the name

  5. Automatic collation of common colors

  6. Canvas scroll bar

  7. The rounded set

1. Hide uncommon functions

Do the same for a new graphic, and you’ll notice that the width and width of the Figma properties panel and Sketch look much cleaner, although there’s not much difference in size and functionality:

In contrast, Skech has more styling and borders, while Figma hides them.

And Sketch adds scrollbars to rounded corners and opacity Settings, which takes up a lot of space

Figma also saves some space by incorporating the Shadows, inner shadows, and blur modules of Sketch into one Effects module.

In addition, Figma’s modules have less space to occupy even when expanded, because the advanced functions in the modules can be folded again:

For a tool product with many functions, the probability of using different functions varies greatly. I personally support such multi-level hiding.

2. The text box is automatically selected

The text box in the Figma properties panel will be selected completely when you click on it, which is not the case with Sketch:

Most of these texts are short numbers. If you do not select all of them automatically, you will have to press “DELETE” to delete the data and then input the numbers.

If all are selected automatically, you do not need to press delete. Even with a larger number of numbers, it’s easier to skip between numbers and the “Delete” key.

3. Invisible slider

Figma and Sketch both have invisible sliders, but there are differences:

  • Figma can be dragged by hovering over the left side of the text area.

  • The text box must be selected before you can hover over the right side of the text area and start dragging Sketch. If the text box is not selected first, the up and down arrows hover to the right of the text area.

Personally, I rarely use the up and down arrow, because it is inconvenient to have more than 5 numbers, so I think it would be better to use the slider design in Figma.

But some people might prefer to click on the arrow, which might require a little research:

4. Double-click the name

In both Sketch and Figma, when creating an artboard or Frame, there is a default title in the upper left corner.

However, the title of Sketch cannot be changed directly. After a long time of thinking about it for the first time, I realized that it needs to be changed from the left layer list.

Figma’s title, which can be modified in place by double-clicking, is particularly easy to understand:

In addition, the Figma file name is also modified in this way. Such a simple and clear interaction form is worth learning from almost all products:

5. Automatically arrange common colors

Both Sketch and Figma add a common palette to the color picker for easy access.

The difference, however, is that the usual palette for Sketch must be added manually, whereas the usual palette for Figma is automatically retrieved from the document:

With Sketch, unless I’ve been working on the same project for a very long time, there’s no incentive to manually add common colors.

With Figma, I never needed to receive additions and had a lot of common colors available, which made it easy to use.

I can also use Figma’s common color palette to determine if the main color of the document needs to be adjusted or if there are too many similar colors that can be combined.

6. Canvas scroll bar

A lot of design tools, or drawing tools, are canvas sizes that are fairly large and don’t worry too much about boundaries, Figma and Sketch.

Sketch simply removes the scroll bar from the canvas, and while it looks neat, I sometimes slip off to a far place and don’t know how to get back.

At this point, I had to draw a graph, determine the current position from the location data, and then keep dragging the canvas until I find the original position…

Figma doesn’t have this problem because the canvas has a scroll bar that allows me to easily find it wherever I accidentally go!

7. Rounded corners

When I first started using Sketch, I didn’t know how to set different rounded corners for rectangles, or even if it was available.

Inadvertently tried to double-click after the selection of a corner, only to find the use.

Figma, on the other hand, has an icon that looks like four corners near the rounded corner setting, which is easy to use.

Of course, once you’re comfortable with Sketch, you might find it easier to input multiple corners at once.

But the frequency of setting special rounded corners is not that high, and learnability is more important than efficiency.

conclusion

Figma is a beginner friendly, lightweight looking design tool, but it has enough features for most UI designs.

This tool makes me feel that the designer has fully considered the real use environment, researched the user’s demand habits for different functions, and then pursued restraint and simplicity on this basis.

This year, the concept of “b-end product C-end” is very hot, I think this should be a successful case.

I recommend an online collaboration tool — Mick. Mick is a one-stop cloud platform for design + Collaboration (All in One), providing product development teams with high-fidelity design, design draft delivery, whole-process collaboration and design specification management.

Source | advanced experience