 Today on The Journey, we're talking about why you should use Figma for your web design process. Making a switch to a new programmer tool isn't always easy, especially if you're the kind of person who tends to get set in their ways. Web designers and developers have improved the way they work and have redefined what design means to them. They're creating projects that not only look good, but also achieve business goals and solve real user pain points. One of my favorite Steve Jobs claims quotes is the design is not just what it looks like and feels like, the design is how it works. I love that. And web designers really have a choice of tools that they can use to design websites like Sketch, Adobe XD, InVision, Studio, or Figma to name a few. Each has its own strengths and features, but today we're focusing on Figma. So Nealey, I've heard you say Figma before, but define to our audience. What is Figma? Yeah, well, Webster's dictionary defines no. So Figma is a design tool like many others that allow designers to work and create different flows, wireframes, user interface designs, and really any other graphic element that they may need. Similar to other programs mentioned before, Figma's features help designers create a high quality project offering. But what really makes Figma the best available design tool is its ability to allow users, whether it's project teams or even clients, work collaboratively in the same file at the same time. Yeah, so there's no software to install or to download or to continually update. There's no need to save and organize your files. Sound pretty good, right? Your work is automatically saved to a shared space in the cloud. So one URL becomes the source of truth that everyone gets to see, which means there's no need to continually upload, sync, and arrange PNGs in multiple places. And clearly Figma covers all the basis with the features designers need, but it gets really interesting when you consider how it improves workflow. So let's talk about five reasons Figma can fundamentally improve how you work as a designer or developer. So reason one, it's incredibly fast. You can do a design review, you can make updates on the fly and instantly get feedback on your changes. And the time between iteration can go from days down to minutes because there's zero time wasted uploading, syncing screens, creating shared links, messaging people to look at the links and so on. Now all of a sudden the design file becomes a venue where anyone can meet up and have a discussion about the designs. And now it's easier for designers to work parallel, exploring options and iterating in shorter increments versus creating something closer to the final design only for it to be the client to come back and say, that isn't really what I envisioned and going back to the drawing board. Developers can also spot and voice technical concerns sooner rather than later. And this means that stakeholders, project managers, or really anyone with the link can see how the design is unfolding from an idea to a polished visual rather than waiting for the big reveal. Exactly. Another huge reason of why I personally love Figma is that it's just one word. Components. Sketch has symbols and Figma has components. The difference is that components are a little bit more flexible than symbols, which means you can do a lot more with less of them, which also means that designers are more likely to actually use them instead of breaking them or starting from scratch. With Figma, you can access and modify the properties of any layer in a component without detaching it from the master to really break down what a component is and a use case for it. So you can create a component for a navigation menu and the different items, right? So there's a default state, there's a hover state and there's a disabled state. So these components you can easily turn it onto a hover state and it'll automatically adjust any type of CSS or border or boldness that you might want on the fly and then go to another page, copy over that menu, adjust the components without having to rebuild everything from scratch. It just makes the entire process a little bit more streamlined and efficient when it comes to you building out the site and seeing what that design will actually look like live. So another thing that makes designing with components easier in Figma is you can actually edit the master component in context of the larger view rather than having to, you know, go to separate pages to make edits. Our next reason for really using Figma is the ability to create team libraries. So you can share and update collections of those components across projects. So this one is big and it's not just for teams. This has the potential to give you access to the fault styles and layouts as intended. If you think about it, if Google and Apple were to make their own component libraries and share those with the world, we'd all be speaking the same design language for the first time since the iPhone. So just imagine having all of the things that you need in one place so you don't have to go back and recreate everything, right? You don't have to manually go through that. So it's making it super easy for you. It's kind of like I like to think of it as like a brand kit. It will also notify people on the file of any other changes that are made, which is great. It keeps the group cohesive. Maybe you had a simple color change, then let's everyone else on the file know, then they can review, basically like get for design files. There are entire teams of people at companies who are making tools just so that component libraries can be usable with Sketch. But not everyone has the budget for that. And Figma makes it so that you really don't have to. So reason number four, updates, support and community. Figma is benefiting from a smaller user base and is able to make changes more quickly because of that. But it goes without saying, though, like having a tool that is always up to date is far better than seeing a fat update available dialogue when you log in. They also have a pretty great support team and it's effortless to get help. And additionally, Figma community is a feature similar to the portfolio sites like Behance or Dribble as a place for users to share files to their profiles and show the design process like layers and vector paths that make up a piece of work. And users can choose which files that they want to have published to their profiles and which can be accessible for others to view, remix and learn from. And reason number five, version history. You guys, you can see when the edit was made. You can see who made it. You can go back to it and you can fork a file from a specific point in time, which is great because you don't need a vision. So you don't need Dropbox. This is built in. Do I need to say more? I don't think you have to say more, Emma. There is a lot of buzz around design collaboration and with existing workflows in place, especially with the large portion of the workforce working from home. Figma was built on the concept of designing things together in real time. And if this holds true and goes mainstream, similar to Google Docs, Figma will see a bright future. That's all we got for you. If you like this video, make sure you give us a like and tell us down in the comments below what design tool you're using for your projects. Be sure to subscribe to our channel and ring that bell so you're the first to know when our next video is uploaded. This is a journey.