Tuesday 8 December 2015

Figma: A New Design Collaboration Tool

figma-wdl

For many years, Adobe Creative Cloud has been the de facto leader of design tools. While the name does have “cloud” in it, Adobe’s products initially began as desktop applications, and even today, many users feel that collaborative workflow is not up to the par.

To answer this problem, 23-year old Dylan Field has come up with a new solution: Figma, a new set of collaborative design applications.

In simple words, Figma is a design collaboration tool that, instead of relying heavily on desktop apps, runs within your web browser, and allows your team members to work together and collaborate freely on design projects. Any changes made to the design are saved and synced in the cloud, allowing users to track changes and work seamlessly with other members of the team.

Obviously, this sounds like a novel approach to design collaboration and, if rightly implemented, can prove to the Google Docs of web and graphic design.

The mainstay of Figma is a browser-based version of Photoshop, that focuses deeply on interaction design. Any change you make to the current project is saved to the cloud, and if you ever wish to revert back to a previous state, version control helps you do that. As such, when working with Figma, you do not need to constantly toggle back and forth between email, Dropbox and other such services -- instead, collaboration is built inside the design tool itself.

As of now, Figma allows you to share color assets with the members of your team. However, eventually, the plan is to offer shared asset libraries, with real-time simultaneous design editing.

Figma seems to have a promising road ahead, and it has already generated $14M in funding. Currently, it is in its testing phase, and you can signup for the free preview program by visiting Figma’s homepage. Later on, Figma intends to rely on a paid monthly subscription SAAS model.

Wish to learn more? Read the official blog post here.

What do you think of Figma? Share your views in the comments below!

Read More at Figma: A New Design Collaboration Tool



from Web Design Ledger http://webdesignledger.com/figma-a-new-design-collaboration-tool

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