John Lilly

Figma Preview Release - The collaborative interface design tool

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Dylan Field
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Maker
Hi! I’m Dylan, CEO of Figma. @evanwallace and I have been building the tech behind Figma for a few years now and we are thrilled to be launching our Preview Release today! Figma is a collaborative interface design tool. Our aim is to combine the power of legacy programs like Adobe Illustrator with the collaboration of web apps like Google Docs. You can do vector-based UI design, commenting, sharing, and storing all in one place -- in the browser. We also integrate with Slack. Right now we are in a Preview Release. Sign up for our waitlist, and we’ll let you in as soon as we can. We will start by letting in the first 50 people who sign up for the waitlist using this link. And this is just the beginning. We know we have a long way to go, so I’m looking forward to your feedback and questions.
Ben Tossell
@zoink awesome work :) What are the biggest things that differentiate you from others in this space? What are the big pain points you have tackled here that other products just were not?
Ben Berkowitz
@bentossell @zoink for us @seeclickfix who have been testing in alpha it has been the ease of use of the pen tool, the incredibly fast image scaling and rendering and the slack integration.
Sho Kuwamoto
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Maker
@bentossell @zoink I'll let Dylan speak for himself, but as for me, I think the biggest difference is that having the creation and collaboration experiences in a single online app makes everything simpler. You don't have to worry about uploading and downloading and generally managing a bunch of files.
Sho Kuwamoto
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Maker
@bentossell @zoink And the other point that goes hand-in-hand with this is that it takes a lot of detailed engineering to create a professional-level drawing tool. The pen tool has a lot of thought behind it. The performance is really snappy. All that takes time to get right.
Gabriel Loftus
@zoink @bentossell - this kinda reminds me of the "feedback" page on the Product Hunt beta.. Would be awesome companies used this for crowdsourcing design/ux suggestions
Chris Messina
Top Hunter
The design of the site is excellent -- great type, white space, etc. Excited to see this coming out soon. Could this be a competitor to Sketch, but in the cloud?
Dylan Field
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Maker
@chrismessina Thanks, Chris! That's the plan :)
Sho Kuwamoto
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Maker
@chrismessina Oh, but so much more than that! ;-)
Chris Messina
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@skuwamoto that's saying a lot, but if you get collaboration/sharing right, you could of course also supplant InVision.
Sho Kuwamoto
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Maker
@chrismessina Also, FWIW, I think that new products never really supplant existing ones. Google Docs didn't supplant MS Word or Sharepoint. It allowed new people to work in completely new ways. But the existing products remain valuable in their own right.
Erik Torenberg
@skuwamoto @chrismessina I like this philosophy
Ben Berkowitz
We have been using Figma @seeclickfix since this Summer. We have been blown away by the simplicity and speed. We dropped our photoshop license two months ago as a result. The pen tool is incredibly easy to use for a beginner and faster than illustrator for a pro. Watching how fast photos scale on a MacBook Air leveraging the cloud has been pretty incredible as well. Slack integration has been a huge plus for our team as well. Can not wait for the multi-player update. If it's not obvious we definitely vouch for switching to Figma.
Chris Calmeyn
Personally, I am excited for the day where I can do substantive work from basically any computer. Figma looks like one more step in that direction. 👏 When the internet is spotty or unavailable, how does (or will) the offline mode work?
Sho Kuwamoto
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Maker
@calc Right now, we assume that you are within spitting distance of an internet connection. So if you lose your connection for a few minutes, no problem. But we assume that you won't go hours without connecting.
Jeremy Britton
Been using it much of the year. Left Sketch behind and haven't looked back. A few reasons it's stuck with our team: 1. Its web-based nature is sneakily useful. Sharing work-in-progress or referencing design specs is just a link over Slack/chat with no software to install on the other side to view and no file sync to wait for. 2. The attention to detail in the drawing tools trumps Sketch in many ways (type, dimensions, etc.). Easy to overlook, but remarkable to experience. 3. Directionally their recent updates (shared colors, constraints) and roadmap (collaborative editing, shared assets, design with data) are super compelling.
Mɐx Bulger
I'm down with any product that uses Rhode Island in its comps and marketing :). Congrats team, looks awesome!
Andrey Grabelnikov
Hey guys! Any plans to have animation/interactive tools within?
Sho Kuwamoto
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Maker
@grabelnikov For now, our feeling is that there are so many great prototyping tools out there and they are all so different, that we'd rather integrate with existing prototyping tools and make that as seamless as possible.
Bhanu Sharma
@skuwamoto congrats and kudos! Great stuff. Can't wait to try it.
JasonKristofor
Just signed up - I love the emphasis on real-time collaboration. Can't wait to try this out with our geographically dispersed design team!
Nicolas Nemni
Amazing idea. I'm on the waitlist. Can't wait to try it. :)
Dylan Field
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Maker
@nicolasegosum Just added you! :)
Sanj
great work
Dylan Field
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Maker
@sanj_arora thank you!
Jeffrey Erickson
Collaborative component libraries and drag and drop style guides are the holy grail of design software. What are your plans here?
Claire Butler
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Maker
@jeffreykaine We plan to build out a shared assets library for teams - it is high on the list for our roadmap. Right now we started with shared brand colors. More to come soon :)
Ramon Escobar
This is amazing guys, it looks so clean that inspire many good ideas. Congrats on the design side, it's absolutely​ beautiful. Can't wait to try it out.
Lane Shackleton
Awesome product, been enjoying using it in the alpha!
Ouriel Ohayon
would that kind of overlap with a tandem like Sketch+invision? or complement?
Sho Kuwamoto
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Maker
@ourielohayon It depends. InVision has a very broad feature set, and I don't see us trying to cover that kind of breadth any time soon. That having been said, I think you will see us investing heavily in areas where InVision may not, such as simultaneous editing.
Lea Marolt
This is absolutely fantastic :D! Signed up, and can't wait to try it out (:
Claire Butler
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Maker
@hellosunschein what's your email? i'll add you :)
Lea Marolt
@clairetbutler @hellosunschein Hey Claire! I don't think I've received anything yet :(, could you try again? Leyamars@gmail.com
Claire Butler
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Maker
@hellosunschein Sorry about that - you should have an email now!
Gyan Prayaga
Exciting app. Signed up on the wait list and looking forward to testing it out :)
Claire Butler
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Maker
@gyanprayaga you're in - give us your feedback please!
Lynn Fredricks
Signed up - would like to see how this could enable some of our customers to better build front ends to our database and reporting technology.
Claire Butler
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Maker
@lynnfredricks added you!
Alexis Fogel
Looks very promising. Can't wait to test this. Congrats guys
Claire Butler
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Maker
@alexisfogel you got it - let us know what you think!
Alexis Fogel
@clairetbutler thanks a lot, I will give it a try and let you know
Jinal
@clairebutler, @zoink can you help get in..would love to try it?
Claire Butler
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Maker
@jinalzz yep - added you!
Max Pelzner
You guys nailed the product video! Looking forward to testing out preview when invites are sent out :)
Claire Butler
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Maker
@whoismaxpelzner glad you like it! added you to the list.