What drew me to Figma
In 2018, I wanted to bring Figma to the company I was working at. We made the switch in 2019. In 2021, I joined Figma as a designer advocate. Today, I reflect on the past year and what keeps me here. When I think about these events, one word comes to mind: thoughtfulness.
Anticlimactic, huh?
At my previous job, I remember meeting with the Figma team when we were evaluating the Org plan. I came battle-ready. We sat in a circle in their café, my team on one side, the Figma team on the other. We talked about styles, design system workflows, yadi-yadi-yada. I asked them why color styles were stored separately from text styles. That wasn't how we were doing it (and there was no other way at the time). Sho, the director of product, explained why they chose to de-couple color and text styles, and depart from existing setups. The entire conversation was such a departure from sales pitches I had gotten earlier that week. It was thoughtful, empathetic, and I wanted to know more about how they made product decisions. I was taken aback, and had ultimately made the decision right after the meeting to move forward.
Later that month, I sent a prioritized list of 20-something questions and feature requests with the hope that Figma had some proposals or workarounds for workflows we wanted supported. That's when I met Tom, a designer advocate. I asked about best practices for creating tables. There were no individual borders. We had to hack a drop shadow, and it was SUCH AN INCONVENIENCE WHY. During our call, Tom walked me through scenarios of what might happen if they did support individual borders. For example, how would the borders reflect in CSS? Would it be treated as a border or a stroke? I got to hear about the design decisions happening behind the scenes, and also learned more about the tradeoffs for each approach. When the meeting ended, I remembered thinking how I honestly didn't care about individual borders anymore. The fact that a detail like that was so deeply investigated was not only enough, but it instilled so much confidence in me as a valued prospective customer, user, and community member. I was embarrassed for being such a drama queen about... borders.
A week later, our team committed! I got to know my account managers well (special shouts to Nathalie and Karia!). They took good care of us, reaching out with event notices and EOY recaps. I was able to connect with them at Config in February of 2020. The event was a whirlwind, but I distinctly remember the thoughtful name tag stickers, community-created quilt, and nice people. A month later—you know the story.
During lockdown, my motivation to work was dwindling. Scroll, tap, scroll, scroll, tap. Config Europe, Variants, new Auto Layout... How is Figma doing all of this? What's the secret sauce??
In March of 2021, I had the opportunity to join the designer advocate team at Figma. It was right before Config, and energy-levels were high. I thought the energy would settle after the event, but it never did. It hasn't settled yet, nor do I think it ever will. Now on the other side, my experience is not much different from my first few encounters with the team. I see the same type of thoughtfulness happening with every conversation and decision, just in more depth.
Thoughtfulness may be the secret sauce, but I think it goes deeper than that. I feel so lucky to work with brilliant minds. Brilliant, yet humble. I see this humility in the Figmates I work with everyday, and it's a type of humility that begets curiosity and self-awareness. This is what draws me to Figma everyday.
I was initially drawn to Figma because of the thoughtfulness. And I am continuously drawn to Figma; not because of thought leadership (what is that?), but thoughtful leaders.
Thanks for reading! A photo dump below of events and office shots:
