What is our primary use case?
My main use case for Figma is designing UI/UX prototypes for student projects and creating posters, event banners, and social media graphics for college activities. I also use it to collaborate with teammates on group projects, gather feedback in real-time, and prepare design mockups before development begins.
What is most valuable?
Collaboration features are one of the strongest aspects of Figma. They allow multiple team members to work on the same design simultaneously, leave comments, and provide feedback in real-time. This makes group projects much more efficient and reduces the need for sharing multiple file versions. The workflow is smoother overall, though large files with many collaborators can occasionally feel a bit slower. Overall, collaboration has significantly improved our productivity and communication.
Figma serves as a single place for both design work and feedback. For student projects, even posters and hackathons, our team can brainstorm ideas, create designs, and review changes in the same file instead of switching between multiple tools. This keeps everyone aligned and makes collaboration much easier, especially when working remotely.
The best features of Figma in real-time are collaboration, easy prototyping, reusable components, Auto Layout, and a large library of templates and plugins. These features help us create designs faster, maintain consistency across projects, and collaborate efficiently with teammates. The plugin ecosystem deserves more attention as it allows users to extend Figma with tools for icons, illustrations, content generation, and design automation, which can save a significant amount of time on student and project work.
The feature I use the most is real-time collaboration. It has the biggest impact on our student projects because multiple team members can work on the same design, leave comments, and review changes without needing to send files back and forth. This helps us make decisions faster, reduces version control issues, and keeps everyone aligned throughout the project. For group assignments and event poster designs, it has significantly improved teamwork and productivity.
Auto Layout is an additional feature I find very valuable. It makes it much easier to create responsive and organized designs, especially when requirements change frequently during student projects. I also appreciate the extensive template and plugin library, which helps us get started quickly and reduces the time needed to create designs from scratch.
What needs improvement?
Several improvements could make Figma even better, mainly around performance and advanced usability. First, performance with large files could be improved. When working on heavy projects with many frames, components, and collaborators, the tool can sometimes feel slightly slower. Second, better offline support would be useful, especially for students who may not always have stable internet access. Third, more advanced built-in prototyping features would help streamline complex interactions directly inside Figma. Overall, Figma is already very strong, but these improvements would make it even smoother for large-scale or long-term projects.
There are small challenges with Figma, especially around plugins and advanced workflows. With plugins, the main issue is that quality can vary. Some plugins are very useful and well-maintained, but others become outdated or do not work consistently, which can interrupt workflow during projects. In terms of the user interface, it is generally clean and intuitive, but beginners can feel overwhelmed at first, especially with advanced features like Auto Layout, constraints, and component variants. These take some time to fully understand. Overall, these are not major issues, but improving plugin reliability and simplifying some advanced UI concepts would make the experience even more smooth for new users.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Figma for about two to three years, primarily initially for academic projects, UI/UX design assignments, and hackathons and creating posters and promotional materials for college events and office events.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Figma has been very stable and reliable overall. We rarely face downtime or major outages. On a few occasions, there were minor performance slowdowns with larger files or heavy components, but nothing that has caused major disruption or data loss. Overall, it feels like a dependable tool for daily projects and collaboration.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Figma is very scalable and helps handle larger projects, at least for the academic level.
How are customer service and support?
The customer support for Figma is generally good, but in our experience, we have not needed to contact them often. Most issues are usually resolved through their help center, documentation, or community forums, which are quite detailed and easy to follow. I would rate them a 10 out of 10 because I do not have anything to directly approach them about, but I heard that they are strong because the help center documentation and community are very detailed and easy to use.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
Before using Figma, we mostly relied on tools like PowerPoint and Canva. The main reason we switched was the need for real-time collaboration and proper UI/UX design capabilities. Figma solved these issues by allowing everyone to work in one shared file, leaving comments directly, and iterating much faster, which made it better suited for group projects and design-heavy coursework.
How was the initial setup?
The free plan is very useful for academic work projects and small team collaboration.
What about the implementation team?
Our use of Figma is strictly as a regular customer. We do not have any partnership or any agreement beyond using the product itself.
What was our ROI?
We have seen a clear ROI using Figma, mainly in terms of time savings and improved workflow efficiency rather than direct cost reduction. In student projects and hackathons, we estimate the design and iteration cycles became 25 to 35 percent faster, mainly because real-time collaboration reduced back-and-forth communications and eliminated multiple versions. It also reduced the need for separate design coordinate meetings since feedback could be given directly inside the file using comments. ROI comes from faster delivery, better collaboration, and reduced rework rather than financial savings or staff changes.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We explored other tools such as Canva and Adobe, especially for posters and mockups. Canva was easy to use but felt limited, and Adobe XD was more powerful for UI/UX work, but collaboration was not as smooth. Because of these limitations, we chose Figma since it offered the best balance.
What other advice do I have?
I would tell anyone considering Figma to start with the basics and gradually explore more advanced features. It is best to begin with simple layouts and prototypes and then slowly learn tools like Auto Layout, components, and variants as projects become more complex. I would also recommend using real-time collaboration and commenting features actively since they significantly improve teamwork and reduce back-and-forth communication. Overall, I gave this review a rating of 9 out of 10.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Other