Figma is mostly used for website and app prototyping. It's very popular because it allows for multi-user collaboration, like a Google doc. Older prototyping tools like Invision or Sketch did not have this, and it was a major differentiator.

You can create different screens and set up click points, such as a button. Clicking the button navigates you to another screen in your design. This is called "interactive prototyping".

Figma puts these interactive prototypes on the web, so designers can create a visual prototype that can be tested on mobile and desktop devices. It's more realistic than simply looking at pictures of mockups. The biggest advantage is that it does not require developers to write working code and deploy a whole app just to click around and test it out.

Not illustration - design (UI design, specifically). It's fantastic for maintaining styles/themes, collaborating, iconographic design, flows, and especially composable/configurable/modular UI components. The components are one of the standouts for me, as compared to other software. They are more powerful, and yet somehow less confusing/complex than in other software. In general, I always run into some kind of limitation or bug or confusing behavior in other software - Figma has by far given me the least trouble. They obviously have both enormously talented designers and enormously talented engineers in charge. Also, they appear to actually think about what the team-based UI design pipeline looks like in practice.

Edit: As others have pointed out, it's not so much the existence of a feature that's missing from other software - it's the design and implementation of features.

Edit: Their autolayout implementation is incredible. And their tutorial videos! My god, they're incredibly discoverable and informative and SHORT. I'm going to stop because I could keep coming back and adding edits to this comment all day.

Product (software specifically) design is where Figma shines. Auto layout, prototyping, etc. are second to none. Sketch had all of these features for years, but Figma’s implementation and depth of execution is unrivaled.

Figma's biggest strength is in UI design. Open illustration, while possible is not so great. (I still love Illustrator for this purpose, others may disagree or have other favorite tools). Figma allows UX/UI designers to speak a congruent language with UI developers. A design system or component library can be mutually understood. Things like, "we're using our 80% gray button here" can be very easily communicated. That's not at all impossible in other tools, Figma just takes it to a very nice level.

Things like this make us SUPER valuable and fast: https://www.uiprep.com/

So a slow death, then.

I'm old enough to remember when Adobe acquired Macromedia. They slapped some new icons on Dreamweaver, Fireworks, Flash etc. then completely neglected them until people abandoned them. I pray Figma fares better.

If it gets slower or clunkier, it will die.

High chance Adobe increases pricing & wastes a year of engineering resources on integrating Figma with their Adobe Cloud over building useful features.

> It'll be bundled as part of the Creative Suite

I can promise you it wont. None of their recent acquisitions have. Allegorithmic Substance is extra money on top of CC now they've bought it. Figma will probably remain an extra subscription too.

Adobe is a fate worse than death. For software, at least.

If this was local software, you'd lose out on most of the collaborative benefits that Figma provides. That collaboration, especially with guest accounts is one of the reasons for the explosive growth and popularity. If this was a buy it once tool that required IT support for collaboration it wouldn't have nearly this growth trajectory or industry adoption.

Well, I can't quite get my Word 5.1a to run anymore. It was the best version of Word to ever have lived. Unfortunately, it only runs on 68k and PPC macs (on the latter even under emulation, IIRC). Software has a limited lifetime, unfortunately. Bit rot may be metaphorical, but it does happen.

If you're a UI designer and you work on a remote team, Figma makes it incredibly easy to both build and share your designs with your teammates. It runs entirely in a browser and was built from the start for sharing, so you can jump into a design file and see and share the latest work in real time.

It is to design as Google Docs or Sheets was to Word or Excel. No more passing around files - everything just works in the browser.

Yes, Figma’s appeal is that it was not owned by Adobe.

Yep. Sketch can feel limited compared to Figma (I hate that they need iOS Mirror app instead of being able to access interactive prototypes on the web), but I love that they are a desktop app and you don't have to keep paying forever.

I've tried Designer and I just hate how it handles groups. Illustrator seems to be the only vector software that does groups right these days.