February 13, 2023

Figma Thinkers Week 6: Bezier Butts

Welcome back to Week 6 of Nate and Tom building Figma Thinkers, an online course for non-designers to learn Figma. Every Thursday we do a live-streamed working session. Click here to join the Thursday livestream.

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Hey, Tom here. I have two kids so there's a lot of talk about butts in my house. Poopy butts and stinky butts, dada butts and butt faces. Seriously, having kids is the best.

But/and! There's this little mental model I have for building online courses that I call bezier butts

Here's the short version, in a quick one-two punch:

1. The bezier tool (also called the pen tool) is fiendishly difficult to master
2. If you ask students to draw butts using the bezier tool it's more fun and engaging

That's it. That's my wisdom about building online courses!

(There's a slightly longer version of that idea here if you want it: bezier butts)

Outputs, Outcomes & Obstacle Courses

Ok, so back to building this Figma Thinkers course. Right now Nate and I are trying to figure out what people actually want to use Figma for.

For non-designers there are so many things you can use Figma for, so many design-adjacent use cases.

But if we can figure out what YOU care about, then we can design mini challenges, projects, games, and obstacle courses designed to teach you how to do those things in the most fun, most memorable way.

I'm inspired by Gary Chou and Christina Xu and their concept of obstacle courses¹:

Design an obstacle course, not a syllabus. One thing that we have validated repeatedly is that no amount of lecturing will get across the core points of this class; some things just have to be experienced. But as the instructors, we can’t fully control or design each student’s experience—rather, we have to build an obstacle course through which an experience is likely to happen.

That's the secret to a good course I think - a series of obstacle courses that we guide you through. Not just us talking AT YOU, but helping you navigate the obstacle course TOGETHER.

So, you're probably not aspiring to use Figma to draw butts... (unless you have kids?). In last week's session we talked about diagrams for presentations, visual assets, mind-maps and more.

But tell us:

→ What do YOU want to use Figma for? Hit reply and let us know!

Laters,

Tom & Nate