Figma Thinkers Week 8: Creative Figma Uses
Welcome back to Week 8 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 sign up, and check out past sessions on our YouTube channel.
Hey, Tom here, back from ⛷️ skiing.
The basic premise for Figma Thinkers is that Figma is useful for non-designers. We've talked about "design-adjacent" work before. But Figma is also a creative tool, useful for all kinds of not-even-design work!
Here's some fun inspiration:
Not-even-design: Co-working
I love this exploration from Mu-An Chiou on using Figma as a way to have virtual presence with friends while working remotely:
Immediately, this FigJam file we aptly named “Presence!” changed our work day behaviors. For me personally, simply starting the day from Presence made such a big difference. I now care to make myself presentable in the morning in order to take a picture to put on the desk. This routine gave me a reason to care and lifted my spirit. And the Presence tab became a place that I simply “hang out in” during work hours. Instead of scrolling through my phone mindlessly, I’d switch to the tab whenever I was waiting for a test to run, a deployment to finish, or simply want to distract myself from work. When I am in Presence, I look to see if there’s anything I can put on my virtual desk, check out what @risacan has been working on, respond to her comments, or play the music she shared.
Look at how cute and cool and nourishing this looks!
Check out the full blog post: Presence
Not-even-design: Trend reports
Co—matter is a research and strategy studio in Berlin and they publish regular mood boards for "stuff we're thinking about".
https://www.figma.com/file/Oi2wILeH4uAQOounlS2C9D?node-id=0:1For me, Figma is perfect for sharing this kind of "realtime thinking in public" mood board / scratch pad. Mostly because there's zero friction between creating it and publishing it to the web. This Figma file is embedded right on the homepage of their site. A great rabbit hole for people to fall down without requiring a designer or web-developer to update.
Not-even-design: Figma Essays
Feeling trapped in your rectangles? Want to shake loose? Try a Figma Essay! Here's a few examples:
Other Internet's Crypto Philanthropy Figma Essay
My own Working in Public Figma Essay
This week in our Thursday session I think Nate and I are going to nail down the dates and landing page for the first course beta! If you wanna join: signup here
Thanks Tom & Nate