Figma Question

[Carlisle1500]

Can someone talk about this acquisition of Figma? Is XD dead?

See attached

[Kenneth Kawamoto]

@Carlisle1500  At this moment I am using the free tier, as I cannot justify for my company to pay for Figma licence for my whole team while XD is there in the CC package - basically free. Ironically I am very excited about this Adobe's acquisition of Figma - at last I can give full access to Figma to my team without rising a complex business case! When will this happen, Adobe...? 😆

[thomashallgren]

That's too bad. The real value comes when you start collaborating with others in the paid version of Figma. 

[thomashallgren]

The Figma web app always works when connected to the internet via the browser. No download is necessary. The electron app is a shell with a browser inside and allows the user to work offline and sync to the online server when connected again. 

[Kenneth Kawamoto]

I like webapp desktop wrappers over browser apps personally, just to separate things from browser tabs of websites 😉 (eg. I use Gmail desktop wrapper - I can't stand web-based email client!)

[Peter Villevoye]

The Electron framework (as used by popular apps like Figma and Miro and I guess Webflow as well) lends itself very well to port into a desktop app. Earlier incarnations had some bugs and flaws, but it's very capable nowadays.

[thomashallgren]

Figma bet on Webapp with wrapper, Adobe bet on old school. The old school lost. Will Adobe start migrating the entire Creative Cloud to WebApps? It would cut their software maintenance costs considerably and attract a new generation of developers to the company—time to start the upgrade - of everything.

[Kenneth Kawamoto]

Adobe has kind of started that with Adobe Express. Porting really complex software that deals with large size raw materials such as After Effects would be very challenging, I'd imagine

[Peter Villevoye]

Due to the huge popularity of many Adobe applications, certain groups of more casual and less professional users resort to those applications for simple stuff – or at least what they consider as simple. And to be honest, some actions which used to be complex before have become quite simple, thanks to innovations based on new approaches and Adobe's expanding artificial intelligence (e.g. cutting objects from their background.

It even results in questions like this recent one in our community: "I expected to be able to import my website into XD, make edits, and put it back"... How's that for simplicity ? 

That's why many heavy-lifting Adobe applications like Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Premiere and After Effects have been urged to add a layer of simplicity on top of their vast arsenal of features and options. Which conflicts with the routine of most more-demanding professionals, or at least confuses them. Think in Illustrator of the restricted toolset, and re-re-rethought Pen tool, or the numerous ways to scale, rotate, and duplicate objects. Or in Photoshop, the automatic conversion of placed imagery into a Smart Layer, turning Adjustment commands like Levels and Color Balance into Smart Filters.

Simple services like Canva and Adobe Express will cater for those users. Mobile apps like ProCreate, Fresco, Illustrator and Photoshop on iPad can cloak all ancient methods of a larger application and display new approaches more prominent, while keeping compatible file formats. Big applications can still offer complexity to advanced users.

Figma, although it operates preferably as a web tool, is definitely a heavy-lifter and not a simple service. Fortunately, in contrast with tools for photography, print, and audio/video media, Figma largely deals with smaller files and light-weight processes, hence very feasible with web technology.

In all aspects of their own creative tools, it seems as if Adobe has always been (and still is) fighting against HTML, both as an underlying technology and as an output format. And again, Adobe needs to acquire another company to "take them out, dancing", as it was said during the acquistion of Macromedia...

[thomashallgren]

Thank you for all your insight—Spot on. 

YET, the Figma dance could have been a public good - for the global design community, for decades. 1/10 of that $ could have set Figma on a path to being funded as a public good for the community. Silicon Valley has done this in the past for key software pieces the world needs. But Silicon Valley lacks a vision for the design community - and the best tool for supporting engineers with quality design software for the designers.

First, let me explain how many left feet Adobe has from my perspective of history. 

Adobe could have hired dance instructors 25 years ago, and it never did. Instead, they flopped around on the dance floor, annoying everyone in the design and development community except some uninformed who followed Adobe's lead. Flash is probably the worst dance of all time.

• HTML dance proposed 1993

• CSS dance proposed 1996. 

• Flash dance proposed 1993. (Bought by Adobe in 2006 - 13 years later)

• Flash ravages the internet for seven more years.

• Flash killed by Steve Jobs 2010 - removing floppy dancer from the path to mobile internet.

• First responsive website design dancer, Audi 2001.

• Figma jumps on the dance Floor, September 2016, and busts some cool moves. 

• Adobe busts on the dance floor with Cool, offbeat XD beta moves 2016.

• June 2022, Adobe discovers nobody likes their XD beta-dance–looks at Figma. Wowed at the lack of self-awareness.

• September 2022, Adobe begs banks to save them to the tune of $22-Billion, to buy the Figma mother-of-all-dances. 

• Adobe claims the best dancer title, trying out the Figma dance. • Community cries self to sleep.

• Future: Adobe can't Figma dance. New, better web-apps jump on the dance floor, and the world forgets about the Figma dance.

Adobe has been willfully ignorant for decades, and the bankers are giving them fake zeros to own Adobe. A fitting ending for Adobe. Not a winning bet for shareholders. How did that work out for GM? Then again, who cares? It's just made up twos and zeros.: two,two, zero,zero,zero,zero,zero,zero,zero,zero,zero.

That 22-Billion could have made Figma free to the world - FOREVER! it could have been a PUBLIC GOOD. 

I am a UX designer and work at Fractally, where we create platforms to support and manage public goods - for global communities. Figma is a perfect example that could be a public good. It could have been a public good, rewarded by and loved by the global community of designers for many decades. 

Instead, the Figma private equity investors sold Figma (and Adobe) to richer private equity investors. Figma will be sacrificed and bled by Adobe - for the Adobe shareholders (and private equity bankers) for 5-10 years. Sad. Suitable for private equity investor$ who funded the Figma dance, then sold it to Adobe for 40x. It's not good for the design community. Had this been done to a beloved programming language, the developer community would be up in arms. Well, if you are a developer, you should be. Because this is the tool designers use to improve your lives as developers. 

I humbly request that the private equity investors' acquisition of both Adobe and Figma be stopped immediately. And Figma is to be made a public good for all Silicon Valley and global software developer teams and designers. 

[Peter Villevoye]

It's unrealistic to expext that Figma's investors or Adobe will freely 'donate' Figma to the community.

But you can have your cake and eat it, because the Figma community and eco-system of contributing designers and developers will probably continue to work, even under an Adobe flag. They care for the tool and its purposes. Of course, some die-hard anti-Adobe users will steer away from it, but professional designers and developers will be happy to keep riding along with Figma. Don't underestimate the staying-power of both brands and their loyal users, or the majority of users who just don't care at all what flag is on the roof...

[Carlisle1500]

@Peter VillevoyeI get the future road for Adobe apps but a cloud app can never compare to the performance of a desktop app. Intel in their next version/cadence will rollout processes in 32/64/80 configs. No...NEVER will any cloud provider dedicate all those processors to a single app. Currently, I run Adobe Apps on a 56 core data center chip in a dektop computer from HP (Z8). Don't overreach with cloud talk! 

[Spas K.]

They didn't really bet on old school. I know most pros are Mac users, but I've always been a Windows user for multiple reasons. The Win version was (still is) so bad because they decided to go with UWP and that "touch-friendly" mindset, very different than their top performers like Photoshop / Illustrator / AE.

If Xd was made like a simplified Illustrator (maybe what Fireworks was, but I never had a chance to try it before they abandoned it), with prototyping functionality - it would've crushed everything else as a tool. Instead, they decided to reinvent the (color) wheel, which resulted in numerous bugs, clunky interface, and a bunch of other issues. The workspaces of 'old' programs are leaps ahead of what we have in Xd. No detachable panels, you can't see layers and components at the same time, no dark interface, glitchy value fields, it's crazy.

[thomashallgren]

Exactly. Adobe again had a brilliant idea, and in the middle of it got funky and decided to reinvent the wheel. It's not what the community needed. The had it NAILED in 2015/2016 and then went loopy by the end of 2017. 

[Peter Villevoye]

Indeed, Microsoft's UWP and its Touch-oriented requirements influenced Adobe XD's interface a lot. The lack of a top bar menu (just a hamburger to access the main menu), just a few tools, large buttons, one-panel  operation, all aspects which were implemented to accomodate casual Windows users on a Surface device.

But it was evident that this restricted interface would not be able to last for long. In a few years tabs were added and shoved around at the top (somewhat mimicking Adobe's regular but less versatile interface), buttons needed to be smaller and the number of settings and options increased quickly. And recently, Adobe reinstated XD's top menu bar, after years of touting the assumed benefits of its absence...

To be honest, that's actually one of the reasons while I still prefer Figma's desktop app incarnation. It has a top bar menu, in stead of that truncated hierarchical access through the upper left corner icon.

[Peter Villevoye]

Be careful: there are some very crucial differences in file-handling and editing. I teach UI design professionals to use either Adobe XD or Figma or both, and you really need to distinguish some jargon and approaches. But eventually the technical construction of the designs is very similar ! So that's why it's already possible to import XD files into Figma. Migrating Figma files to XD is not an option, since Figma has far more features and refinements which would be lost in the conversion.

[thomashallgren]

I was a major proponent of XD years ago. I also designed dozens of native mobile apps mostly for iOS. XD is an amazing app, and the teams that created it are brilliant. Unfortunately being multi-platform means parity of maintenence, upgrades and innovation which brings EVERYTHING to a crawl. That kills innovation. I left XD a year ago for good. The writing was on the wall.

[thx1138 · Accepted solution]

FYI Multiplatform is less of an issue than it used to be. Depending on the environment you can create a Mac app as easily as a Windows app. Again, this is using the newer development environments. However, if one platform has a library that the other doesn't then it can cause major lag as it has to have feature parity.

The interesting part here seems to do with Microsoft's interests in Figma. They like Figma at Microsoft. 

Another issue may be the Mac M1 architecture upgrades for the desktop tools. If that's the case then Figma's browser based environment would be less platform issues. But, running Electron apps has always been much slower than native apps unless somethings changed. In other words this move is baffling unless it's to consolidate customers. 

I've tried Figma a few times and always returned to XD. But a lot of comments here seem to have people who like both. 

[thomashallgren]

Figma, in the Electron shell, is much faster than XD. 

[Peter Villevoye]

It might be trivial, but Microsoft & Adobe maintain very strong relations with regards to cloud services. https://news.microsoft.com/transform/adobe-moving-its-cloud-services-to-microsoft-azure-microsoft-to... 

Maybe Microsoft was also particularily interested in this deal because of the enormous cloud capacities and data management involved for these services. They're probably in it for the long run...

[Earth Oliver]

it's almost guaranteed that the reason Figma went for $22B is that Microsoft and Adobe got in a bidding war for it. MS relied heavily on Figma and it threatened the partnership that Adobe and MS have had for ages.

[thomashallgren]

Too bad. Microsoft is doing a decent job with Github. 

[Carlisle1500]

@Earth Oliver  I think your comments about Microsoft and Adobe are 100%. Microsoft hosts the Marketing Cloud for Adobe and their relationship is bigger than CC. Microsoft loves Marketo. Also, Microsoft developers will gravitate to any tool that speeds development. If anything Figma just makes the relationship tighter.

[plainclothes · Accepted solution]

What it means is Adobe has finally accepted their abysmal failure.

XD will wind down. Figma will receive lots of cash and a slow lethal injection of Adobe bureaucracy.

It's not a great time to be a user of XD or Figma, tbh.

[Carlisle1500]

@plainclothes  What do you feel is wrong with XD? I liked the product enough to certify on it but it was great for prototyping. I did pages and voice prototypes but I wanted a tool to convert code to HTML but you don't want to give customers files they can steal though and so I accepted XD.

[plainclothes]

I know I replied to this already … 🤔

Browse these forums. The stagnant requests for basic features (eg pages, style management, local library sharing, etc) and fixes for painful glitches (eg the mess of complex component states) look more like the community surrounding a beta product that never made it.

I think XD was a reasonable improvement 10 years when compared to people's crazy ideas of building web designs in Photoshop -- anyone remember that nightmare!? But when you compare it to Sketch (my fave) and Figma, it just never stacked up.

Long ago, I used Axure for prototypes. But now it's easy to move from a simple design proto for user testing straight to code with a proto backend. You don't need the fuss of XD's prototyping mess these days -- frameworks have made code quick and easy.