We recently started using Figma. How did it turn to be better than sketch?

Designers in my organization have been using Sketch as a primary design tool since the beginning. So far so good as a tool and the experience is also good.

The challenge came in as multiple designers started working on a single project in my organization. There was no way we could collaborate other than sharing the updated file in clouds, drive, etc. Here came in Figma, the buzz was already there that it’s a life-saving boon for the designers. We decided to give Figma a shot for the upcoming new projects and that’s it, there was no looking back after that.

It didn’t take much time to understand why Figma has succeeded to capture the design market so rapidly. Designers from worldwide are switching to Figma and trust me, it’s worth every effort. It’s been a while since I am using Figma. There are some of my experiences I would like to share.

Usability:

First and foremost, Figma is a browser-based app whereas Sketch is exclusively available for mac which I found one of the important drawbacks

Collaboration:

The performance of Figma as a collaborative app turned out mind-blowing. It’s way too easy to collaborate with the team members. Since it’s a browser-based app it gives you a real-time preview or presentation. Which is just unbelievable!

Speed and Performance:

Undoubtedly Figma has won the race in this category too. It doesn’t stutter, unlike Sketch. Sketch will easily stutter if your file has images even with moderate numbers of artboards, crash often, and slow down the performance eventually. When a sketch file crashes, your last edited changes will be gone whereas Figma keeps the file autosaved and updated.

Feedback/Comments:

Your client can comment on your real design. Yes, you heard that right! On the contrary, you need to upload files from sketch to some other tool (like Invision, etc) to share your prototype or to receive any feedback from your client.

Symbol/ Component:

The ‘component’ feature of Figma works quite similarly to Sketch’s ‘symbol’. There are other additional actions available in Figma, ‘Go to master component’ and ‘Push overrides to master’ which gives you the freedom to customize the same component, unlike sketch.

Plugins:

Both the application has plenty of plugins available online but for Figma, you can get the plugins in the application itself. You don’t need to move out of the application and search for one. The user experience you see!

Fonts:

Figma comes with readily installed google fonts. Yay!

Drawing tool:

I felt that the vector tools or the drawing tools of both the applications are great. I have used both but cannot choose one of them. It’s a tie!

Import a file:

The most exciting feature of Figma is you can import a sketch file to Figma anytime you want. Voila! You can then continue working on the same file using Figma.

Please note that I still find both the applications are powerful at their capacity. It’s just that I found Figma’s approach is more collaborative and that’s why I prefer Figma over Sketch.