Figma
Client
Figma
Year
April 2025
Role
UI and Visual Design Lead
Designers often carry their work with them throughout the day. Yet most tools are not built for the moments when those thoughts appear.
MISSED MOMENTS
Ideas often appear in passing moments throughout the day while commuting, waiting, or between conversations. These moments hold opportunities to move work forward in small but meaningful ways.
Instead, they become fragmented across notes, Slack messages, and screenshots, or disappear entirely, because acting on them depends on being back at a desk.
Solution
WHERE IDEAS LANDS
Across interviews, advertisers shared that the setup flow felt distant from the outcome. Decisions around placement and targeting lacked visibility, making it difficult to plan with clarity.
Process
EARLY ITERATIONS
Given the focus on creativity, the ideation naturally grounded itself in Figma.
Which ideas matter?
DECISION 01
Bringing the full Figma experience to mobile was never the goal. Instead, the focus was on identifying the moments that matter. The exploration began by mapping the kinds of ideas designers would want to capture.
Extending ideas with AI
DECISION 01
Another path explored an AI copilot that responds to text prompts, offering ideas and iterations as a way to extend existing designs.
Visual annotations & voice memos
FINAL SOLUTION 01
The exploration settled on annotations paired with voice. Together, they hold both the idea and the thinking behind it, making it easier to return to and build upon. This approach felt closer to how work unfolds in practice than the paths explored before.
The canvas gives way to a more linear experience, where related frames appear in a continuous flow that is easier to move through on mobile.
A mini map brings the entire canvas into view, making it easier to move across distance while staying oriented within the work.
Lasso checkpoints turn selected areas of the canvas into a path. Instead of navigating freely, designers can move through the work in a defined sequence.
The interaction centers on snapping into place. A double tap brings the view directly to a frame, allowing designers to focus and annotate without navigating the canvas.
Making sense of feedback
DECISION 03
Live comments need to be understood in a glance, yet still carry the full weight of the idea. As feedback grows longer and more layered, clarity can fade. The challenge is to keep both the surface and the depth intact.
Keeping the thought intact
DECISION 03
Segmentation stays within the Live Comment itself, allowing the thought to remain intact. While this preserves continuity, it makes it harder to respond to smaller moments within a longer recording.
Reflection
DESIGNING FOR DESIGNERS
Designing for designers means designing for people who are already deeply aware of the tool. Expectations are higher, and even small interactions carry weight. This required a level of restraint, where the goal was not to introduce something entirely new, but to fit naturally into the ways designers already think and work.