AMA: Noah Levin (Figma)

over 3 years ago from Noah Levin, Design Director, Figma

  • Steven GarritySteven Garrity, over 3 years ago

    Noah, are the particular features or design issues where you find yourself limited by the Web platform? Are there others where you've been particularly enabled by the Web platform, vs. a native/local product?

    0 points
    • Noah LevinNoah Levin, over 3 years ago

      Honestly I've felt more empowered than limited while working on the web here. Which I never expected to say, because a lot of my time when I worked at Google was actually working on convincing teams of the advantages of working with native technologies while working on mobile products like Google Now and Voice Search. But here, I’ve been BLOWN AWAY by the quality of our engineering team and what they’ve proven the web is truly capable of. It’s advantages of shipping every single week and not requiring app updates, being available on every platform immediately, easily share links, and easily collaborate together in real time, make the pros far outweighs the cons — and most Figma users have found our performance even faster than many of our native competitors.

      That said, there are some random things that come to mind. For example, multiple window management for having a prototype up while you view your design is a bit difficult to do well on the web when you’re relegated to a single tab, working with the clipboard has some specific challenges, and certainly offline support is something that we think a lot about. We’re constantly looking for workarounds for this to handle these shortcomings, but overall we’re quite confident about our direction of investing in the web.

      1 point