Good read. Flexibility is definitely a balance.

I do think some good points are made. But the points are lost in the final version that is actually worse.

Inventive for sure. Not readable at all. But it does seem to be a WIP (based on the top...um row in the spreadsheet).

A good designer is more than simply age. It's general wisdom, and patience. The ability to communicate, and more importantly listen. As the author says these traits are present at any age, but in general come with time. I'd include an additional point, that with the world's demographic is shifting to 40+ years of age (really older), it's more important than ever to really put a concerted effort into understanding, and catering to the older generations. I've known quite a few agencies that have hired designers over 50 to achieve that perspective. The world isn't young, but varied. Companies should start realizing this, or risk losing grasp of their world presence.

Try using Figma to build a component for a button with horizontally centered icon & text inside of it. This shouldn't be an issue in 2019, but here we are.

I do think stacks are great. But I can do that fairly easily in Figma with grids and constraints.

That sounds amazing, and I would love to do the same, but unfortunately, that seems like a luxury only afforded to big companies with virtually unlimited resources. I'm having a hard time imagining smaller companies being able to dedicate the necessary engineer and designer resources required for building this out.

Very true. That’s the nice thing about Figma. It’s much more incremental. I’ve started with color, and text being defined by Figma. And the advantage with Figma is that you aren’t locked into any single ecosystem that could go the path of jQuery. And designers don’t all have to no how to work with code to modify parts of the system.

Read data in Sketch

This has always been possible with plugins.

Stacks in Framer X

Still don't see this as that much of a benefit, and you are locked into a technical approach of designing instead of freeform. I don't really understand the love of Stacks. Sketch had similar functionality in plugin form, and the larger benefit of the feature is similar to dynamic grids.

Figma did release exclusive features recently (e.g. API, dynamic grids,...) but ultimately those didn't materialize in significant benefits in daily use

I can tell you that a number of organizations are using the Figma API to build rapid prototyping with React. Saw some great demos at a conference.

Michael: I think you are missing the $45/editor located above the contact sales button. Though when sales spoke with me they gave me a much larger number.

Yeah. The components losing values when updated is a big annoyance. I've reported that a few times.

Critique of Enterprise

Broad thoughts

I really wish Enterprise offered more value. It's really just group pricing, and the ability to create teams. Fonts, and organization library is....well not really much. Organization libraries are great, but with a single team you get pretty much the same workflow. Fonts can be useful for remote teams, and collaborating with contractors. But really it's not significant enough to warrant the cost just for that. It's pretty simple to just share an asset folder (which we do already for other assets). Activity seemed to be a rough afterthought with little polish, and is missing a lot of functionality I'd like to see, and needs to be much more forward facing. Figma needs some sort of true Dashboard view at the Enterprise level.

My demo

I scheduled a demo to see if it was useful for our organization. The sales contact didn't really demo it effectively. The individual that demoed Enterprise services didn't properly introduce themselves, and seemed confused about their role in Figma. I came up with some possible solutions for my own questions after the meeting, since the sales individual didn't really seem to know the tool enough to come up with workarounds. I also found it odd that they were doing the demo while at the beach. Lots of static, and audio clicked in and out. Cool, and hip to be at the beach for sure, but come on! I'm at a coffee shop myself right now, but for conference calls (beyond standups) I'll move somewhere quiet.

Permissions

My main wish with Enterprise was to allow more fine grained control over permissions, and UI visibility. Detailed into the following roles:

1. Admin / Owner: Same as now
2. Editor: Can edit files within the teams they have access
3. Developer: Can view everything an editor can, but in view mode.
4. Copy: Can edit anything that is text, but nothing else.
5. View: Can view pages, and frames are displayed (but no sublayers). Code is not displayed, and is replaced with comments visible by default. As that is the main use case for stakeholders / business sponsors. They come in, and review designs / prototypes. The interface is confusing for them.
6. Custom: I imagine looping all of this into a custom interface that allows organizations to configure their own custom roles would be useful. Especially for Contract employees, and providing fine grain access to specific files and teams.
7. Share: Really need more knowledge on sharing, and info about who views files. Just people who have logged in, and have an account is not enough. I want to know if the file has been copied. I want to know basic IP information about file access.

It would also be very useful to be able to only share specific pages, frames, etc. and not display anything else. This is easy enough to workaround by exporting, or having a separate file. BUT this defeats much of the benefit of Figma where comments can reside in the core project file, and not separated out in other files.

Versioning

I really hoped versioning would also have more functionality within Enterprise. In general this needs to be more focused, and fleshed out. Being able to branch files into duplicates, but retain the connection to the previous file (in the sense of this is from X). Would really make versioning better. Really I have many wants to versioning that is missing.

Part of the whole reviewing of files. Having something simple where frames, and pages have a CTA when changes have occurred since your last visit would be a game changer when dealing with stakeholders, and business sponsors. I can again work around that by doing it manually. (which I do) But having that group into versioning would be nice.

Help

The help documentation is decades old online. I've been working on my own cookbook / manual that I use to onboard contractors, and as a reference because I can't really direct them to help. Most of the screenshots are outdated, and don't show the current interface. Documentation on many of the features is very primitive, and doesn't really explain the HOW something works. This isn't directly related to Enterprise, but I feel is worth mentioning for anyone that comes across this mini-review. I've discussed this with a few internal members of Figma, and I know they are aware of the issues and are working on it.

That said...

All of this said. I love Figma. I'm an evangelist, and run the Tampa Bay Meetup. I'm always sharing, and talking about it. I've personally converted dozens of individuals to paying Figma users. But I'm continually frustrated by the slow pace of management level capabilities. I imagine time will eventually lead to solutions to some of my concerns. Use Figma!

Great article as always. I'm going to have to explore some SVG Filters now.

1. Install Quicklook from the Windows Store. It's just as good (and even better) in many cases than the Mac equivalent. The code, and markdown preview is better.
2. I've personally never liked drag-and-drop. I'm more of an Open With...but I get why this might be an annoyance. I kinda like the pin capability. It is technically possible to drag-and-drop, but each app must implement it.
3. I suspect this might be your drive. My NVME SSD is super fast, and I haven't noticed a difference when compared to my MacBook Pro.
4. This can be killed by disabling some of the more annoying Windows options. I compare this to the odd random swiping in Mac OS that opens the useless Notifications Center. Or Mac OS telling me this isn't an approved app requiring me to unlock to install.
5. I'm curious about your frustrations.
6. This is simply not true. For awhile now Windows has more elegantly handled Window management, Window snapping, etc. There are a number of built-in shortcuts that mimic Spectacle on Mac OS. Not to mention I don't have to do a weird click + drag on the green traffic light to snap fullscreen apps.
7. Again not true. Windows allows you to properly utilize the GPU across every Adobe app. Not to mention have any GPU you could possibly want. Do you have the GPU acceleration enabled in your Adobe applications?