Absolutely for years, Adobe was the ruler of the Design Empire. Everyone, whichever his or her position was working in the graphic/web/digital marketing/digital publishing/digital advertising industries had to use Adobe software. Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign… And later Adobe XD where the mandatory giant tools that all designers, photographers, digital marketers, digital publishers had to use.
It was hard to imagine Adobe being beaten.
If you look around at the users of creative platforms today, the company in question had an enormous roster of customers, a robust ecosystem of creative offerings, worldwide brand presence, and years of expertise under its belt. For dozens of designers, getting to know Adobe tools was pretty much essential if they wanted to forge a career in creativity.
But yet near the end of the 2010s, a quite young startup started to redefine the standard of design.
That company was Figma.
Unlike Adobe, Figma was created without the decades of history, the billions of dollars in annual revenue, and the breadth of products in the portfolio. It had something else entirely, a different vision of how design needed to work in today’s internet age.
Rather than just improving design tools, Figma addressed a different core issue-what Adobe missed completely: collaboration.
With more distribution of teams, the growth of remote work and the increasing complexity of products, natural workflows in design began to reveal their weaknesses. It was the need for coordination between many people of the different design stages in real-time.
The Design Industry Before Figma
In order to piece together why Figma was successful, we have to analyze the environment it was introduced in.
In the past, professional design software was exclusively used on a desktop computer. Experienced designers downloaded their software on their computer and worked alone as a team.
To protect the files were stored on a local network.
Files were most often emailed around, exported to assets, multiple versions created with a manual log kept of what was changed.
This workflow was just terrible.
Teams regularly ran into version control problems Design feedback couldn’t be easily shared across multiple designers.. Product managers, developers and stakeholders often had little insight into in-progress design work.
Nevertheless, the professionals frustrated with this nevertheless accepted the truth due to a lack of alternative options.
Adobe’s creative tools still packs a punch, but they’re built for a different era these days:
The web had revolutionized the way companies worked, but the flow of designing was the same as it was some years ago.
Thus thisopening.
Although not many people knew it then.
The founders of figma did.
The Vision Behind Figma
Figma was established in 2012 by Dylan field and Evan wallace.
The founders felt that design software should go beyond traditional desktop applications.
Instead of just developing a second design tool, with improvements across the board, they addressed a more basic question:
So how would it look if a design software would be developed completely for the internet?
Meanwhile, taking into account the fact that this idea appeared to be dangerous at that time?
Most professionals dismissed the thought that internet applications would perform anything on par with desktop applications.
Speed of internet was unpredictable, cloud computing was still taking shape and designers relied heavily on powerful local applications.
No matter what these challenges, Field and Wallace concluded that the future of software would be in the cloud.
Most significantly, they forecasted that collaborations would become more valued.
And theirs was a big dream.
We should design just like Google Docs revolutionized how you work with documents.
Several users should be able to work on it at the same time without stress over ‘who just received the file when?’, conflicting versions, or convoluted workflows.
This concept formed the basis of Figma.
Building a Product for the Future
There were huge technical challenges to be overcome in creating browser based design software.
Designed applications need high processing power. They are supposed to generate graphics fluently, support complex interfaces, and instantly react to user actions.
It took a lot of work to get this performance in the browser.
Figma team learned a lot how to solve hard engineering problems.
Noticing that sacrificing results was not the way forward, they designed new technologies enabling the application to be effectively delivered from the web.
Indeed, this investment was crucial.
When users finally got their hands on Figma, they found a product that was remarkably fluid considering it was based in a browser.
The company had proved all assumptions of what web apps can do.
Most significantly, it had built a platform for something that Adobe could not easily duplicate.
Collaboration Changed Everything
What set Figma apart as a feature was real-time collaboration.
Multiple designers collaborating concurrently rather than submitting individual files.
Product managers may have been able to review designs IMMEDIATELY.
They could also be examined straight into.
Without the need for sophisticated workflows, stakeholders might enter provide feedback.
This resulted in a significant increase in productivity.
Design became less isolated and more integrated with other aspects of product development.
Teams could receive files and no need to create multiple versions.
You could see anytime updates-real time.
This experience seemed revolutionary to naff traditional workflows.
Financial institutions played a key role, and various other organizations jumped on the bandwagon. Many of them saw the advantages sooner than others.
With rising adoption, Figma evolved to become beyond a design tool.
And it was a collaboration platform.
This difference will have a larger impact on its development.
Why Adobe Was Slow to Respond
Adobe realized the shifting industry trends.
The company realized early on that collaboration was a core proposition and later introduced for instance Adobe XD.
However, responding was not an easy task.
More often than not established business models prove hard to break within large organizations.
Since the desktop software development was made by Adobe.
Over-rolled and became fully collaborative in browser-based workflows and platform-offered
In the meantime, there were no legacy systems to defend at Figma.
It could be pre-occupied with modern workflows.
Its product decisions were based on the needs of modern teams and, as such,ignores the contraints of history.
This enabled Figma to accelerate their pace and be more aggressive with innovation.
By the time Adobe stepped on the pedal, Figma had already gathered great momentum.
The Rise of Product Design
Another reason for Figma’s success was the increasing role of product design.
As software has taken over a significant portion of modern business operations, corporate investment in user experience, interface design and other digital product development has increased.
The design teams were grown quickly.
There was a greater emphasis on collaboration among designers, developers, researchers and product managers.
Figma’s platform was also ideally suited to these trends.
It was not just for designers, it was supporting whole product teams.
This wider appeal helped drive implementation through organization.
With more companies creating digital products, the functionality of Figma proved to be ever more appealing.
Its growth was indicative of the larger trend happening across the technology field.
Network Effects and Community Growth
The one thing more than anything else that Figma did well was the community.
Users would share templates, design systems, plugins, learning assets and best practices.
The platform fostered collaboration not just within organizations but across the larger design community as well.
Produced the market for the Internet business subject to these effects:
The more that people learned Figma, the more useful it became. assisted newcomers with available navigation tools, support, or documentation
Easier for the organizations to take on designers that know the software.
Schools used Figma as part of their curriculums.
The ecosystem grew fast.
These network effects consolidated Figma’s position and closure of competitors
Remote Work Accelerated Adoption
The worldwide transition to remote work also quickened Figma’s growth.
There was a sudden need for products that could support distributed teams.
Traditional workflows were harder to control.
Our transition was especially eased by Figma’s collaboration environment in the browser.
Remote teams Ted teams. They shared the ideas and values of the new economy, which could be implemented.
New feedback cycles were gaining momentum.
Communication on two fronts.
Speeded up projects.
What had previously been considered a useful feature suddenly became a crucial advantage.
A considerable number of companies who used Figma at this time remained on the tool for the greater part of the decade.
It had become an essential part of their operations:
The $20 Billion Adobe Acquisition Attempt
One tangible proof of accomplishment was revealed in 2022.
Adobe revealed its intention to buy Figma at a price of around 20 billion.
The proposal that was put forward has caused a lot of controversy among many groups.
It accounted for both the growth and strategic value of Figma.
Adobe was aware that Figma was now one of its most competitors in the design industry.
The purchase of the organization would bolster the company’s position and although acquire the other establish looming threatened competition.
And, much to the regulators’ chagrin, competitions were beginning to voice concerns.
Finally, the acquisition was ditched after thorough investigation.
The failure of the deal reflected the shifting paradigm Figma was becoming.
Thats where very few startups will ever get to that stage where so enormous buying powers of the likes of Times/Wa/Ch working were trying to gobble it all up.
Figma was demanding to be noticed.
Lessons Businesses Can Learn From Figma
The story of Figma can provide learning points for entrepreneurs as well as business leaders.
Focus on the learning lessons and one is to learn about identifying changing needs.
Instead of taking a competitive approach to feature set, Figma targeted the collaborative pain points that most of its users experienced on a daily basis.
One other lesson is about timing;
The company expected the larger trends of cloud computing, remote work and collaboration software.
Its products were available in time to hit those trends hard.
And furthermore The impact Figma makes when you related to user experience.
Technology by itself seldom leads to successful outcomes.
It is convenient to learn what people do and build solutions that support these workflows.
This also emphasizes the risk that market leaders face.
Even powerful businesses need to keep adapting to the shifting surroundings.
Leading today does not mean having led in the past.
The Future of Figma
Today, that isn’t the case Figma is still going beyond design.
The platform is expanding support into a wider set of product development processes, collaborative tools, and organizational activities.
AI won’t just put us out of a job, it’s going to open up all sorts of new ones.
Automating design, creating content, helping with prototyping, improving workflow can change the industry again.
Figma seems to be in a very good position to contribute to these sort of innovations.
Much of its emphasis on collaboration, cloud computing and user-centered design continues to be used today.
With digital products becoming increasingly critical to businesses, a growing number of teams are likely to want to use a collaborative designing tool in years to come.
Conclusion
Figma didn’t beat Adobe at their own game of designing slightly better software.
It worked because it understood a much bigger change that was happening in the way teams worked.
Prior to Figma, design tools were centered around the single “designers”, but Figma was centered around the enables collaborative, accessible, and modern workflows.
The company realized that, moving forward, teams rather than individuals would be designing.
Figma created a tool for that future and in doing so, altered an industry which many thought was settled.
Its rise shows that even the mightiest of firms can be brought down when customer demands change.
It is a story about innovation, timing and the desire to question assumptions that others hold permanently.
It is a lesson for entrepreneurs, designers and business heads that opportunities lie in the comfortable corners of the incumbents.
FAQs
What is Figma?
Figma is an online collaborative platform for interface design, prototyping, product development, and team collaboration.
Who founded Figma?
Established by Dylan Field and Evan Wallace in 2012.
Why did Figma become so popular?
Figma gained popularity due to offering real-time collaboration, accessible from the browser, and designed to meet the workflow of modern product teams.
Did Adobe buy Figma?
Adobe tried to buy Figma for around $20 billion. In the end, Adobe sources abandoned the deal following regulatory worries.
How is Figma different from Adobe?
Figma emphasizes a lot on cloud-born working together really effectively in real time, whereas many Adobe applications are built on earlier (desktop) workflows.
