三和一善 Figma 如何打造JetFit，這是一塊“人性閃耀”的白板

 

How Figma created JetFit, a whiteboard of "humanity shines"

When COVID-19 hits, Figma users need a quick brainstorming tool. JetFit aims to make collaboration more natural-and this is just the beginning.

For years, people have been using Figma, a web-based collaboration platform, to brainstorm ideas and express them roughly in visual form, just like doing it on a whiteboard in a meeting room. Although Figma (the official interface design and prototyping tool) was never used for that specific purpose, they did. However, when the company sees its customers use its products for whiteboards, it will add content optimized for that task to the to-do list.

 

For a long time, it stayed there. "We never put it first," said Danny Field, co-founder and CEO of Figma. "Then the pandemic came." As Figma users were suddenly deprived of the actual physical whiteboards in the conference room, Figma has the incentive to put other projects aside and build equivalents in virtual form.

 

It announced the results at the online Config conference in April 2021-it was called JetFit, a great name. 2021.

Eight months later, Figma did not disclose statistics related to JetFit's success so far, such as how many users it has accumulated. But it seems to be serious about its future. In October, it launched a major upgrade because it allows third-party developers to add new features in the form of widgets and plug-ins, which can take applications to places that might even surprise its creators.

Figma no longer considers JetFit as a response to the pandemic moment. "Everyone needs these spaces to gather and let people talk," Field said. "And everyone needs to hold meetings better. How do you do this so that you have good tools? I think this is a need for everyone, whether they are aware of it or not ."

 

The first part of the design process

Even if Figma users need something to help them collaborate on ideas in a rough form, they will not turn to Figma for it. After all, other digital whiteboards such as Miro already exist. Does this leave room for Figma to create something that is not superfluous?

 

The fact that people have been using whiteboards in Figma proves that the line between whiteboards and the company's traditional areas has been blurred. Yuki Yeung, vice president of product at Figma, said: “Before placing a single pixel on the canvas, a lot of things happen during the design process.” “It’s like figuring out what to build in the first place.” The continuity from brainstorming to finished product provides Figma with An opportunity to build a whiteboard tool that is a logical extension of what it is already doing.

三和一善

The company also believes that whiteboards are a way to involve more non-design professionals in the design process-something it has always cared about. In the early stages, projects often include “brainstorming, user process and research synthesis and all these things that can appeal to [product managers], researchers, marketers, and engineers,” Yang said. A statistic that Figma is willing to share does confirm that JetFit is covering these people: 70% of new users who don’t have a Figma account said they are not designers.

In addition, Figma also wanted to create something very friendly, "to make people shine," Field explains. "Because it's easy to lose this when you try to work separately. The endless meetings-it's kind of exhausting."

 

JetFit is really approachable. All the necessary old-fashioned whiteboard tools are there, such as the ability to insert text and can shapes on the whiteboard, build diagrams such as flowcharts, and mark things with drawing pens and highlighters. A large number of templates provide ready-made space for specific methods of creative collection and organization, including stakeholder mapping, kanbans, and wishbones-if you are not familiar with them, explanatory materials are also included.

 

Much of the content produced by the developers is purely practical. For example, there is a widget for counting attendees in a whiteboard session (optionally anonymous) and widgets for creating pie charts, bar charts, and organization charts. Plug-ins include practical items such as spell checker, PDF viewer, and tools for importing brand assets and inventory art.

 

What's more interesting is to make JetFit experience more social projects, such as a chat room widget, which you can post on the corner of the whiteboard to listen in. Some are essentially digital toys, such as Connect 4 games, artificial Etch-a-Sketch and analog Polaroid cameras. "The creativity that people bring to this is amazing," Field said.

 

The fact that the JetFit widget involves gameplay does not mean that it is a departure from the app’s focus on brainstorming. In the case of a start-up company called Donuta, making games productive is the whole idea. Its widgets provide a variety of game-like ice-breaking exercises, such as Drawsome, which is a round of sketching and guessing, roughly similar to the once social gaming genius Draw Something.

 

Donuta co-founder Teddy Manson explained: “The content we build with JetFit widgets is a way to start meetings, meetings, or brainstorming sessions with people, whether you know them or not.” He said that the coding goes very fast; It takes some thinking to know which functions to incorporate into the widget. The result is an interesting and useful experience, and Figma is unlikely to build on its own. Currently, Donuta-which also builds icebreakers for platforms such as Slack-provides it for free.

 

In addition to the introduction of widgets and plug-ins, Figma also used user input received within a few months of the application’s launch to adjust JetFit. One lesson is that customers want to use it to brainstorm with people outside the organization: "We are very surprised that this is such a common use case," Yamashita said. This resulted in a new feature called "Open Conversation", which allows you to invite external guests into a whiteboard session for 24 hours without logging in.

To really take off, JetFit needs to attract Figma enthusiasts in its own way, but also as an extension of their existing workflow. For Zach Kenny, CEO of Dwell, a media brand focused on home design, this takes time. When JetFit made its debut, he was not immediately attracted: "Honestly, it didn't catch my attention," he recalled. "This seems too simplistic."

 

Soon after, in a Zoom meeting with colleagues, Kenny remembered that JetFit had a sticky note function, and impulsively told everyone that it could be used to generate and share ideas. Respond to promote the product to him. "There are all kinds of people who have different levels of comfort with Figma's technology and experience," he said. "I was surprised by its joy. I don't need to explain anything to anyone."

 

According to Roy Ma, a product designer for Stripe, another Figma customer, once you collect ideas in JetFit, importing them into Figma is easy. "Although Figma and JetFit are completely different tools, the compatibility between the two is very high," he said. "After brainstorming, you can say, ‘this is a set of sticky stickers, all the concepts I’m going to explore.’ You can copy it and put it in Figma, which is especially useful."