Jun / Jun Design Beyond Limits with Figma

50+ Figma solutions for advanced collaboration, prototyping, AI, and design systems in modern UX/UI
1. Auflage 2025
ISBN: 978-1-83620-770-2
Verlag: De Gruyter
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection

E-Book, Englisch, 282 Seiten

Figma isn't just a design tool; it's the modern designer's command center

Šimon Jun, COO at Dotidot, longtime Figma lecturer, and organizer of the Czech Friends of Figma community, built this book from the trenches of real product work. After years of untangling messy files, rescuing failing handoffs, and coaching teams at scale, he distilled what actually works into a practical, recipe-driven guide.

Over time, Šimon saw the same problems show up again and again: bloated files, broken handoffs, and design systems that couldn't scale. This book is his way of sharing the patterns, tools, and habits that helped teams move past those roadblocks and build stronger, more connected design processes in Figma.

Inside, you'll learn how to structure files for real collaboration, use design tokens without chaos, build accessible, scalable libraries, and hand off to developers with confidence. You'll see how to automate repetitive work with plugins and AI, run async reviews, and bake feedback loops into your process so projects keep moving, without losing polish.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Jun, Šimon

Jun, Simon

Fachgebiete

• Mathematik | Informatik EDV | Informatik EDV & Informatik Allgemein

Leseproben

1

Advanced Collaborative Design with Figma

The first time I used Figma in 2017, I was blown away by how seamlessly it supported collaboration. It was the first design tool truly built with teamwork at its core. While this approach might seem standard today, it was groundbreaking at the time. It shifted the mindset from isolated design work (“I’ll work on this until the deadline and then share it”) to a dynamic process of ongoing feedback and iteration. And as we all know, consistent feedback leads to better products. Figma excels at enabling this, but it’s essential to understand the full range of collaborative features it offers.

This chapter dives into eight crucial areas of collaboration that will empower your team to create outstanding products by improving communication, streamlining workflows, and ensuring alignment between design and development. Mastering these areas will help you avoid common pitfalls, reduce inefficiencies, and deliver high-quality products faster, with fewer roadblocks along the way.

In this chapter, we will walk through the following topics:

• Communication gaps between designers and developers
• Repetitive design meetings waste time and delay progress
• Designers may not anticipate technical limitations, leading to missing details for developers
• Constant changes in the design
• Streamlining version control and iterations
• Unlocking advanced sharing and permissions settings
• Real-time co-designing for maximum team productivity
• Facilitating feedback loops in collaborative designs

Getting the most out of this book – get to know your free benefits

Unlock exclusive free benefits that come with your purchase, thoughtfully crafted to supercharge your learning journey and help you learn without limits.

Here’s a quick overview of what you get with this book:

Next-gen reader

Figure 1.1: Illustration of the next-gen Packt Reader’s features

Our web-based reader, designed to help you learn effectively, comes with the following features: Multi-device progress sync: Learn from any device with seamless progress sync. Highlighting and notetaking: Turn your reading into lasting knowledge. Bookmarking: Revisit your most important learnings anytime. Dark mode: Focus with minimal eye strain by switching to dark or sepia mode.

Interactive AI assistant (beta)

Figure 1.2: Illustration of Packt’s AI assistant

Our interactive AI assistant has been trained on the content of this book, to maximize your learning experience. It comes with the following features: Summarize it: Summarize key sections or an entire chapter. AI code explainers: In the next-gen Packt Reader, click the Explain button above each code block for AI-powered code explanations.

DRM-free PDF or ePub version

Figure 1.3: Free PDF and ePub

Learn without limits with the following perks included with your purchase: Learn from anywhere with a DRM-free PDF copy of this book. Use your favorite e-reader to learn using a DRM-free ePub version of this book.

Unlock this book’s exclusive benefits now Scan this QR code or go to packtpub.com/unlock, then search for this book by name. Ensure it’s the correct edition.

Communication gaps between designers and developers

One of the most persistent challenges in product development is the interaction between designers and developers. While both disciplines work toward the same goal—creating functional, user-friendly products—they often approach problems from entirely different perspectives, leading to friction and miscommunication.

What’s the problem?

Designers and developers are two essential forces in product development, but they often struggle to understand each other. As a designer, it’s important to remember that what you create in Figma isn’t the final product—the production code is. However, despite working toward the same goal, many teams face miscommunication that goes beyond just different terminologies and perspectives.

The challenges run much deeper than word choices. Designers and developers operate with fundamentally different mental models. Designers work with fluid, relational thinking, placing elements freely in space and considering visual hierarchy and flow—much like how Figma’s free-canvas approach works. Developers, on the other hand, operate within structured, hierarchical frameworks shaped by how code, databases, and systems are organized. They think in terms of top-to-bottom sequences, nested structures, and rigid organizational principles. This fundamental difference in spatial thinking creates natural tension when translating design to code.

Additionally, there’s often a knowledge gap around existing technical infrastructure. New designers, and even experienced ones joining a project, may lack the historical context of how current systems were built, what technical constraints exist, or what potential blockers might arise from legacy code. Understanding the production environment and existing technical architecture is crucial for creating designs that work within real-world constraints, not just in an ideal vacuum.

Here are some common terminology differences between Figma and code:

Figma

Code

Auto layout

Flexbox

Corner radius

Border-radius

Frames

Divs

Variables/design tokens

CSS variables

Prototypes

Clickable mockups (via JS/HTML)

Table 1.1 – Terminology difference between Figma and code

Understanding these differences is crucial to ensuring a smoother workflow and more effective collaboration between designers and developers.

How to fix it

To bridge this gap, designers and developers must actively work toward a common understanding:

• Involve developers early: Bringing developers into the design process from the start ensures technical feasibility and helps avoid late-stage surprises. Make sure everyone understands the purpose behind design decisions through clear design annotation. I highly recommend walking through the entire design with developers, explicitly describing each screen and interaction rather than assuming anything is “obvious.” This serves two crucial purposes: developers can challenge your solutions and gain a deep understanding of user flows and interactions, while you, as a designer, can catch hidden flaws you might have missed during the design phase or that went unnoticed during design critiques.
• Establish a shared vocabulary: Document and define key terms that designers and developers use differently. This makes communication clearer and reduces misunderstandings. Consider using tools such as Storybook or similar documentation platforms to create a shared reference point where both teams can see how design components translate to code, helping establish common terminology and understanding.
• Use Figma’s Dev Mode: Leverage Figma’s developer handoff features to provide precise specifications and make it...