The Elephant in the Zoom
By: Joe Ringenberg
Tags: Figma, White Elephant, Holiday Party Ideas, Remote Work, Event Planning

Rescue holiday cheer by organizing a remote White Elephant gift exchange using a group video call and this collaborative Figma file.

If you love your friends, coworkers, and/or family but also believe in Public Health, you’ll probably be celebrating at a distance this year. Here’s a fun way to bring the joy of gift giving, receiving, and stealing to your family FaceTime or team Zoom.

What’s so great about this White Elephant:

Instead of the pressure of finding the perfect gift for one person, you buy a gift that could go to anyone in your group. Instead of getting stuck with a boring gift you don’t really want, you have the chance to steal someone else’s gift, which is fun. Anyone can get any gift, and the unwrapping gets more exciting as the party goes on. This version is remote, so no one gets sick. You can procrastinate and pick a gift at the very last minute. You don’t have to worry about presents getting delivered in time, since they are ordered and shipped after the party. The White Elephant distributes value more efficiently than assigned gifts, since a boring gift like socks is more likely to end up with a person who actually wants socks. This frees you up to pick weirder gifts with a greater expectation that they’ll actually be appreciated.

Powered by Figma

The secret to making this work is Figma, a design tool built for collaboration. Everyone can log in with Google (so you don’t have to sign up for anything), and you can see each other’s names on their cursors while they move around the document. Most importantly, you can paste in an image that nobody will see until it’s revealed!

Hannah didn’t actually buy an Apple Watch, the gift was a new watch band.

As the organizer, you’ll have to set up a Figma file for your party to use. If Figma is new to you, you can duplicate my file here, in the Figma Community.

The template includes the rules and some empty boxes you can copy and name after each person you’re inviting. Include the Figma link in your invitation. It’s also a good idea to review the rules and share them out, since there are many variations out there.

Remote White Elephant Participant Rules

Before the party, shop online for a gift to give. Take a screenshot of the gift and copy it to your clipboard. Pro tip: on a Mac you can (⌘+control+shift+4) to copy an area of the screen right to your clipboard. In your group’s Figma file, find the an empty box with your name on it. Select the colored square and paste (⌘+V) the screenshot you copied into the square. No one can see it until the wrapping paper layer is deleted. Pro tip: find a fun wrapping paper pattern and paste it on the white square. Once the party starts, you’ll need to establish an order. Hit T to type and enter your name, and then work as a group to sort them alphabetically. This is the order in which you’ll pick presents, and a fine way to mark a present once it’s yours. The first person will pick a gift to unwrap by deleting the wrapping paper layer, revealing the gift, and dragging their name onto the gift to claim it. Standard White Elephant rules apply. The next person can steal any unwrapped gift by putting their name on it, or open a new one. Each gift can only be stolen once in a single round, and after a gift has been stolen three times total, it can’t be stolen any more. Once the unwrapping, stealing, recrimination, and glee is over, everyone goes to order the gift they contributed and has it shipped to its new recipient. Pro tip: after all the action, ask everyone to edit the name they typed in Step 4 to include their address, to save a little time.

Happy Holidays!

If you try this, I’d love to see it! Share a screenshot with me on twitter.

A special thank-you to my in-laws, who tried this out for the first time, and to Dave Pell, who suggested a punny title to a stranger on the internet. If you read the news and appreciate a clever title, sign up for his daily newsletter, NextDraft.