Why Use Figma to Build a MVP
Tags: discuss, startup, ux, beginners
Published: 2019-06-02 07:25:13

---
title: Why Use Figma to Build a MVP
published: true
description: Using Figma for your next MVP
tags: discuss, startup, ux, beginners
canonical_url: https://www.maxongzb.com/why-use-figma-to-build-a-mvp-3-mins/
---
![Photo by Jo Szczepanska on Unsplash](https://thepracticaldev.s3.amazonaws.com/i/vdk3sy2y9rlie6up64sy.jpg)

# Introduction
[Figma][1]  has been my goto design tool that I would use for design task from creating the design for prototypes, wireframes to Linkedin banners.

I became more interested in it when I read that [AJ & Smart][2] recommends Figma due to its live collaboration feature. 

They are also part of the course instructors for the [Udacity Design Sprint Nangodegree][3] course.

# Problems in Sharing Design Prototypes
 I hate it whenever you are sending designs to a user for feedback.  It assumes that the user has the design tool in their machine to view it.

To overcome the problem, you export the design as a PDF, but you lost the **interactivity** portion of your prototype,  which allows the users to play around with it to provide feedback on your design.

Figma provides a link which you could share it to your users to play around to provide feedback directly in Figma as well.

# Storing Design Documentation For Your MVP
Figma allows you to store your design documentation in one stop. 

Whenever you are building your MVP you should have these **three** critical pieces of the documentation which is namely the following:

* [User Persona][4] - a fictional representation of the type of ideal users who will be using your software 
* [User Journey][5] - The data flow of how your user will be interacting with your software from the start to end.
* [Style Guide][6] - A template that represents your brand for your startup from colour schemes, typography and icons.

With this, it helps in reducing the amount of design & development time lost to communicate your idea across to your team to build an MVP from the UX Designer to Developer.

# Works With All Platforms
Besides the native application founded in Windows and Mac. 

Figma provides a web app which allows anyone with an internet connection and web browser to design and edit their design.

This was important due to my developer environment was a Linux machine.

# Allows the Importing of Sketch Assets
This was something that I had found that was quite useful as you do not need to design everything from scratch. 

You could import tons of beautifully designed pre-built sketch files. Which the last I heard **Sketch** is considered quite a popular tool used by UI/UX designers to build UI for websites, mobile apps and tons of other software.

# Live Collaboration
This was something it had never crossed my mind or used while I was building designs or prototype as a single person. 

This might be a useful feature for teams that has more than 1 designer who is designing the prototype. 

By making changes on the fly while collaborating on a single file that acts as a single source of truth for designers.

# Developer Handoff
One of the neat features that I like about Figma is that a developer could replicate the whole design with ease.

By just hovering and clicking on a piece of the component to get the colour, size and style of that component directly under the **code** tab for CSS, iOS & Andriod.

This saves a lot of time for the developer to find out the size, colour and placement of a particular component for your MVP on a website, iOS or Andriod.

# Conclusion
Lastly, I really like Figma is the learning curve needed.

I'm not a designer by trade and I really appreciated the thought process and the time that is taken to get up to speed to create a prototype or design without tons of effort to learn on how to use it.

I hope you might consider the use of Figma in your next project or building your own MVP. 

For those who are using Figma, I love to know your thoughts and experience using it.

If you like my article, please **sign up** for Max [Adventurer's Newsletter](http://eepurl.com/dOUoUb) for awesome content I stumble across weekly in **Python**, **Startup** and **Web Development**.

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This post was originally posted on Max's blog at [Why Use Python for Startups?](https://www.maxongzb.com/why-use-python-for-startups/) and [Photo by Jo Szczepanska on Unsplash](https://unsplash.com/photos/bjemWZcNF34)

# References
* [Figma][7]
* [Design Sprint][8]
* [Udacity Design Sprint Nanodegree][3]
* [Figma Tutorial For Beginners - AJ&Smart][2]
* [User Journeys – The Beginner’s Guide][5]
* [How To Create a Brand Style Guide][6]
* [User Persona][9]


[1]: https://www.figma.com
[2]: https://youtu.be/tdy1bo5eAgA
[3]: https://www.udacity.com/course/design-sprint-foundations-nanodegree--nd201
[4]: https://careerfoundry.com/en/blog/ux-design/how-to-define-a-user-persona/
[5]: https://theuxreview.co.uk/user-journeys-beginners-guide/
[6]: https://99designs.com.sg/blog/logo-branding/how-to-create-a-brand-style-guide/
[7]: https://www.figma.com/
[8]: https://www.gv.com/sprint/
[9]: https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/topics/user-personas