Review Figma: Figma is the leading UI/UX design tool

Detailed Review

Figma was founded by Dylan Field and Evan Wallace in 2012 while both were students at Brown University. Field, then 20 years old, received a Thiel Fellowship ($100,000 to drop out and start a company) and decided to tackle the biggest problem in digital design: isolation. Designers worked alone on local files, with no real-time collaboration and no single source of truth.

Figma chose the browser as its platform over a desktop app — a bold decision in 2012 when web performance was still limited. Evan Wallace, a brilliant engineer, wrote a WebGL renderer from scratch to ensure performance as smooth as a native app. That decision created an insurmountable collaborative advantage: no app installation needed, just share a link and anyone can view and edit immediately.

In 2022, Adobe announced the acquisition of Figma for $20 billion — the largest deal in design software history. But the deal was blocked by EU and UK regulators in 2023. Figma continued independently, and for the design community, this turned out to be a good outcome. Figma Config 2024 announced an impressive array of new features including AI-powered tools and code generation.

Strengths

• Realtime collaboration like Google Docs — multiple designers work on the same file simultaneously with zero conflicts
• Auto Layout resizes components automatically when content is added — responsive design without writing CSS
• Dev Mode exports accurate CSS, iOS, and Android code — reduces designer-developer handoff time by 80%
• Massive plugin ecosystem: Unsplash, Iconify, Tokens Studio — unlimited workflow extensions

Areas for Improvement

• Browser-based means it's completely unusable when offline or if the connection drops mid-session
• Complex files with many animations and components can lag on machines with less than 16GB RAM
• Figma Professional at $12/editor/month is fairly expensive for freelancers or small teams just starting out

Verdict

Figma is an excellent choice for anyone needing a powerful tool in the PC Software category. Founded in 2012 by Dylan Field (CEO) and Evan Wallace (CTO), this product has undergone years of development and continuous improvement. With a rating of 9.6/10, it ranks among the best in its segment. We encourage you to try the free version before deciding to upgrade.