Losing Figma! Not Really…
Figma has been the crown jewel in the modern designer’s toolkit, surpassing Adobe’s XD and even causing us to forget what Sketch was. Adobe has acquired Figma, causing anxiety and uncertainty. The news isn’t good or bad for us.
Though Figma has been a design community darling since 2016, they suffer from having a product larger and more complex than a small, lean team that can actively iterate on quickly. On the other hand, Adobe has invested a huge amount into Adobe XD but has never really succeeded in enabling real-time collaboration in its core products.
Atlassian acquired Trello in 2017, and it was a similarly loved tool by its community. The main change was the workspaces, and the login experience changed, but the core Trello experience remained pretty much the same.
Heroku was acquired by Salesforce in 2010, but users have only recently seen the changes. Logging in has changed slightly, and there’s now an MFA option.
Adobe acquired Behance in 2012, and it looks like it still has a strong community of designers.
After being acquired by Adobe, Flash became a monstrosity that was eventually killed off. However, Apple killed Flash for security reasons that existed long before Adobe acquired Flash.
Acquisitions of our beloved tools can cause some distress and panic, but historically many of these tools remain the same or simply become even better. Adobe XD may not be a supported product for five years, and the team may be redeployed as an additional resource within Figma. In all of these cases, the acquisitions went ahead and were completed due to the values of both sides aligning with each other.
Given the high profile of Figma and potential backlash, this is a huge relief for many. Adobe’s native tool is hard to tell what will happen, but once the dust has settled, there may be influences over the roadmap.
Designers will go through the five stages of grief after an acquisition, and then very little will change. Adobe will probably launch new products in a year or two, and FigJam may overtake Miro in the design market. Adobe is changing its pricing model for Figma to be a proper part of the Creative Suite, which could be good for businesses and people in poorer countries. Pin, pen, and paper are all good options if you want to stay with Figma or switch to another design tool.
Figma is going to remain its own business with its priorities, so it’s worth giving it a chance to see how things go. Figma is still a cool product, and the Adobe acquisition means that the team is more global, and more passionate designers can contribute meaningfully to the tool.
Adobe has voiced its intention to keep Figma, and Dylan Field, the founder of Figma, has said that Adobe is deeply committed to keeping Figma operating autonomously.
Adobe has a lot of capabilities that Figma currently does not have. Figma was to replace Adobe, not join it. They will take control over Adobe. Figma might stay separate from other Adobe tools, or it might become Adobe Figma CC.
There is one thing certain about product design, it is dynamic and does not depend on a single tool to succeed. It is always possible for designers to switch between tools.
