Whenever you open Figma, the first thing you see is the welcome screen. This is your control center, a personal hub with a huge amount of information and functions. It may take some time to learn everything that is presented on this screen, but at the end of this section, you will know all about its functionalities.
Figure 1.7 – Welcome screen
Recent and Drafts
If you have already used Figma before or you have just transferred some files from another tool, you'll see all of your most recent Figma and FigJam files. If you are just starting Figma for the first time, you may be confused by some files already appearing in there. Don't worry, no one hacked your account, those are simply some pre-existing example files provided by Figma itself.
As a rule of thumb, Recent in the left sidebar shows you all the files and prototypes that you've recently opened or edited. This area includes files and prototypes from your drafts, teams, and any files you opened. You can only see recent files from the account you are currently using, not ones from other Figma accounts, if you have more than one.
Let's now take a look at Drafts. Despite the obvious title, this page is more than just a collection of all your drafts. According to the plan chart, drafts are not limited to pages, even on the starter plan. This way, you can create as many drafts as you like and keep all your projects stored in the cloud.
The main difference between Drafts and a regular team folder is access restrictions. This means that no one can view your draft files until you share a personal link with them. As your personal space, Drafts lets you play with Figma, draw mockups, and test ideas without worrying about others seeing them. When you're done with the design file in Drafts, you can immediately convert the draft to a team file. This action unlocks multi-editor capabilities for your file.
Community
Figma's Community feature is a space for all creators who want to publish their design files and plugins with other designers. This is a huge topic that definitely needs to be explored in more detail. So, we'll come back to this in the last chapter of the book and take a closer look at it. For now, let's focus on the standard features.
Teams and Projects
Figma wouldn't be Figma without its collaborative core. It succeeded in understanding the designer's struggle and came up with a brand-new way of working with others. Since the beginning, its focus was to simplify this experience, making a team work as easy as being in the same room, editing the same file.
As stated earlier, Drafts is a safe place where you can freely follow your inspiration and test your ideas. But when that folder starts to get messy, which happens very soon, it's time to move on to teams, where you can better organize your design files. Moreover, teams, unlike drafts, are about collaboration. You can invite an unlimited number of viewers to your file in Drafts, but not editors. Once you create or move your file in teams, you can add as many editors as you want, and you can all work on the same file in real time.
To better understand the difference between drafts, files, projects, and teams, let's create a functional workspace:
- In the left column, click on Create new team. This will lead you to a multi-step window.
- First, you have to enter a name for your team. You can call it
Personal since it won't be shared with anyone, but you can choose any name you like.
- Next, you'll be prompted to add collaborators to the team. Collaborators can instantly view, open, or edit any new file you create. They can also create new files themselves unless you manually change the permissions. Eventually, you can skip this part and add people to your team whenever you want.
- The final step is choosing a plan between the free Starter one, Professional, and Organization. For now, pick the Starter plan. You can upgrade it whenever you face some limitation, if needed.
So, your team is set up and you should now see it on the left bar of the welcome screen, ready to be used. If you click on it, you will see an area with a lot of details, such as any projects, the members on the team, and the limitations of your current plans.
Figure 1.8 – Team description
On the Starter plan, you can create only one project per team. A project in Figma represents a team's shared folder, where you can store up to three design files in one project on the free plan. Teams don't have to be shared. You can use them privately, but plan limitations will still be the same. Since you invite someone to your team, each file you create inside it will be visible to others. You can have unlimited editors on this plan but only for three design files. Each file also has a limit of three pages. You can still create as many Starter teams as you like.
If the free plan doesn't cover your needs, or you want to collaborate with others on multiple projects and files, there is a Professional team option for you. By choosing this plan, you can have an unlimited number of projects, files, and viewers, plus shared libraries in one team. You will need to pay for each Professional team you want to create but the libraries still cannot be shared between different teams.
Figma also has an option for companies that have multiple products offering an Organization plan. Every Organization team has access to Professional teams' functionality, as well as an unlimited number of teams and shared libraries across all these teams. Companies on this plan will have their Figma account linked to the organization's email address. Every file including drafts created by members of this team will be owned by the organization. Moreover, Organization teams have access to other extra, advanced features, such as private plugins, shared fonts, and library analytics.
Figma and FigJam files
In this section, you will learn about two types of files that you can create right from the welcome screen in Figma: design files and FigJam files. FigJam is a brand-new collaboration tool recently introduced in Config 2021. It is basically a whiteboard that you can use with your team to brainstorm, build flows, organize your ideas, and even play games! It's a very helpful tool, but especially for working on the early phases of a project.
Figure 1.9 – New file options
Before the release of FigJam, most designers were using specific tools for digital whiteboards and diagrams. Some of them used Figma itself for these purposes but it was not very handy for that. Since Figma already managed to get us to ditch a lot of tools by bundling everything into a single solution, the introduction of FigJam seemed like the right way to fill the last gap. However, adding to Figma a whole new set of tools was certainly not the best idea in terms of performance and ease of use, and neither was creating a separate software a great solution. FigJam became a different space with a completely unique interface and new features. Plus, it is still a part of Figma, and it makes it very easy to switch from one file to another as if they were one big environment.
Figure 1.10 – FigJam file
We'll briefly introduce FigJam and you'll learn more about it in the next chapter. For now, let's take a look at one more thing on the welcome screen.
Account and notifications
It seems that every function placed on the top toolbar of the welcome screen is easy to understand. However, there is still something to clarify before moving on to practice.
Starting from the top search bar, Figma's search functionality is a very powerful one, as it can search through your personal and shared files, even within file content, as well as Community templates and plugins.
In the top-left corner, you can see your account email address. By clicking on it, you can switch between your workspace and other ones to which you are added. There is a bell icon in the opposite corner of the top bar. This is where you will see all of your personal notifications about invitations to shared files and so on. It's important to always keep an eye on this. Finally, by clicking on your avatar, in the top-right corner, you can access all settings, add accounts, log out, and more.
Now, can you say that you are familiar with the welcome screen? If so, you are finally ready to sail.
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