What Is Figma? The Design Tool Every UX/UI Designer Uses (And Why)

If you've been researching a career in UX or UI design, you've probably heard the name Figma come up more than any other tool. Hiring managers list it. Job descriptions require it. Design portfolios are built with it. But if you're new to the field, you might be wondering: what actually is Figma, and why does everyone use it?

This guide answers that question properly - covering what Figma is, what it can do, how designers use it across a real project, and how you can start learning it even if you've never designed anything before.

What Is Figma?

Figma is a browser-based design tool used to create user interfaces, interactive prototypes, and design systems. Unlike older software that you install on your computer, Figma runs in your web browser (or a lightweight desktop app). That means you can open it on any machine, share work with a link, and collaborate with teammates in real time - all without emailing files back and forth.

It was launched in 2016 and spent its first few years as a challenger to established tools like Adobe XD and Sketch. By the early 2020s it had become the dominant tool in the industry, used by design teams at companies ranging from small startups to Google, Airbnb, and Spotify. That shift wasn't accidental - it happened because Figma solved a set of practical problems that earlier tools didn't.

Why Figma Became the Industry Standard

Before Figma, designers typically worked in desktop apps that saved files locally. To share work with a developer or get feedback from a stakeholder, you'd export an image, send it over email or Slack, and wait. If revisions were needed, the process started again. Version control was a mess. Developers would often build from an outdated file because nobody noticed a newer version had been saved.

Figma changed the workflow fundamentally. Because it lives in the browser, a design file has a single URL. Everyone looks at the same file. When the designer updates something, the change is live immediately. Comments happen directly on the canvas. Developers can inspect any element and copy the CSS values without the designer needing to write a spec document. This shift from 'static files being passed around' to 'shared, live design space' is why adoption happened so quickly and so completely.

There's also the matter of the free tier. Figma allows individuals to create and work on design files at no cost. For anyone learning the tool or building a portfolio, that removes a meaningful barrier. You do not need to pay anything to get started.

What Figma Can Do

Figma covers most of what a UX or UI designer needs across a typical project. Here are the main capabilities worth understanding.

UI Design

The core of Figma is a vector-based canvas where you design screens and interfaces. You work with frames (which represent screens or components), shapes, text, images, and icons. Everything is editable and adjustable. Because it's vector-based rather than pixel-based, designs can be scaled to any size without losing quality.

If you've ever used a graphic design tool before, the fundamentals will feel familiar - though Figma has specific features built for UI work rather than print or illustration.

Prototyping

Figma lets you link screens together to create interactive prototypes. You can simulate user flows - tapping a button on one screen takes you to another, a drawer slides in, a modal appears. These prototypes can be shared with stakeholders and tested with real users without writing a single line of code.

This is a core part of the UX process. Rather than guessing whether a design will work, you prototype it, put it in front of users, observe where they get confused, and iterate. Figma makes this loop fast.

Components and Design Systems

One of Figma's most important features for professional work is the components system. A component is a reusable design element - a button, a card, an input field. You create it once, and then use instances of it throughout your designs. When you update the main component, every instance updates automatically.

This is how real design teams maintain consistency across a product. A design system is essentially a library of components combined with rules about how they're used. Figma is the tool where most design systems are built and maintained. Understanding how components work is one of the things that separates beginners from job-ready designers.

Real-Time Collaboration

Multiple people can work in the same Figma file at the same time. You can see other users' cursors moving on the canvas. Stakeholders can leave comments pinned to specific elements. Designers can do live review sessions by sharing their screen within the tool itself.

For remote teams - which now includes the majority of design teams - this capability is genuinely transformative. It's the reason Figma became the default tool so quickly after remote work became widespread.

Developer Handoff

When a design is ready to be built, developers need to know the exact measurements, fonts, colours, spacing, and behaviour of every element. Figma has an inspect panel that surfaces all of this automatically. A developer can click on any element and see its properties, copy the relevant code values, and access any assets they need.

This reduces back-and-forth between design and development significantly, and it reduces the chance of designs being implemented incorrectly.

FigJam

FigJam is Figma's whiteboarding and collaboration tool - separate from the main design canvas but part of the same product. It's used for brainstorming, user journey mapping, affinity diagrams, and workshop facilitation. Teams use it in discovery phases before any visual design work begins.

If you've been in a session where someone shares a virtual sticky-note board, there's a reasonable chance it was FigJam.

How Designers Actually Use Figma in a Project

It helps to see how Figma fits into a real UX/UI process rather than thinking of it as a list of features.

Discovery and research - A UX designer might use FigJam to map out a user journey or synthesise research findings with a team.

Wireframing - Low-fidelity wireframes are often sketched in Figma using simple shapes and placeholder text. These aren't meant to look finished; they're used to test structure and layout before investing time in visual design.

UI design - Once the structure is agreed, a UI designer builds out the full visual design in Figma - applying the brand, typography, colour, and imagery.

Prototyping and user testing - The designer links screens together and shares the prototype for user testing. They watch how people navigate, identify friction points, and revise.

Developer handoff - The finished designs sit in Figma for developers to reference throughout the build. Annotations can be added directly in the file.

This isn't a rigid sequence - in practice these stages overlap and loop back. But it illustrates that Figma is used across the entire design process, not just at one stage of it.

Figma vs. Other Tools

You may come across other design tools: Adobe XD (largely discontinued as a standalone product), Sketch (Mac-only, still used by some teams), and more recently Penpot (an open-source alternative). There are also specialised tools like Axure for complex prototyping and Maze for user testing.

Figma is not the only tool that exists, but it is the tool you will encounter most consistently in job descriptions, bootcamp curricula, and design team workflows. Learning it first is the practical choice. The skills transfer to other tools; the underlying design thinking transfers even more completely.

Starting Out: How to Learn Figma as a Beginner

Figma has a reasonably gentle learning curve if you start in the right place. A few practical notes:

Create a free account. Go to figma.com and sign up. No payment required to get started.
Follow Figma's own tutorials. Their official learning resources cover the basics clearly and are kept up to date.
Practise by rebuilding things. Take a screen from an app you use - a login page, a settings screen - and try to recreate it in Figma. You'll learn faster by doing than by watching.
Learn components early. Most beginners skip over components and later have to unlearn bad habits. It's worth understanding them properly from the start.
Use community files. Figma has a community section where designers share free files. Exploring how experienced designers have structured their work is one of the fastest ways to improve.

The tool itself is learnable. What takes longer to develop is the design judgement behind the tool - knowing why you're making a particular layout decision, how to structure a user flow, what makes an interface intuitive. That's where structured learning makes a real difference.

Learning Figma Properly on a UX/UI Course

If you're serious about moving into UX or UI design, learning Figma in isolation only gets you so far. Employers aren't just hiring for tool proficiency - they're hiring for the ability to conduct user research, make decisions based on evidence, and design systems that work for real people.

At UX Academy - a live online UX design school based in the UK - Figma is the primary tool used throughout the curriculum. Every project, prototype, and portfolio piece is built in Figma, so by the time you complete the course you have genuine working experience with the tool in a realistic context. The course is taught live, not pre-recorded, by working practitioners.

You can explore the UX/UI design course to see how Figma fits into the broader programme. If you're not yet sure whether UX or UI design is the right direction, the free UX/UI masterclass is a good place to start - it covers the landscape of the industry, the differences between disciplines, and what a career transition actually looks like in practice.

Figma is free to start. So is the masterclass. If you're curious about either, there's no reason to wait.

Not sure whether UX or UI design is the right fit? Read what is UX design or UX vs UI design to get your bearings first.