My Beef with Figma.

So, picture this: I scored my second gig as a product designer, and let me tell you, it was quite a jump! I went from being the lone ranger designer in a tiny startup team of 10 to joining a design crew of 10 in a massive 400-people company. Talk about a whole new world!

Now, this company had its fingers in a bunch of pies, with loads of products and sub-products. You can imagine the chaos of numerous design files that came with it — seriously, it was like an avalanche! And even if I managed to find the right design file for a specific project, understanding the reasons behind the design decisions and the whole design journey was like cracking a secret code.

It took me a good two weeks of playing detective, talking to at least 60 people, just to wrap my head around the design history and figure out where things stood at that moment.

And that’s not Figma’s fault — well it kinda is but it’s not.

You see, Figma was not meant to document designs, it was meant to create designs — and no matter how many plugins there are, proper documentation of designs and design systems is something the industry is lacking!

Until my team found a solution to this — Doccot!

What if I told you not only you can document your designs on a platform, right from Figma without having to download PNG versions of your frames as well as share them easily across your organization, simultaneously impressing designers, product managers, and developers?

You would say I was bluffing, but that’s exactly what Doccot does for you and your team!

Take a look:

Some of the ways Doccot helped me and my team:

Navigability

As we already know, navigating through our design files can be a real headache, and even if we take the time to document our work in Figma, it’s like a hidden treasure that no one else can find or bother to read.

Let’s do a quick reality check:

How many times have you had Product Managers or developers asking you to point them to the right screens or bombarding you with a gazillion comments about the most mundane things?

It’s a never-ending cycle, and we all know the struggle!

Thanks to Doccot, all that changed for us! With Doccot’s documentation plugin, we could directly link our designs to the platform and write guidelines for everyone to see!

We started with our design system, and boy oh boy, it was glorious.

Not only our work with developers became 100 times easier, but even the other teams were continuously using the design system documentation to create sales pitch decks, marketing posts without involving the design team. Things became super fast!

Visibility

I have already talked about making collaboration with stakeholders easy, but another thing that designers struggle with within an organization (and one of my greatest pain points) is visibility!

Sure, we get props for creating those eye-catching interfaces, but what about all the behind-the-scenes work?

I’m talking about curating design systems, defining branding guidelines, standardizing components, and even doing pre-design research and analysis. It’s like our secret superhero identity that hardly anyone sees!

You see, while Product Managers flaunt their PRDs and Developers drop those fancy release notes, the hard work of us design folks only becomes visible once a feature is built and released. It’s a bummer, I know.

So when I gave DOCCOT a whirl, I documented my designs and organized them by versions, and let me tell you, magic happened!

My Head of Product was thrilled to see the progress and impact of our work! The best part? It took me just half a day to set it all up!

To conclude!

There’s a lot that designers have to offer to an organization and its time we take it to the next level. Doccot has helped me raise my work level, communicate better with my stakeholders, helped my team document and use design systems, and has made overall collaboration much easier!

So give it a try yourself and see the magic take place!