This past two weeks have been catching up with two good ex-Apple friends who I worked with before leaving Apple in 1992. 30 years later two friends are some of the best inspiration for innovative ideas.

An example of one idea was Figma. Never heard of it. Well some of you may now as Adobe acquired the company Sept 15, 2022 for a rumored $20B.

2 years one friend said check out Figma for software user experience design. I had started playing with it and got it, but at the time was not doing user experience in design. And finally 2 months ago was ready for user experience design work. Got curious more about how Figma worked and why it was big.

Dylan Field had the idea for something new in 2012. He was 20 years old. In 2016 he finally shipped. In 2017 he started making money as he changed for the service. Many blew off the approach as no way can it work. Dylan Field the co founder of Figma writes about the outrage.

We didn’t realize that launching Figma was heresy, a generational assault on top-down, siloed models of decision making and a challenge to the identity of many designers. While some immediately understood the potential of building design software in the browser, our vision elicited an immediate and negative reaction from others. Some even told us that if this was the future of design, they were changing careers.

Nice thing is my two friends know Dylan and have share some of his approaches and thinking. And I now have a better understanding of what happened to make Figma successful. The ideas are revolutionary and can be copied.