Anyone have a good theory for why Figma won over Sketch? Felt like there was a time where Sketch was ahead?
They even raised a $20M Series A from Benchmark! https://www.sketch.com/blog/sketch-raises-20m-in-series-a-funding-from-benchmark/
The web wins over native apps when monopolistic power is not used to nerf the web. Its easier to share. Easier to get your co-workers and clients in to give feedback, etc, etc. But also Figma won because it is multi-player which is key when designing is a collaborative process in your org (most).
collab + web app made it much sticker across the org. became a tool that devs and pms used, while sketch was largely relegated to designers.
They were well ahead. It’s because Figma worked on web and was multiplayer. Sketch was determined to be Mac only. They used to have it as one of their main pieces. That they won’t build for windows because there’s no demand 😂 I’m a Mac fan but that was moronic
ived tried a lot of ux/ui design apps, figma just felt right, i dont think it was necessarily anything specific, just a strong feeling that figma was the right choice
i lived the transition at google and was very early to switch to Figma from Sketch, even visiting @zoink in SF offices with my team in ...2017ish? anyway – they won bc multiplayer. once it got good enough, there was no going back to shared drive versioning sketch files with various plugins on/off it was 10x better
Natively multiplayer vs single player. Also, being web based reduces friction. Same reason why most docs, sheets, slides apps moved to the web.
They were well ahead. It’s because Figma worked on web and was multiplayer. Sketch was determined to be Mac only. They used to have it as one of their main pieces. That they won’t build for windows because there’s no demand 😂 I’m a Mac fan but that was moronic
Designers coordinating to not override each others changes or having to use another tool like Abstract, when that was built in Figma. But mostly dysfunctional org.
For us it was a decisive change to be able to design collaboratively in the same file... That was the Tipping Point!
Free to use. No need to install an app. Better cloud. I still really like Sketch tho
My own experience: I wanted to start exploring UX and after a cursory search it looked like the choice was between learning Sketch and Figma — Sketch had to be installed + had no free plan — Figma was browser based + was free forever Never looked back It may sound silly but I can't be that much of an edge case
The devs actually designed the product around the product development workflow. Sketch and Photoshop were just photo editing tools.
My theory is that they believed that the community was more powerful than the product. Versatility with their app/web app, based on chromium the ability to evolve quickly is a big plus. Community, full-fledged indie product.
The only thing I can contribute to this after the valid points already in this thread is I still prefer Sketch. Especially now that Adobe bought Figma. Always go with the Underdog.
better abstractions (core primitives + extensibility) + multiplayer via web
My sense is that they hard the CRDT/multi-player collaborative aspects down, and good enough, that "collaboration → network effect" before Sketch got onto it. They also started with a precise copy of the Sketch UX editor mechanics, which meant it was an easy "no mental model" switch for the Sketch designers to move.
When the did the $20B, there was so much financial-industry/VC pundentry about the "why" of it all. While a lot of that was no doubt right...I think it missed the key thing. It was CRDT (Conflict-free Replicated Data Type), baby! 💥 Fundamental architecture choices drove the rest of the business theory after that.
the crown jewel of design tooling was solving the source of truth/version control problem for teams. companies like abstract (and others) created skeuomorphic github-like products that never caught on. figma took advantage of emergent web tech + novel product design + selling to teams who felt the pain most acutely
https://review.firstround.com/the-5-phases-of-figmas-community-led-growth-from-stealth-to-enterprise Dylan flying around the world talking to lots of designers and studios definitely had something to do with it
A big thing for team adoption of Figma over Sketch was versioning history and allowing multiple designers to work on the same file. If you wanted to do that on sketch, you had to purchase abstract and learn branching, merging, etc to manage collaboration & versioning history
