[2022/12/25] Published in Medium

Most of the attendees were Japanese (of course), but some foreign attendees, too, including the Figma US office people who came to Tokyo for a business trip for this event. The staff distributed the name tag and swags, which were cute badges and a big wide violet canvas bag that you could put anything inside. Quite practical.

Recently, I had a chance to attend the Schema by Figma Tokyo 2022 in Shinagawa. Attendees were selected among those who applied for the entrance pass before the event. (And it was free! 🤑)

All the sessions were engaging. I want to summarize some of the talks in this article to fulfill my knowledge desire, which is quite a selfish reason. Please understand it 🙏😛

The Keynote by Sho Kuwamoto

https://youtu.be/EKIj_-QkbZQ

One of the Figma people at the event was Mr. Sho Kuwamoto, VP of Product at Figma, who moved to the US from Japan when he was 5. He did the keynote by briefly explaining the short history of the Figma Japan office, introducing himself, and his career journey. Before Figma, he worked for various web-based companies, including Adobe for Dreamweaver. He said,

I eventually joined Figma 7 years ago, and the ideas I learned back in Macromedia and Adobe informed some of our thinking at Figma.

This reminds me of the recent Figma acquisition by Adobe.

Early in the design, two types existed. For freeform design, people don’t know what to make and just freely think about what they want to make. After the design is refined, they think about the implementation, and it’s called ‘structured design.’ Freeform design and structured design going back and forth. It’s not a linear process. Both of them are equally important for designers. Today, those ideas are still relevant, but things are more complicated. So the design systems today are very advanced. It’s hard to manage.

There’re three complex things that we need to maintain in the design system.

1. Layout complexity: If it’s two layouts, it’s not that difficult, but sometimes you have lots of layouts, and it’s hard to maintain in the design system.
2. Theming complexity: Many design systems only have one or two themes(light mode and dark mode), which is simple. However, some DS have more themes. For example, the main for the company and each theme for each product. You could also have a mobile theme.
3. Process complexity: Design systems are not just about components or tokens. It’s also about documentation about the usage. It can be anything that makes your team work more efficiently. When the team is small, the process might not be necessary. But if teams get bigger, it becomes essential.

So, what are the ideas to manage those complexities? Here’re two.

1. Testing for Design (In short, visual regression testing.)
2. Branching and Merging

Those ideas come from the code; he said it’s not coincidental. The world of design is moving toward the world of collaboration. The early purpose of the design system was to reduce the chance of making mistakes. (i.e., reducing the number of font weights or color codes) But he didn’t like the framing because it sounded like restricting people. So the new purpose of DS, he suggests, is ‘reducing the friction to increase creativity.’

Openness and the use of Figma in solving social issues with Nana Yokota & Noriyasu Vontin