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Microsoft Teams Blog
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Redefining Product Design and Development with Figma in Microsoft Teams

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NiranjanDeo
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Dec 19, 2022

Empowering today’s digitally connected, distributed workforce requires the right culture powered by the right technology. One critical challenge facing employees, whether remote or in the office, is the hidden cost of context switching between applications.

 

The traditional workplace model is centered around business applications and requires users to constantly switch between siloed apps, distracting from the flow of work and putting the burden on the user to retain context. Quantifying the impact on business productivity, a recent Harvard Business Review article found that employees on average waste 10% of their day reorienting to new context.

Collaborative apps are the antidote to this problem to help employees thrive in the modern workplace. Apps designed for collaboration take a team-centric approach, bringing the app experiences, data, and business processes to users in the flow of work. The Microsoft Teams platform is fast becoming the “center of gravity” for collaborative apps in Enterprise. More than 100,000 companies have deployed their own custom line-of-business applications in Teams and there are over 1,700 apps available in the Microsoft Teams Store. One example of a leading collaborative app on the Teams platform is Figma.

 

Figma is a design platform for teams who build products together. Teams explore concepts and brainstorm ideas in FigJam, an online whiteboard, before bringing them to life through designs and prototypes in Figma. And because Figma is built in the browser, sharing work is as easy as sharing a link—making it possible for anyone within an organization to contribute to the product development process.


In a recent Microsoft webinar (demo found at 8:58) Microsoft and Figma executives got together to discuss the critical trends redefining modern work, and how the Microsoft Teams platform and the new Figma on Microsoft Teams application are helping users stay more productive.

Presenting an overview of the Figma application in Teams, Figma VP of Engineering Marcel Weekes spoke to the ways that the web-based design platform accelerates design and development. A video demo of the app in the webinar showed just how easy it is for users to collaborate on work in real-time or asynchronously while staying in the flow of work.

 

With Figma and FigJam in Teams, users can access the full power of each product to get better feedback and collaborate more effectively. For example, users can jump into a brainstorm in FigJam, without leaving Teams. Once there, they can leverage features like sticky notes, shapes, voting, and more to make any meeting more engaging and productive. In addition, the app lets users present and share designs for in-the-moment feedback without the hassle and inconvenience of having to switch apps or screenshare.

To support asynchronous workflows, Figma and FigJam files can be added as new tabs to any Teams channel so that teammates can easily find the right files and review them on their own time. Users can even get notifications about comments in Teams so they can stay on top of feedback and keep work moving forward.

 

“User collaboration and communication are essential guiding principles at Figma” according to Weekes. Designed with the end-user – and teams of users - in mind, Figma provides powerful product design and development capabilities that are accessible to teams working anywhere. The app empowers an extended group of individuals to join the design process, including developers, product managers, and business stakeholders.

To address the challenges of modern work businesses are increasingly turning to easy, intuitive collaborative applications like Figma for Microsoft Teams that let users stay in the flow of work and get more done. To try Figma on Microsoft Teams, download the app from the Microsoft App Source today.

Updated Dec 19, 2022
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