💭 Context

Figma isn’t just used for design, it’s also used for an array of unorthodox purposes from illustration to marketing graphics - just take a look at the range of categories on Community.

The wide range of different categories on Figma Community

Figma marketing templates we have for Women in Computing at Cornell (WICC)

However, as I use Figma for marketing purposes in my college clubs, there comes increasing friction points in getting non-designers to use it over the largest competitor, Canva.

The Figma how-to guide WICC has to help people use the templates

In this particular use case - WICC (Women in Computing at Cornell) members rarely use the Figma templates and don't bother to read through the tutorial guide created because it's too long. I wanted to explore - was this a broader theme and a problem worth solving?

🔬 Research

The Market

The “design for the non-designer” market is booming as we see players emerge such as Canva, Adobe Spark, Crello, and Stencil. I mainly looked to Canva as the biggest competitor, with half a million in funding.

Although Canva was long-running in this space, I noticed that you needed to pay for Canva premium to access core features such as brand colors, typography and more. Although Canva was useful for one-off graphic design experiences, I had a feeling for more sustainable brand experiences that wouldn't be enough.

Reddit comments explaining the limitations of Canva in terms of image quality

Users advocating for Figma for professional use because of versatility

Additionally, Figma had the advantage over Canva as already being a trusted tool by designers. I saw it as the perfect opportunity to make it a space where designers and non-designers could thrive together.

User Interviews

After five semi-structured user interviews, I was able to synthesize some key insights:

People found that Canva was intuitive because usable templates are introduced in the onboarding flow - designing on a blank canvas was intimidating
Because of the lack of guides or an onboarding project in Figma's onboarding flow, it becomes intimidating for a novice to use it
Users didn’t want to read long onboarding guides, instead they wanted to cut to the chase and start designing by editing a base-file as a guide.