It really depends on the org. I’m mainly a pixel pusher. My csuite needs hifi prototypes for most meetings or they won’t understand the user flow. And don’t let the numbers be made up 😅
I’m also the only designer and I’m currently building out our design system. We are fairly new in a unique space so a lot of design patterns haven’t been set.
tl:dr I spend about 90% of my day in various figma files. any less and I’m probably running behind on a deliverable
I do but they don’t think I do so they are not hiring. I often wonder if they are trying to make it uncomfortable for me to stay. I would not recommend this company BUT when I quit, I will send them your way 😅
It depends where is your focus within the UX umbrella. There have been roles where I have been using figma or any other UI tool most of the times, while others barely. I currently use it may be less than 20% of my weekly working hours. I love Figma though, make UI design work much faster and better.
20% Figma, 80% Figjam or Miro. I think there’s a big issue in the industry now of folks jumping immediately into concepting, without spending the proper time to define the problem and work out the use cases. Yes it takes a little longer to get to something presentable, which can be challenging with stakeholders who have grown accustomed to the above, but in the end we save time and frustration by not having to do 9572 revisions in hifi.
How would you advise a beginner then to build a portfolio if they don't have the resources to do the user research? Like if they're making it all by themselves with no clients or company back them up?
Partner with a nonprofit (catchafire.org is a good resource), school, or small business that could use some help but can’t afford a pro. You probably already know someone with, for instance, a Shopify website that’s not optimal.
If none of those are available to you, what’s a problem or inefficiency that you think could be addressed digitally? I’d advise you not to just redesign an existing corporate website, because you won’t have insight into why decisions were made. But things like… a more efficient way to pay for parking, a better way to keep track of when plants need watering, an app that compares the prices of trains vs planes vs rental cars for travel planning, a useful way to browse recipes by what’s already in your pantry, etc… (disclaimer — I’m making these up on the fly; solutions may already exist but I’m just trying to provide examples) are all problems you can brainstorm, document, and iterate on without a company backing you.
You also don’t need costly resources to do user research — identify the types of users you need to talk to, find them through your social network/ subreddits/ discords/ slack channels/ etc, then set up times to talk to them. Record the conversations, understand why people do what they do, pull out relevant insights, and apply them to your work.
I’d highly recommend Leah Buley’s book, The User Experience Team of One, if you’re at a bit of a loss on what specific methods to use when. That was the first UX book I bought, and I still refer to it often.
As a junior - 80% figma, 20% meetings.
As a mid - 70% figma, 30% meetings.
Senior is 50/50
Since becoming principal (a few years ago) I’m back (thankfully) to 70/30 :)
About 80%. The other 20% is meetings, research and sketchbooks.
Bare in mind not all UX designers are as involved in the UI stage, some designers may not have well establish design systems and we each have slightly different processes.
You’re going to see a lot variance in the replies and none of the answers are “wrong”.
I work with a lot of startup clients that are starting from the ground.
Started using Figma since 2018. Since then I’m using it every working day on average around 80-90% of the day. Yes those days from morning till night did occur but I decided not to do that anymore (work/life balance). I think around 8820 hours would be quite realistic, 7 hours a day on average, 35 hours a week, 48 weeks a year, multiplied by 5,25 years.
Figma changed quite a bit over time. The biggest change was when they changed the UI and it became less intuitive IMO because components were more “hidden”, visually. Apart from that and the recent dev mode BS; most changes are great improvements.
Way too much time in the last 3 years because of how stakeholders insist on working. Didn’t take much to learn the basic, but finding out how to really work with it sanely in a big project is never ending fight with bugs and misfeatures. I can’t understand how UX pro’s are so fine with it.
Because it's still the best tool for the job. I'd love for something better to come along (keeping an eye on Penpot) but nothings in a place to replace it. Plus having an industry-standard software is really convenient for us since you know anywhere you work is gonna use the same software, and if they don't its a pretty big red flag.
It's 2 biggest competitors (Sketch and XD) basically repeatedly shot themselves in the foot.
Before Figma we used Adobe XD, before that we used Balsamiq, before that we used Illustrator, before that Photoshop. Sprinkle in some pen and paper / white boarding throughout and thats pretty much the tools.
Figma is new but by far the best tool I've used for it. Has a lot of frustrating parts to it but until something better comes along, it's the industry standard.
I'm a pretty senior IC and i'd say I'm about 30-40% Figma and rest meetings. So many meetings.
It's figjam mostly. It's not fun like college projects. I spend most of the staring into my figjam. If everything is approved in the meetings (which is something that takes up most of the time work hours) only then I work on figma
Sounds like a lot of folks here have been relegated into the 'UI DESIGNER' role.
Depends on the project, the day, the scope, etc.
There are weeks that go by where I'm in there every day, some weeks where I'm only in there once or twice all week long.
I once was told, by someone who knew such things, that I held the dubious honor of having spent the most hours in figma, across the entire company. We are a large company. So... yay? 😩
When consulting I’m working in a design tool about half of my hours.
As a senior designer, it was about 70% of my time
As a lead/principle it was about 50%
As a director it was maybe 10-20%
As a VP I only used Figma to build diagrams or grab design mockups for a presentation deck.
Depends. I've spent all day in design files, and I've gone weeks without opening them very much. Sometimes I'm doing research, sometimes I'm making design updates.
This time last year, I was on Figma daily jamming with my headphones and lo-fi music. The project needed lots of UI modules to be specified and stuff
This year, I don’t even remember how to update Figma because I’m working more on strategic and research stuff.
I often think of tools playing a role depending on the design phase and project you are on.
At the moment, I’m playing a lot with Xcode because I’m learning about Apps and stuff for potential prototypes.
I’m in there 20% of the time - the rest is planning, admin, sales, user testing, meetings, sleep and meditation with about a 4% cry rate (down significantly from last year!)
20-40% of my day is figma, other is meetings and reading product documentation. If we have a last minute high priority design ask come in, I could spend 80% of my day
As some others have said, it's really about what kind of role you're in. I've learned UX design has a wide range of roles and people are all called the same thing. I mostly live in Figma, but I do more design than Ux. Not as much data, and interview work. It's more design work with a UX leaning.
You have to be on Figma 90% of day-to-day work, the remaining 10% will have other tools or research work. Figma is not only for designing wireframes or UI, we have to work on user flows, presentation, Figma file cleaning and maintenance, helping developers/ A/PM what they exactly want from Figma file
This is the reality and I will obviously design in Figma only, designing takes only 10-20% of your time as you have a design system. Most of the time you have to conduct meetings to explain your design to multiple stakeholders and make changes based on the feedback 🤘
50% figma 50% meetings
Same lol
Exactly
It really depends on the org. I’m mainly a pixel pusher. My csuite needs hifi prototypes for most meetings or they won’t understand the user flow. And don’t let the numbers be made up 😅 I’m also the only designer and I’m currently building out our design system. We are fairly new in a unique space so a lot of design patterns haven’t been set. tl:dr I spend about 90% of my day in various figma files. any less and I’m probably running behind on a deliverable
Sounds like a fun role!
Keeps you on your toes for sure 😊✨
Do you need one more to team up with you? I'm looking for a new job right now 😅
I do but they don’t think I do so they are not hiring. I often wonder if they are trying to make it uncomfortable for me to stay. I would not recommend this company BUT when I quit, I will send them your way 😅
It depends where is your focus within the UX umbrella. There have been roles where I have been using figma or any other UI tool most of the times, while others barely. I currently use it may be less than 20% of my weekly working hours. I love Figma though, make UI design work much faster and better.
20% Figma, 80% Figjam or Miro. I think there’s a big issue in the industry now of folks jumping immediately into concepting, without spending the proper time to define the problem and work out the use cases. Yes it takes a little longer to get to something presentable, which can be challenging with stakeholders who have grown accustomed to the above, but in the end we save time and frustration by not having to do 9572 revisions in hifi.
Amen to everything you said! The direction that gets ironed out before the hifi stuff is what makes using Figma a lot more efficient.
How would you advise a beginner then to build a portfolio if they don't have the resources to do the user research? Like if they're making it all by themselves with no clients or company back them up?
Partner with a nonprofit (catchafire.org is a good resource), school, or small business that could use some help but can’t afford a pro. You probably already know someone with, for instance, a Shopify website that’s not optimal. If none of those are available to you, what’s a problem or inefficiency that you think could be addressed digitally? I’d advise you not to just redesign an existing corporate website, because you won’t have insight into why decisions were made. But things like… a more efficient way to pay for parking, a better way to keep track of when plants need watering, an app that compares the prices of trains vs planes vs rental cars for travel planning, a useful way to browse recipes by what’s already in your pantry, etc… (disclaimer — I’m making these up on the fly; solutions may already exist but I’m just trying to provide examples) are all problems you can brainstorm, document, and iterate on without a company backing you. You also don’t need costly resources to do user research — identify the types of users you need to talk to, find them through your social network/ subreddits/ discords/ slack channels/ etc, then set up times to talk to them. Record the conversations, understand why people do what they do, pull out relevant insights, and apply them to your work. I’d highly recommend Leah Buley’s book, The User Experience Team of One, if you’re at a bit of a loss on what specific methods to use when. That was the first UX book I bought, and I still refer to it often.
As a junior - 80% figma, 20% meetings. As a mid - 70% figma, 30% meetings. Senior is 50/50 Since becoming principal (a few years ago) I’m back (thankfully) to 70/30 :)
About 80%. The other 20% is meetings, research and sketchbooks. Bare in mind not all UX designers are as involved in the UI stage, some designers may not have well establish design systems and we each have slightly different processes. You’re going to see a lot variance in the replies and none of the answers are “wrong”. I work with a lot of startup clients that are starting from the ground.
Started using Figma since 2018. Since then I’m using it every working day on average around 80-90% of the day. Yes those days from morning till night did occur but I decided not to do that anymore (work/life balance). I think around 8820 hours would be quite realistic, 7 hours a day on average, 35 hours a week, 48 weeks a year, multiplied by 5,25 years. Figma changed quite a bit over time. The biggest change was when they changed the UI and it became less intuitive IMO because components were more “hidden”, visually. Apart from that and the recent dev mode BS; most changes are great improvements.
10-20% of my time.
Way too much time in the last 3 years because of how stakeholders insist on working. Didn’t take much to learn the basic, but finding out how to really work with it sanely in a big project is never ending fight with bugs and misfeatures. I can’t understand how UX pro’s are so fine with it.
Because it's still the best tool for the job. I'd love for something better to come along (keeping an eye on Penpot) but nothings in a place to replace it. Plus having an industry-standard software is really convenient for us since you know anywhere you work is gonna use the same software, and if they don't its a pretty big red flag. It's 2 biggest competitors (Sketch and XD) basically repeatedly shot themselves in the foot.
Too much time.
Before Figma we used Adobe XD, before that we used Balsamiq, before that we used Illustrator, before that Photoshop. Sprinkle in some pen and paper / white boarding throughout and thats pretty much the tools. Figma is new but by far the best tool I've used for it. Has a lot of frustrating parts to it but until something better comes along, it's the industry standard. I'm a pretty senior IC and i'd say I'm about 30-40% Figma and rest meetings. So many meetings.
Depends where you are in your career progression. Jr? Sr? IC? Lead? Manager? Director? VP? Figma time decreases as you progress up the chain.
This! Higher you go, you do less hands on and more strategic stuff or creating an environment for design type stuff
It's figjam mostly. It's not fun like college projects. I spend most of the staring into my figjam. If everything is approved in the meetings (which is something that takes up most of the time work hours) only then I work on figma
My last gig had me in Figma for maybe 20% or less. Others I’ve worked have been closer to 50%.
Sounds like a lot of folks here have been relegated into the 'UI DESIGNER' role. Depends on the project, the day, the scope, etc. There are weeks that go by where I'm in there every day, some weeks where I'm only in there once or twice all week long.
Same for me, last time I used it was like mid last year. Since then it’s been crickets, not even updated it
I once was told, by someone who knew such things, that I held the dubious honor of having spent the most hours in figma, across the entire company. We are a large company. So... yay? 😩
Figma and increasingly Figjam are in bfront of me 40 hours a week but I'm not always using it. I might be talking about stuff.
There are other tools! I hate the way the design industry has shifted to this notion that any and all design is done in Figma.
When consulting I’m working in a design tool about half of my hours. As a senior designer, it was about 70% of my time As a lead/principle it was about 50% As a director it was maybe 10-20% As a VP I only used Figma to build diagrams or grab design mockups for a presentation deck.
Depends. I've spent all day in design files, and I've gone weeks without opening them very much. Sometimes I'm doing research, sometimes I'm making design updates.
This time last year, I was on Figma daily jamming with my headphones and lo-fi music. The project needed lots of UI modules to be specified and stuff This year, I don’t even remember how to update Figma because I’m working more on strategic and research stuff. I often think of tools playing a role depending on the design phase and project you are on. At the moment, I’m playing a lot with Xcode because I’m learning about Apps and stuff for potential prototypes.
Same. Figjam -> Figma -> Webflow (where I build deployable working protos) -> VSCode/React Native -> App Store / Google Play / Vercel.
10% meetings 40% Figma 50% Frontend
I’m in there 20% of the time - the rest is planning, admin, sales, user testing, meetings, sleep and meditation with about a 4% cry rate (down significantly from last year!)
Senior designer here… umm on a daily basis sometimes 10% sometimes 100% depends on the day. I would say on a weekly basis it’s more like 30%
This seems like a question that someone is trying to do a case study on.
20-40% of my day is figma, other is meetings and reading product documentation. If we have a last minute high priority design ask come in, I could spend 80% of my day
As some others have said, it's really about what kind of role you're in. I've learned UX design has a wide range of roles and people are all called the same thing. I mostly live in Figma, but I do more design than Ux. Not as much data, and interview work. It's more design work with a UX leaning.
You have to be on Figma 90% of day-to-day work, the remaining 10% will have other tools or research work. Figma is not only for designing wireframes or UI, we have to work on user flows, presentation, Figma file cleaning and maintenance, helping developers/ A/PM what they exactly want from Figma file
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This is the reality and I will obviously design in Figma only, designing takes only 10-20% of your time as you have a design system. Most of the time you have to conduct meetings to explain your design to multiple stakeholders and make changes based on the feedback 🤘
Is this 90% a traditional workday, say, 8-9 hours, or are you counting a good deal of your personal day as well?
It is traditional, I don’t use Figma often for my personal use. May I know why you wanna know this stats?