Figma sweetens FigJam whiteboard tool with new AI features

Last updated: 2023/11/08 at 10:30 AM

Published November 8, 2023

5 Min Read

Whereas Figma waits to listen to whether or not regulators will permit Adobe to finish its $20 billion acquisition, the startup is just not sitting idly by. At the moment, Figma introduced it was including three generative AI options to its FigJam whiteboard instrument to make it simpler to get began and arrange initiatives.

FigJam is Figma’s on-line collaborative whiteboard that groups can use to work on design or different initiatives, and usually arrange conferences and concepts. It makes use of a sticky notice metaphor, and has proved well-liked with prospects because it was launched in 2021.

“We realized that, because it pertains to FigJam, that there’s actually an enormous alternative for us to get actually inventive round enabling folks to collaborate and visually reimagine all types of conferences and issues like that within our platform,” Yuhki Yamashita, Figma’s chief product officer instructed TechCrunch.

In actual fact, FigJam is definitely utilized by a number of people who usually are not a part of their core designer consumer base. “Lots of people can be stunned, however two-thirds of our weekly energetic customers usually are not designers,” he stated.

Chris Marsh, analysis director at 451 Group, concurs, saying that Figma has tried to method whiteboarding with with a broad viewers in thoughts. “Since its conception Figma has thought of FigJam as a spot [where] totally different designer, product, engineering, advertising, challenge house owners and different customers can collaborate on initiatives, and that type of cross-team, higher-value collaboration.”

That big selection of customers led the corporate to think about methods to make it simpler to make use of the product, and so they determined to place AI to work on the issue. For starters, they’ve a instrument to assist create FigJam boards. The clean palette may be intimidating for brand new customers, so that they needed to make it simpler to get began by creating a generative AI instrument that helps customers create a brand new board from a immediate. The concept is that once you don’t know the place to start, you can begin a FigJam template or diagram by describing it, and itemizing totally different components you may, want like a calendar and a challenge timeline.

As soon as customers have a board going, they have an inclination to make use of digital sticky notes to submit concepts or duties (or something they like), however because the board grows, it may develop into unwieldy, and the corporate needed to offer an easier option to arrange them by sorting the sticky notes into logical thematic groupings like topic or individual accountable for finishing a process. “One of many issues that we’re doing is permitting you to kind these stickies. So if a designer ran this huge brainstorming session round what stuff ought to we construct or what consumer issues ought to we be fixing, they will kind these stickies into thematic teams,” he stated.

Lastly, when you may have a full board, it’s arduous to scroll via all of the stickies to get the details of the assembly or brainstorming session, so Figma developed a summarize function that can routinely generate a abstract from the ocean of sticky notes. “This can be a actually helpful option to leverage AI to gather key themes. Whereas earlier than, a [user] might need been taking numerous time to actually synthesize all of the sticky notes,” Yamashita stated.

The corporate is utilizing OpenAI as its massive language mannequin and has tweaked it to know Figma and FigJam ideas like diagram or calendar objects. If customers go outdoors the parameters of their use case in a method that might lead to dangerous or inappropriate content material, Yamashita says they’re testing a warning system that gained’t permit them to proceed. He factors out that OpenAI has a few of these controls as properly.

Marsh says that his agency’s current “Voice of the Enterprise: Work Execution and Targets 2023” survey discovered that 71% of workers wrestle with collaboration. If that’s true, it’s potential that these new options could possibly be a place to begin to assist new customers.

At the moment’s options can be launched in an open beta beginning right now.

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