Figma
The standard design tool for product and UX designers — collaborative, browser-based, and required at virtually all product companies.
Figma has become the universal standard for product and UX design, replacing Sketch, Adobe XD, and other tools with a collaborative, web-based platform. It's required for all product designer and UX designer roles and increasingly used by product managers and frontend engineers who work closely with design systems.
Typical time to job-readiness: ~6 weeks.
Learning Figma
Beginner
Learn the canvas, frames, and basic shapes. Create low-fidelity wireframes and understand the layers panel, alignment tools, and basic components.
Intermediate
Build a design system with components, variants, and auto-layout. Use Figma's handoff and inspection tools to collaborate effectively with developers.
Advanced
Interactive prototypes with variables and conditionals, Figma plugin development, and running design sprints and critiques. Portfolio quality matters more than tool depth in designer interviews.
Key concepts
- Frames — screen-sized containers that define pages or views in your design
- Components — reusable UI elements; instances update when the master component changes
- Auto Layout — flexbox-like layout that adjusts when content changes
- Variants — combine multiple states of a component (default, hover, disabled) in one
- Design tokens and styles for consistent colors, typography, and spacing across a system
- Inspect panel — shows measurements, properties, and CSS values for developer handoff
Common interview topics
- Walk me through your design process from brief to handoff
- How do you use components and variants to build a scalable design system
- How do you hand off designs to engineers — what do you include
- Explain how Auto Layout works and when you'd use it
- How do you design for accessibility in Figma