This is better than Figma | Edition #29 – 조주노 Fernando Juno Jo

Hello people, in this issue, we’ll look at…

⏮ Replay the last workshop,
Better than Figma 🤔,
Press Play ▶️,
📚 Books recommendations,
✨ Herbal Sparking UX,
and much more…

📼 Rewatch it

Last week we had a great Figma Basics workshop! I’m glad we had so many people joining us. If you missed it and wanna rewatch it click here.

🤔 Figma Alternatives?

After some days to process in your mind about Adobe acquiring Figma a lot of designers have been sharing some potential tools to replace Figma. But I will say it’s not going to be an easy task. Here is a list of some tools that you can try:

Lunacy 👉 Kuddos for having icons8 library easy to use.
Origami 👉 Very cool and advanced prototyping options.
Penpot 👉 It’s an open-source platform, I like the idea but if you see software business people need support (even for Linux) to get adoption from companies.
Play 👉 Focused on iOS and mobile design/development.
Marvel 👉 Hey Marvel, I thought you left the party earlier. 🤣 I used a lot for prototyping years ago with Sketch, they are trying to survive this war ⚔️.
UXPin 👉 From a wireframe in the past they improved a lot.
Axure 👉 I used this 15 years ago. It tastes like Microsoft building a UI tool.
InVision Studio 👉 The only legacy is the concept of a frame inside another frame successfully copied by Figma.
Sketch 👉 The last but not least… Going back to the old and good Sketch.

Anyhow Adobe is planning to shut down XD in 2023. They may keep longer but from my understanding from the Adobe meeting no big improvement or new features from now.

Another detail to keep in mind: Sketch file was always open and that’s why Adobe and Figma could easily import it. Adobe and Figma have been very clear for a long time that they will 🔐 lock in the file, building a huge moving cost for designers.

🎮 Let’s play

I started early to work in my life and I was so focused on my career that I stopped playing games. But I was always been curious to study game interfaces. To me is fascinating to understand how to enable users to achieve so many tasks in a short amount of time.

I remember I made a website for KLB boy band in Brazil with a lot of game mechanics attached, storytelling, and animation. Everything using Flash. I tried to recover it from Internet Archive but they couldn’t save the Flash file correctly.

My tip for you is to look into this amazing collection of game designs on this website: Interface in Game.

📚 Reading Time

You know how important it is for a UX Designer to understand the psychological aspect of ~~users~~ people.

I just finished reading these two books and I highly recommend you read them:

The Psychology of Money: Timeless Lessons on Wealth, Greed, and Happiness have a lot of amazing insight into money decisions. If you are working in any financial application/company you can use this info for good or bad (😈 evil design).
Super Thinking: The Big Book of Mental Models from DuckDuckGo founder. If you think tech giants track you to sell products, you are just an average person that fits into a few mental models. You are that special (only for your mom 👩‍👦).

🥂 Cheers

I already recommended this company, Aurabora to a few of you before. This herbal sparkling water is a healthier option for you. I personally love all the design, copy, and small details.

I had an issue with my first order and the customer care was 10/10. They refunded me the damaged cans and also send me a new box of those beautiful Auraboras.