Introduction:
Figma is not letting the $20 billion acquisition by Adobe go unnoticed as it awaits word from regulators over its approval. To make it simpler to get started and manage projects, Figma announced today that it was integrating three generative AI technologies into its FigJam whiteboard application.
Teams can work on design or other projects, plan meetings and brainstorming sessions, and generally organize ideas using FigJam, an online collaborative whiteboard from Figma. Since its release in 2020, it has gained popularity among consumers and employs a metaphor involving sticky notes.
Chief product officer of Figma Yuhki Yamashita told TechCrunch, “We realized that, as it relates to FigJam, there is a big opportunity for us to get creative around enabling people to collaborate and visually reimagine all sorts of meetings and things like that inside of our platform.”
Many people who are not a part of their primary designer user base do use FigJam. Two-thirds of our weekly active users are not designers, which will surprise a lot of people, he said.
According to Chris Marsh, research director at 451 Group, Figma has made an effort to approach whiteboarding with a wide audience in mind. “Since the beginning, Figma has viewed FigJam as a location [where] various designers, engineers, marketers, product owners, and other users can work together on projects, and that kind of higher-value, cross-team collaboration.”
Figma Sweetens FigJam Whiteboard Tool:
Figma Sweetens FigJam Whiteboard Tool [Source of Image: Techcrunch.com]
Because of the diverse customer base, the firm thought about how to make the product easier to use and ultimately opted to use artificial intelligence to the issue. To begin with, they have a tool that makes creating FigJam boards easier. They wanted to make it easier for users to get started, so they created a generative AI tool that assists users in building a new board from a prompt. For new users, the blank palette can be scary.
The concept is that you can start a FigJam template or diagram by describing it and identifying the many aspects you would require, such as a calendar and a project timetable, if you don’t know where to start.
The company wanted to provide a more straightforward method of organizing users’ digital sticky notes by grouping them into logical thematic categories such as the subject or person responsible for completing a task. Once users start a board, they typically use digital sticky notes to post ideas or tasks (or anything they like).
However, as the board grows, it can become unwieldy. You are allowed to sort these stickies as one of the things we are doing. So, he explained, “They can sort those stickies into thematic groups if a designer ran this big brainstorming session around what stuff should we build or what user problems we should be solving.”
Ultimately, with a full board, it can be challenging to read through all the sticky notes to find the key points from the brainstorming or meeting. For this reason, Figma has created an automatic summary tool that pulls information from the deluge of sticky notes. “This is a truly practical application of AI for gathering important concepts. In contrast, it might have taken a [user] a long time to truly synthesize all the sticky notes in the past, according to Yamashita.
The business has modified OpenAI, its massive language model, to comprehend notions from FigJam and Figma, such as calendar objects and diagrams. Yamashita claims that they are testing a warning system that will prevent users from continuing if they deviate from their use case in a way that might lead to offensive or dangerous content. He notes that some of those controls are also available to OpenAI.
According to Marsh, a recent poll conducted by his company titled “Voice of the Enterprise: Work Execution and Goals 2023” revealed that 71% of workers have difficulty collaborating. If so, there’s a chance that these new capabilities will serve as a platform for assisting inexperienced users. Starting today, an open beta will be made available for the features of today.
