UI3 Feedback

I feel handicapped. How can you wipe change everything. This is not how you update UI. It’s how you ruin one. I dont know if after 1-2 months of using it I will be able to get to use it fast enough but at the moment I stare for 5 seconds before I find the feature I need. Please revert back and do small steps. You slowed my productivity by a factor of 2.

I just want to be able to hide each of those areas independently like we could before. Show/hide Layers panel, show/hide toolbar, show hide Design panel. They cut off all the nice “piano-like” shortcuts and stuck everything from the UI in our faces.

How can I hide only the Layers panel and also only the annoying Toolbar (bottom left) which I never use?

I just want to be bale to hide each of those areas independently like we could do so before. Show/hide Layers panel, show/hide toolbar, show hide Design panel. They cut off all the nice “piano-like” shortcuts and stuck everything from the UI in our face.

I guess the person who designed the original interface left the company … and the newbies are trying to be smart. Well, it does not work. Please revert back to the old design tools, and only make small incremental improvements.

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I used to give Figma’s UI as a benchmark of usability and intuitive design … sadly no longer I can do that. I can’t even work now. Why change? It was brilliant. You only had to tweak a couple of small bits …

Now you not only punished the design community but you also ask us to design the UI for you. Quite sad. Starting to make me regret that Adobe’s offer was not approved…

Please revert back or give the option to users to switch between old and new interface that way they can provide better feedback by comparing the two in real time.

Strong agree with this. The new tab bar (which can’t be switched back to UI2 😭 ) lacks contrast and with the background blur makes it difficult to distinguish between tabs

How is Alignment part of Position section? Where is your common sense?
Alignment is part of Layout and should be next to the gap between components Spacing … Rrrrrrrrrr

With the new UI I need to distribute evenly then look down to adjust the gap between the components. Those are part of the same action and both belong to Layout. None of them should be inside Position.

Can you just hire back the guy/team who designed the original interface ??? Your co. valuation drops from 2B to 200K now.

The new design makes it harder to do the same work.

Everything is very small and hard to find even when I’m using an Apple Studio Display - Definitely not good UI.

The design is made like all features is equally important. Personally I never use “Position” tools and use “auto layout”, “appearance”, “fill” and “stroke” all the time - The old design had more focus on these tools.

I’ve been using Figma for +5 years and this is the worst update.

Bauke is right, and I feel like I need to write another one of those very long posts listing every single bit that I found that went in the incorrect direction. But I don’t have the time to do the proper analysis, with description and examples. I do design for living and seems like this just another project I would be doing for free, actually not for free, because I’m actually paying for the software every month.
Now, I do love your software, and I do think you did marvellous work over the year getting to where you are right now, bot please don’t loose that now - similar to the Microsoft ‘improvement’ on UI for the sake of improvements…
I’m quite used to UI changes, working with multiple software across the board (3D, 2D, Video edit, animation, code editors and more…) for the last 20 years, but ever since the UI3 update I keep thinking what is going on with Figma - how come suddenly alter all those years of good and great decisions suddenly a change for worse…
As for specifics what is not working in new design:

• Topbar - this was a great solution for menu and current tools - ‘boolean grouping’ included (btw - where is this in UI3 - still cannot find it…!)
• additional wasteful space between layers/object in the left sidebar - I cannot imagine what was the reasoning behind that, - not only you’re adding unnecessary space, but also additional lines between elements, making much more straining on the eyes
• labels - why would one ever need all those labels on the obvious buttons (like: alignment or position) - is this an approach to become only useful to the new users? Figma, if you’re planning to become a newbie-focused software, ignoring designer, and professionals who are using you on daily basis, please do let us know, so that we can start working on something else instead.
• some time ago the font selection didn’t allow to select & copy current font name - again no idea what would be the reason to remove it as this was a very important functionality when working with typography. Luckily this was reverted and is now back.
• Gradient icon - it makes no sense to me.
• But all that makes me wonder of the choices of UX research that you’re doing before making all those decisions. Maybe it’s the focus group of these research - please let me me know if you’re struggling in this department - I’ll be happy to give you a hand.
  I was really trying to adjust to all the new changes in UI3- but these are simply not better design decisions, and I don’t understand in which direction are you guys heading…

The UI3 team must be reminded that we are not using Figma to use Figma; we are using it to accomplish our jobs. The goal is to complete client work, not use Figma. It is work. Figma is a commercial tool, for the most part. It needs to be crystal clear in its UI, guides and flows. The amount of tasks I need to complete as part of my daily routine is too much to spend time re-learning something that was working and already embedded into a workflow. If the UI3 team is spending time defending their work, it means their work needs defending to justify its existence. Good design is unnoticeable at first because it is an enabler.

There are so many improvement points one could introduce, and UI was not one of them. Polish? Sure. Fixes? Yeah. Overhaul, though… why?

If it becomes disruptive rather than helpful, it is no longer a tool but a hindrance.

So, my suggestion is:

• Keep UI2 default
• Keep UI3 if you REALLY want to toy around with it and for those who like to use it
• Focus on improving UI2 instead of coming up with UI3.
• IF 3 is part of an upcoming bigger feature (like tablet interface, holograms, virtual reality, brain chips, whatever), then make it a part of THAT branch. Hardware dependant multiplatform is a lie.
• Keep the energy on adding required features like better library management, PROPER NUMBER OF VARIABLES, nested variable fixes, TABLES, flow chart connectors, multiple logic per trigger, etc.

I think this should be the sticky post of this topic. Sums up everything most of us think!

Make Action Menu appear above all other modals.

Quality of life suggestion:

When I have both the variables panel open and a plugin window, then use ⌘K to open the Action Menu - the Action menu appears below both of these windows on the canvas.

This slows down my work flow because I have to move my two windows out of the way to access the action panel.