UI3 Feedback

The presence of too many boxes feels overwhelming and looks rather like an old-school UI. The lack of edge-to-edge connection is confusing and gives a missing feeling, reducing various differentiation factors.
I would any day prefer the old UI over this new one.

I honestly hate the new UI. The floating panels look good but offer nothing beyond that, and the gap between the panels and the window is terribly distracting, not to mention it takes up a lot of space from the canvas, especially on smaller screens (e.g., laptops).

I hate that the toolbar doesn’t use the previous context-based appearance. What used to be solvable with 1 click now often takes 3-5 clicks because everything is hidden behind fcking dropdowns, which I can’t understand. Instead of progressing with my work, I waste a lot of time trying to find the command I’m looking for.

Even the most frequently used commands are hidden behind dropdowns, WHY?!?!? Not to mention that the icon sizes also feel much smaller, and I have to hunt around to find many functions (e.g., constraints).

I simply don’t understand why these changes were necessary. There was no problem with the previous UI, why ‘fix’ something that works perfectly? Not to mention, from a UX perspective, it feels like it was designed by a junior designer (or maybe it was AI? It generates similarly unusable UIs).

Instead of wasting time redesigning something that worked perfectly, why not address real issues? I would like to have a better prototyping experience and a better variables panel.

And rather than introducing an AI, which, in my opinion, is very awful at generating designs, why not add functions to turn it into an assistant that can help me execute tedious and repetitive tasks faster, such as generating tokens, styles, component variants, or states? This year’s improvements do not bring anything useful to Figma rather, they remove features that were already perfect.

I agree 100%

There is so much unused space and everything still needs to be hidden?

Hidden nested components properties? Really? Every time we want to use component instead of 1 click, now we need to do 2 clicks minimum.

I just got the new UI3 and in the old UI it was possible to open all folders at once, which made it easier to build screens with assets from different subfolders. Now I have to click into each folder, go back, open the next one etc. which just creates more clicks during work than before. Could we have the collapsable list back to see all opened folders at once?

Dear Figma,

You’ve forgotten a cardinal rule of product development. Just because you are bored of looking at the product, it doesn’t mean your users are.

Unless there is something coming down the pipe that warrants these changes, this is a triumph of form over function. I’m all for flatenning the learning curve, as you chase that larger TAM, but this is a professional tool (not consumer or prosumer) whose sex appeal comes from empowering us. Some of these changes make a lot of sense but giving us all RSI for the sake of a cleaner aesthetic is not the way.

1. Dock the floating panels for all of the reasons mentioned already.
2. Increase the grey on grey contrast. And dark on dark contrast. The need to be discrete becomes less of a problem if there is cognitive separation between the work and tool. See point 1.
3. Unhide the ‘goto master component’ command. This is a navigation point that makes jumping in and out of libraries easy.
4. Return to instance dialogue disappears on my light interface. Maybe make it Figma purple.
5. A dropdown for Clip content? Seriously?

JR

For what it’s worth,

I am currently learning UI/UX design, and from everything I’ve learned so far, I do not understand most of these changes.

This all seems pretty obvious to me:

1. Make the panels hug the window left and right: this maximizes the available space - the space around the floating panels are just wasted space anyhow.
2. Put the scrollbars in the area that actually scrolls. I mean, sorry, but this just seems painfully obvious.
3. Put the rulers in the content area where they’re needed. I don’t really think I need to explain this one either.

Like so:

The scrollbars are rulers aren’t even useful where they are now. Such an odd design choice - how do you even explain that one? Yeah, the floating panels look cool and new, but Figma is not a toy.

It seems like you wanted a refresh and something that feels new, at all cost, but you’re making some serious design compromises here.

As others have commented, I also find the floating toolbar a bit distracting. I feel less strongly about this change, and I understand if you were actually trying to free up vertical real estate by making it float. I don’t know, I guess I could go either way on this one.

With design changes like these, there are bound to be people who like them, and people who don’t. But you’re a design tool, used by designers - we’re going to be more opinionated about these things because our job is to understand and care about details like these.

I would strongly suggest you offer at least an option to at least dock the panels and put the scrollbars and rulers back where they’re needed - or just change it entirely. It isn’t really a change that makes any sense from a UI/UX perspective, is it?

Hey Figma,

I really like when UI getting newer look coz working on same UI months … 8 hours daily kind a gets board. but this time its really hard to find tools and icons also. and mostly i dont like bottom toolbar at least if you guys using that floating tool bars give user to freedom to move it. Because im using bigger screen for UI work and i keep my inspiration and UX research work in upper section of screen and working on bottom … now we have toolbar on bottom thats too distracting and its even floating and i can see my artboard white color in that small edge … and its really annoying to work like that 8 hours on office work 😅

I was going through new UI but ultimately revert back to previous. Please if you are changing UI do it slowly like step by step versions … i really like what you did in dev mood introducing toggle … …thats a step by step change

Hello, long time user here, I got UI3 this morning.
Here’s my feedback.

• it should be possible to reposition and also hide the action bar (for those users who use shortcuts IE everyone)
• it should be possible to change the style of the side panels so they’re not floating (the ruler is terrible otherwise, plus if feels like wasted space atm, and visually distracting)
• the UI should be more flexible, as in it should be possible to pick what to show and what to hide in the design panel (IE I suspect a lot of users would want constrains to be always visible)

since I’m here, a bit of feedback that doesn’t relate to UI3 specifically:

• it should be possible to detach and move the local variables panel out of the app (I have to open the file twice to achieve this atm, one with the app and one on web)

I would have liked to keep updating this post with more feedback but I cannot work with UI3 anymore already.
The main reason why I am switching back to the old UI is the action bar and also the floating panels.
Good UI should be invisible. This UI is in the way.