I agree with all that you have said. It’s not a well-thought-out experience. From what we have heard from the keynote, they tested themself which is not what designers do, designers need to test designs with real users and not be biased about it.

Horrible. The floating side panels are making me uncomfortable. I hope they add an option to choose the old theme, like in VS Code or other coding editors.

I use Figma every day in my professional work and I have to say that new UI completely ruined my flow. Mamy features changed their position and now I have to spend time to look for them in the interface. Icons for settings or properties also changed so I can no longer easily spot them in this “redesigned”, cluttered space.

Visual hierarchy went terribly down.

Saying that new UI is a tragedy is like not saying anything at all.

Make Figma Useful Again!

This work is example the worst UX ever. It seems strange to me especisaly when you deliver tools for the designers. How could this happen? They don’t have UX designers on staff? Why do we see such strange solutions. I have almost no idea why they do to anything they’ve done. Just questions. And the most important question is why?

I really disliked it when Adobe started adding contextual menus right in the middle of the workspace, but you can turn those off. I want an unimpeded area to work, I really don’t like the toolbar being at the bottom in the middle. It is irritating and in the way. I harldy use the toolbar, usually keyboard shortcuts, so it’s feels in the way.

Also I am neurodivergent and I find the bits of designs leaking out between the edge of the toolbars and the edge of the tool very distracting. This is an accessibility thing. What purpose does it serve? You can’t move the toolbars away from the edge, which is what this implies, There is no point to it except for some aesthetic reason, which isn’t a reason to do something IMO. 🙂

Hello Figma.

Make a fully customizable element interface so that blocks can be undocked and attached. In the design settings, so that you can change the order of the blocks. For example, I want to put the color settings at the top and the font settings second.

So basically they should adobefy it.

Completely agree with everything mentions in the original post. I honestly cannot believe who thought this was a great idea. The UX is horrible, and the new menu bars is nothing but a distraction.

I really hope all of this will be reverted, or Sketch might just be the tool of my choice again.

Totally agree on this. Usability has become worse.

• Sidebars not sticking to screen edge are super distracting


• Bottom panel block the view and is also distracting


• Old top bar had comfy functions appearing depending on active object - that’s moved to side panel, and if you have it scrolled down - you don’t see those (surprise!)


• Many things I could just check with a corner of an eye are now hidden behind clickable panels and dropdowns, or moved to most unexpected places

Please don’t do this to us 😦

I absolutely hate the new UI. Why change something that isn’t broken? I dread of having to use it! I use Figma like I play the piano (on auto-pilot) and I feel like all the keys have shifted! I don’t know where anything is and I don’t want to re-learn Figma. I had to switch back to the old UI to prevent an anxiety attack! What may look like a more simple UI is actually a maze of hidden features, just because this UI / layout works for FigJam doesn’t make it suitable for Figma. Every major update from Figma lately has been a disappointment. The Dev mode requiring an Editor seat and now this!

You can revert back to old UI by clicking on the floating question mark in the bottom right corner! I am so thankful for having an option to revert back! The new UI is a disaster!

I have no idea what kind of Ux designers you have or what user research you have done.

But I’m about the 30th person in the company I work with hate it

True! Agree with all the points above. Having side panels not-attached is really distracting me a lot

Figma tries to design motorcycles (slides) and cars (web design) using the same manufacturing molds (UI design tool).

It’s going to be a disaster. Different tools require different designs and now the latest UI designs are not good for either.

I agree with everything said here. The biggest issue is losing the top bar and trying to “squeeze” everything into an already packed area. (right sidebar under an object properties)

Trying to push ACTIONS into property is not good design.

Example:

I can now merge them and do a lot of other stuff.

In the new design tho, those “ACTIONS” go to properties of the object (that is now actually 2 objects, so its not logical at all).

For me, no. There is a lot of going on the right side of the “properties” screen. Those are not properties of the object, those are actions. So please do not smush everything into one…

100% agree with all critical comments here. It looks like a ‘fashion’ update with no regards to usability and everyone involved should seriously consider a career change. My initial reaction was ‘oh great, they’ve found a way to make the workspace even more confined’. Terrible for my aging eyes. I’m moving back to Sketch if the legacy version becomes unavailable.

It is really sucks. Now you need to perform additional actions to do functions like set up constraints or auto-layout… I’m upset by what I see in Figma updates.

OMG, thank you for this comment lol 🙏

So yeah, Penpot just posted an article talking about how they explored more or less the exact same UI concept, and decided to keep iterating.

More or less echoes everything I said in my post:

“Floating sidebars practically result in a loss of space because they require margins that serve no practical purpose.”

“Another of our objectives was to reduce the cognitive load of the interface to promote focus on the designed artifacts. This option did not align well with that goal for various reasons, such as the designs blending more easily with the interface due to showing in the separator spaces, where they added no functionality and left it unclear whether we should allow interaction with the layers.”

“Additionally, there were other issues, such as the difficult positioning of the rulers”

I just learned Figma 3 months ago and was quite enjoying it.

I really hope they take all of this feedback to heart and don’t push ahead with the UI as is.

It is clearly not ready to replace the old UI.

the new design. Unfortunately, it hasn’t met my expectations and I find it uncomfortable to use. The significant changes to many aspects seem unsuitable for a platform used by millions.

I believe it would have been better to implement improvements gradually or focus on features that users have previously requested changes for. The new design is highly distracting, and even the fields for entering data appear inactive due to the gray color, which adds to the discomfort.

I hope the new design will be reconsidered to better align with our needs as users and allow us to work with focus and comfort.

Hi everyone, I just wanted to chime in with a bit of further feedback — the thing that made me switch back within the first 5 minutes was frame constraints (left/right/top/bottom/etc) being removed from the right side panel and now being accessible only as a fly-out menu. When working with larger frames with dense UI (desktop, 1440px, for instance), being able to check/set those constraints is kinda crucial to me.

Plus I absolutely agree with that was said about the UI panels not “sticking” to viewport edges. It looks cool at first glance, but I did notice being distracted by tiny bits of content showing through those edge gaps. I welcome the option to resize panels, but the left layer/pages pane was resizeable already and I can’t say I ever had issues with not being able to resize the properties panel to the right.

Anyways, those were my two cents. Hope the Figma team sees this thread and tweaks the new UI accordingly. I’m kinda glad to see I’m not alone in this 😌

Please keep the option for the old design there as long as possible and make the ones responsible for the new design aware of how utterly trash it is. Hiding everything behind a 2-3 clicks just to make it look friendlier and easier than it naturally is, is just a clear money decision and not a “high quality of service and experience for our users” decision. I understand the decision is not yours but please make it a bit clearer for those making the decision that (and I cite from another medium article from Roman Kamushken):

1. The floating panels: They’re a waste of space and make it harder to use the ruler and guides. Unless you collapse the panel, it’s a constant annoyance.


2. The floating toolbar: It blends in with frames and is a pain to use. Many designers have asked for the option to move it to the top or bottom, but Figma hasn’t listened.


3. Non-contextual toolbar: Figma moved all the useful functions to the right panel and collapsed them behind a “More Actions” menu. It’s like they’re trying to hide the features that designers use the most.


4. Nested instances are collapsed by default: This is the most frustrating one for me. I have to manually open every accordion for every instance I need to adjust. It’s a huge time-waster and a major annoyance.

A project that took like 1000 clicks in the old UI would take like 4000 clicks in the new UI and 2000 clicks after getting used to it if you havent moved to something else already. And just to make it look more AI?

Why would someone be in ‘serious need’ of such new features though?

My exact thoughts.

Extremely annoying alterations which I still can’t apprehend. What’s the point behind it?

I hope they’ll hear us.

+10000000 … plus extra words so they let me post this