Designers Drove Figma Adoption
Matthew Moore, Head of Design at Lime, on Figma vs. Adobe
Figma won because the buying decision started with the people doing the work, not the department policing software. Designers could open a browser tab, work in the same file at the same time, leave comments, share prototypes with engineers, and keep libraries updated in one place. That made Figma feel better on day one than Sketch or Adobe XD, and once a design team standardized on it, companies ended up paying for Figma alongside Adobe rather than forcing a switch back.
-
The actual switch cost in design tools was mostly time, not procurement. One design leader described a roughly one month migration from scattered files into Figma, after which the team used it for brainstorming, prototyping, design systems, and developer handoff, making it much harder to rip out than a point tool.
-
Adobe had distribution through Creative Cloud, but that did not translate into use of XD. In one company, there were 14 Adobe Creative Cloud users and 10 Figma users, but zero XD users. The common pattern was to keep Adobe for Photoshop and other specialist tools, while Figma became the shared workspace for product design.
-
This is classic bottom up expansion. Teams often self served into paid plans, then added viewers, commenters, product managers, and engineers as work moved through review and handoff. Figma later built on that wedge with FigJam and other products to widen usage beyond core designers and turn a design seat into an organization workflow.
The next phase is turning designer led adoption into broader company standardization. As Figma adds more products and enterprise controls, the same end user first motion that beat Adobe XD can pull in product, engineering, and marketing teams, letting Figma grow from the tool designers insist on into the system where digital work gets discussed, approved, and shipped.