Figma as Live Source of Truth
Diving deeper into
Matthew Moore, Head of Design at Lime, on Figma vs. Adobe
the multiplayer capability and being able to work on files together from anywhere in the world and not have to deal with sending files
Analyzed 4 sources
Reviewing context
Figma won because it turned design from a file passing workflow into a shared workspace. Instead of one designer owning a local document and exporting versions for review, the live file became the working surface for designers, PMs, engineers, and brand teams at once. In practice that removed version confusion, cut handoff work, and made the design file the place where product decisions were actually made.
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At Lime, Figma spread beyond the 8 to 9 active designers to roughly 35 to 40 users because teams could jump into the same file, comment, edit, and avoid sending very large files around. That changed Figma from a specialist tool into shared infrastructure for product work.
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A second design leader described the same shift more concretely, brand guidelines, libraries, colors, and version history all lived in one browser based place, always current. The alternative was separate files that had to be refreshed and redistributed every time something changed.
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This is why Adobe XD being included in Creative Cloud did not matter much. Teams still paid for Figma on top of Adobe because the real competitor was not price, it was whether the tool could serve as a live source of truth for design, review, prototyping, and developer handoff.
The next step is broader seat expansion inside companies. Once the design file is already where comments, prototypes, libraries, and early brainstorming live, the natural move is to pull in more PMs, marketers, and developers, then sell lighter collaboration products around that shared workflow.