Whereas Figma waits to listen to whether or not regulators will permit Adobe to finish its $20 billion acquisition, the startup just isn’t sitting idly by. At this time, Figma introduced it was including three generative AI options to its FigJam whiteboard device to make it simpler to get began and manage tasks.
FigJam is Figma’s on-line collaborative whiteboard that groups can use to work on design or different tasks, and customarily manage conferences and concepts. It makes use of a sticky be aware metaphor, and has proved well-liked with clients because it was launched in 2021.
“We realized that, because it pertains to FigJam, that there’s actually an enormous alternative for us to get actually artistic round enabling folks to collaborate and visually reimagine all types of conferences and issues like that inside our platform,” Yuhki Yamashita, Figma’s chief product officer advised TechCrunch.
Actually, FigJam is definitely utilized by plenty of people who aren’t a part of their core designer person base. “Lots of people will likely be stunned, however two-thirds of our weekly lively customers aren’t designers,” he stated.
Chris Marsh, analysis director at 451 Group, concurs, saying that Figma has tried to method whiteboarding with with a broad viewers in thoughts. “Since its conception Figma has considered FigJam as a spot [where] completely different designer, product, engineering, advertising and marketing, undertaking house owners and different customers can collaborate on tasks, and that form of cross-team, higher-value collaboration.”
That big selection of customers led the corporate to contemplate methods to make it simpler to make use of the product, they usually determined to place AI to work on the issue. For starters, they’ve a device to assist create FigJam boards. The clean palette may be intimidating for brand spanking new customers, in order that they needed to make it simpler to get began by creating a generative AI device that helps customers create a brand new board from a immediate. The thought is that if you don’t know the place to start, you can begin a FigJam template or diagram by describing it, and itemizing completely different components you would possibly, want like a calendar and a undertaking timeline.
As soon as customers have a board going, they have a tendency to make use of digital sticky notes to publish concepts or duties (or something they like), however because the board grows, it might probably change into unwieldy, and the corporate needed to offer an easier technique to manage them by sorting the sticky notes into logical thematic groupings like topic or particular person accountable for finishing a job. “One of many issues that we’re doing is permitting you to type these stickies. So if a designer ran this huge brainstorming session round what stuff ought to we construct or what person issues ought to we be fixing, they will type these stickies into thematic teams,” he stated.
Lastly, when you’ve gotten a full board, it’s laborious to scroll via all of the stickies to get the details of the assembly or brainstorming session, so Figma developed a summarize characteristic that may robotically generate a abstract from the ocean of sticky notes. “It is a actually helpful technique to leverage AI to gather key themes. Whereas earlier than, a [user] may need been taking loads of time to essentially synthesize all of the sticky notes,” Yamashita stated.
The corporate is utilizing OpenAI as its massive language mannequin and has tweaked it to know Figma and FigJam ideas like diagram or calendar objects. If customers go outdoors the parameters of their use case in a method that might end in dangerous or inappropriate content material, Yamashita says they’re testing a warning system that received’t permit them to proceed. He factors out that OpenAI has a few of these controls as properly.
Marsh says that his agency’s current “Voice of the Enterprise: Work Execution and Targets 2023” survey discovered that 71% of staff battle with collaboration. If that’s true, it’s doable that these new options may very well be a place to begin to assist new customers.
At this time’s options will likely be launched in an open beta beginning at this time.