Figma – hands down is one of the best design softwares supporting team-based collaborative design projects. This interface design application, which runs straight on the browser, always maintains an online nature allowing all team members to work on the same design project in real-time.
With the exception of being a leading software for real-time collaborative design projects, Figma is also known as one of the greatest design softwares for creating interactive prototypes, wireframing websites, designing mobile app interfaces as well as various graphics. However, when aiming to step onto an advanced design level, as well as to boost your workflow, it’s worth considering adding some plugins to your Figma platform.
Therefore, in this article, we list plugins that add more functionality to your Figma tool, as well as we name the best plugins for Figma to run user & usability testing on your design projects. So, without further ado, let’s dive straight into them:
1. Wireframe
Wireframe Figma plugin provides all skill-level designers with a wireframe graphics library that has more than 350 custom-built graphics/cards to use, which come with a great variety of web and mobile elements. It’s an easy-to-use plugin, with no specific skills and resources required. So, whether you need a wireframe prototype to create a project, or simply to brainstorm some ideas – Wireframe is a great tool to do both!
Picing: free
To get the plugin and install it, press here.
2. Color Palettes
This plugin allows you to easily find the color you need, among a huge list of color palettes. Just enter the color code, palette number or color name, copy and apply it to your design making it look as you wanted.
Pricing: free both for personal and commercial use.
To get the plugin and install it, press here.
3. Illustration
Looking to insert some already made illustrations into your design? Look no further, and install Illustration plugin to your Figma platform. This plugin provides creators with popular illustration libraries that in total have more than 250 high-quality illustrations. All the illustrations are free and used under a creative commons license. So, pick the illustration you need, and just with a one-click drag and drop to add it on Figma.
Pricing: free
To get the plugin and install it, press here.
4. Figmotion
What about some animations to make your design more interactive? Figmotions is an animation tool that is perfectly adaptable with Figma as a plugin. Using Figmotion is super easy and convenient – there’s no need to use other motion platforms like Principle, Haiku, Motions, or After Effects. Create amazing animated designs without exiting the platform – get it done with Figmotion on Figma.
Pricing: free
To get the plugin and install, press here.
5. Unsplash
Unspash is a free stock photography platform for both personal and commercial use. The Unsplash plugin for Figma makes it really easy and fast to insert an image onto the design project. Having more than one million all kinds of images, Unsplash is a great tool for creatives to find what they need to make their projects look stunning.
Pricing: free under the Unsplash Licence
To get the plugin and install, press here.
6. Content Reel
This plugin lets you generate custom content, pulling text strings, icons, avatars, and images from one palette. Create your own content or browse to find published collections for your design use and upscale your work with Content Reel plugin for Figma.
Pricing: free under the Unsplash Licence
To get the plugin and install, press here.
7. Color Contrast Checker
Sometimes we are sure the text is well readable on the design, however, this isn’t always the case. Make sure that the text is clear for users and meets Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) by adding the Color Contrast Checker plugin to Figma. This tool carefully checks the color contrast ratio of visible text and notifies if it meets WCAG’s compliance. It also has color sliders to adjust the colors.
Pricing: free
To get the plugin and install, press here.
8. Iconfy
Whether you use emojis and icons often, or just occasionally, Iconfy plugin is very handy to have on your Figma account. More than 100 icon sets containing over 100,000 icons are free to use for your design. Easily find the ones you need, and add them as vector shapes.
Pricing: free
To get the plugin and install, press here.
User & Usability testing plugins for Figma
Adding all the plugins mentioned above is great – it helps to polish your design as well as to fasten the designing process, but what about making sure about your design usability for users? In order to maximize the efficiency of your design project, as well as to boost your workflow, it’s important to run user & usability testing. Therefore in this list of must-have Figma plugins, we added 5 more plugins that will help you to ensure you are developing the best version of your design product.
1. Userbrain
Userbrain is a go-to remote user testing tool that is perfectly compatible with Figma. It provides detailed findings of users’ experience in just a few simple steps. Unbiased feedback received from testers will help you make the right design changes accordingly.
Pricing: subscription prices start from $69/month.
To learn more, press here.
2. Preely
Preely plugin for Figma completes the prototyping experience by giving access to test your design and to get valuable results to improve your work. This plugin provides you with direct access to the Preely testing platform and in-depth analytics. Just install the plugin, connect your Figma prototype with Preely, select the frame you want to test, and export them. Get fast learnings about your users’ experience and make the right design changes.
Pricing: subscription prices start from $46/month (free option available)
To learn more, press here.
3. Attention Insight
Attention Insight is a visual attention prediction algorithm that uses artificial intelligence and heatmaps to test product design usability. This plugin is based on simulating a human’s vision and this allows clients to see their products through potential user’s eyes with 94% accuracy.
This tool provides feedback with no need for direct user engagement nor data collection, and seamlessly integrates with Figma giving test results in seconds.
Pricing: subscription prices start from $23/month
To learn more, press here.
4. Stark
Stark is a suite of integrated tools, which helps to easily design products with accessibility in mind. Stark plugin is best known for its remarkable function for color contrast checking and is easily compatible with Figma design platform.
Pricing: subscription prices start from $6/month (free option available)
To learn more, press here.
5. Useberry
Useberry enables UI/UX designers, product teams & marketers to get user’s rich feedback and actionable insights in minutes. This testing process easily integrates into Figma allowing to design better, faster, and more efficiently with user testing feedback and insights right on the Figma platform.
Pricing: subscription prices start from $39/month
To learn more, press here.
Bonus
UXtweak
Figma Illustration Plugin
The illustration is one of the most important things to make your design stand out from the others. Designing an illustration is a challenging task, and it can take some time. Moreover, it needs good drawing skills to create eye-catching illustrations. Moreover, people subconsciously judge your design based on the illustrations you put on it. Good illustrations will definitely boost your product’s selling point.
Does Figma Have A Good Plugin For Illustration?
Digital illustration has a powerful message to communicate what your design is about. Big companies such as Google, Dropbox and many others have known about this secret and have used it on their design.
In this article, you will learn about figma illustration plugin that will give you an upper hand on your design. The plugin name is the “Illustration” plugin.
How To Install Figma Illustration Plugin?
- Installing the Figma illustration plugin is pretty straightforward. Just follow the steps below.
- The first thing is open your Figma account.
- Then, open “Plugins” in the community menu. Then search for “Illustration”.
- Finally, click “Install” in order to install the plugin on your Figma. You can now insert nice and good illustrations on your design project.
The Figma illustration plugin allows you to search for high-quality and free illustrations directly and insert them into your Figma. All you need to do is drag the illustration you want and drop it on the location you wish to insert on Figma. All illustrations on the libraries are free to use under the creative commons license.
The Importance of Figma Prototype Testing
As a designer, it is your job to make sure that your design can provide the best user experience. However, you might wonder how to test your design for flaws before you jump into the development process. For this reason, you need to test your design prototype.
In this post, you will learn about Figma prototype testing. Testing for usability with prototypes may seem complicated. However, if you do it correctly, it can prevent some serious design issues from happening. It is better to fix the mistake early during the prototyping stage rather than in the post-development stage.
Why Is It So Important To Test Figma Prototype?
You can start building a good and user-friendly design by doing Figma prototype testing before you begin the development process. Figma prototype testing will prevent mistakes from happening in the first place. Thus it will save you time and resources in fixing design flaws later on.
Moreover, Figma prototype testing allows you to collect both quantitative as well as qualitative feedback from users in order to learn what works and what fails to work. Feedback results can also prevent you from making bad design choices.
Tips When Doing Figma Prototype Testing
Here are a few tips before you do Figma prototype testing:
- Use Actual Content
When testing your prototype, it is essential to experiment with actual content. It is recommended to use real photos and labels and not dummy text such as “Lorem Ipsum” and other irrelevant pictures.
- Have A Clear Goal On Your Prototype
Setting a concrete goal will help you analyze the result better. You need to be specific. Instead of thinking about how to test your Figma prototype, you should try to narrow it down and test if users are able to log in to your app or website through your prototype.
- Do A Figma Prototype Testing In Different Environments
Nowadays, apps and websites are not created to only be accessed from computers. That’s why there are mobile and tablet versions for each app or website. You need to test your app layouts in order to make sure that the design works responsively across desktop, tablet, and mobile versions.
How To Use Figma Vector Plugins Such As Vector Maps and Image Tracer
Figma is a popular interface designer application that runs directly on your web browsers. Figma can make it easier for you to design and get code generated automatically to build the user interface for your application.
Figma has more advantages than any other competitors, such as Sketch or Adobe XD, because it runs directly on browsers such as Chrome or Firefox, which is installed on most computers. Thus, you don’t need to install additional software. Moreover, Figma allows you to collaborate with your team or another person in real time.
This post will give you some plugins to interact with vector formats.
What Are the Best Figma Vector Plugins I Can Use?
One thing that makes Figma attractive is its ability to expand its functionality with the help of plugins. We curated the best two plugins that deal with vector manipulation. Read more to find out.
Vector Maps
Vector maps are one of the excellent Figma vector plugins that allow you to search maps of any countries and cities in vector format and add them to your design.
Image Tracer
If you are a designer, you will always deal with vector objects. Figma has an incredibly useful plugin called “Image Tracer” created by Dave Williames.
This plugin can turn simple logos or images with simple backgrounds into vectors. Before you use this plugin, you need to simplify your image by removing the background using remove.bg plugin. Removing the background is as simple as choosing the image and letting the plugin do its job.
Once your image background has been removed and you got a nice image-only layer, you can use Image Tracer plugin.
As one of the best Figma vector plugins, Image Tracer does a good job at converting simple bitmap images to vectors. However, this plugin still has some drawbacks. If your images are complex, the converted vector files might have a lot of nodes which makes the file bigger in size. Thus, if you are dealing with complex logos, it is recommended to edit them manually using vector software such as adobe illustrator or Inkscapes.
Figma Wireframe Plugin
Figma is a great tool that helps UX designers to create a good design screen and prototypes.
Another awesome thing Figma offers is its ability to add more functionality and features with the help of plugins. Using tools and plugins can make you work more efficiently as it saves your time and energy.
In this post, you will learn about the best Figma wireframe plugins that help you design flow, structure, and information about your app or webpage.
What Is Figma Wireframe Plugin?
A wireframe is the representation of an app or website in two-dimensional form. As a wireframe represent the concept of an early product, the graphics, color, and styling are kept in minimum format. You can draw wireframes by hand, which can take quite some time, or create them digitally using Figma wireframe plugins.
Best Figma Plugins
Wireframe
This excellent Figma wireframe plugin helps you do wireframes on-the-fly and allows you to conceptualize ideas with your team. A team should spend time to think cool design ideas, and a wireframe plugin has many templates that are incredibly helpful to create a design for Mobile, tablets, and the web.
Wire Box
This plugin is created by Seán Halpin, and it can convert your design screen to simple wireframes. This plugin is useful when you need to draw wireframes from scratch but doesn’t have time to do it.
Wireframer
Wireframer plugin helps you to create wireframes with both high-fidelity and rough-and-ready forms. It will then generate an excellent and unique placeholder in SVG format.
Conclusion
Figma is a great design platform, but what makes it even better – it’s adding some amazing plugins.
We hope you find these plugins useful and enjoy using them. We are excited to see and try out new ones that are being created in the future!
