How to use FigJam to brainstorm

Video transcription

Hey everyone, I'm Wayne. I'm one of the product marketers here at Figma. I'll be going over how you can use FigJam to brainstorm with your team.

You can either start a brainstorm from scratch or you can browse through the Figma Community and use one of the templates published here, like this one (FigJam Brainstorm Template). We've actually filled out this template so you can see an in-progress brainstorm with a mix of new ideas on how to feature new plans and improve the checkout experience on the Twigma website.

Sticky notes

You and your team can start jamming right away by grabbing a sticky note and jotting down your ideas. The way you add a sticky note in the file is by selecting it from the toolbar or typing "S" and clicking anywhere on the screen. Once it's added to the file, you can change the color and/or you can add text. I'll add my idea “plant of the week” and by default sticky notes include the authors so that you can easily follow up with folks about their ideas. Names can be hidden if preferred by using this authorship toggle and, let's say you're brainstorming and you're on a roll and you want to add a bunch of ideas, you can click these buttons: the plus button here to add a new sticky note or use the command "⌘ + enter" shortcut to add a bunch of stickies really quickly.

Marker

I'll be going over some of the cool tools at the bottom of the screen here so the first step is the marker. You can access it by pressing "M" or clicking below. You can change the width of the pen and the color and I really like using this to make quick sketches like you'll see up here. Or to annotate ideas and i'm just going to draw an arrow pointing to mine.

Stamps

When you're brainstorming and you want to vote and get people's ideas of what they think is best, you can do so with the stamp wheel. So, if I click at the bottom of the screen here, I can access the stamp wheel or press "E" and I can select a different range of stamps (from a heart to a plus one button or I can even use my own face to vote). Oh, someone has the same idea as me, so I love this idea clearly, and I want to emphasize that I really like it. If I click and hold down the stamp, it will actually get larger to really emphasize how much I like this idea.

Emojis reactions

Another way that you can react to people's ideas is through the emoji reaction wheel. You can access it by clicking the toggle here or accessing it by pressing "E" twice. This is really helpful if someone is presenting and you want to just show your love for it. Let's say someone has a great idea and they're talking about it on a call: I can show that I love it.

Cursor chat

And next is actually my favorite feature which is the cursor chat feature so I can access it by typing forward slash or by clicking here on the wheel. I find this to be really helpful when I'm in a file with someone and I don't want to jump on a call, but I want to say “hi” or, if we are in a workshop and I have a question, instead of interrupting while someone's presenting I can just type it out here and someone else can answer me, or if the facilitator sees it, they can take a pause and answer my question. This is a pretty ephemeral, so it'll disappear in a few seconds (this will disappear in a couple of seconds).

Components in FigJam

You can also use components in FigJam. If you want to keep your libraries open (let's open it first, so click down here), you can actually drag and pin it to either side of your board. FigJam has created some default components to help get you started (we've worked with a couple of cool artists here). I love using this start component to really get people's attention and so they get an idea of where they should actually be starting. You can add labels and indicate the status of a project: “we are done” or I can even ask for my team's feedback.

You can also bring in your team's own design systems and use your own components. The way that you do that is by clicking this plus button here to access other libraries. I want to use a library that my co-worker Mickey created, so I'm going to add this to the file. You'll see here that it's added and I can remove it if needed. Let me just access it. He created this really cool clipboard for meetings and you can set an agenda and type out some notes. The cool thing is, because it is a component, if it has text and I click on it, I can make adjustments. And, because it was built with Autolayout, it'll still be able to work in FigJam so this clipboard can go on forever. Another thing is that if a component is a variant, I can actually click and switch between variants (just like I would in Figma).

Using FigJam and Figma together

You can also copy designs over from a file (this is really helpful for bringing in context) so, for the checkout experience, if I want to show what our current checkout experience looks like, I can grab this screen. Let's say I don't want people to make any changes to the text, I just want them to see it, I can actually lock this and when I copy it over if someone is trying to make changes to this, it'll be locked. If I want to shorten this because it's not locked, I can change this info and I can make edits to designs. What I really love about this is that you're able to provide more context through brainstorm and bring in any in-progress designs (which is always really helpful for me).

Try out FigJam with your team for brainstorming and let us know what you think. I find it to be a really fun way to brainstorm and I think it makes it possible for anyone to contribute and share their ideas. I would love to hear what you think. Thanks.