Bluescape is a cloud-based, software as a service company based in Silicon Valley, CA, that provides a digital whiteboard of the same name.
$10
per month
FigJam
Score 8.0 out of 10
N/A
FigJam is an online interactive whiteboard from Figma headquartered in San Francisco, presently in beta (2021) but available to the public in a free trial. The vendor states that in 2022, FigJam will have plans for $0, $8, and $15 per editor, per month.
This digital version of a pin-up space is absolutely an improvement to my workflow. The input is so robust. What you do with it is where the magic happens. This program is best suited for team collaboration. It helps to discuss how/where the team will contribute information to it--whether that is discussing the templates or a plan of action. Otherwise, the workspace can tend to get messy. I like the idea of having a presentation mode, where some of the markups could be hidden. The idea of a working session with consultants or clients sounds appealing, but at the same time, there is a desire for a cleaned up, clear shareout.
If you're working in small product teams, like triads, and already using Figma, this is a no brainer for white boarding, quick/fast sketches, wireframing, collaborative doodling ... it gets less appropriate with large teams, infrequent. IMO, due to the way in which they price, it's better to keep the inner circle small-ish.
It misses easy-to-use pre sets of diagrams. The ones presented seem to be not native and hard to use. Miro is a good benchmark.
Navegating throught projects in the main page is confusing, specially when people are not admin users.
It should suggest ways of organizing the pages designers do, specially when the project is big and have many pages and sections.
It could have, for example, a draft version for every page, so that one can hide it when they finish the work, but can open it whenever something needs to be modified, versioning the job.
I don't use it often, because the organization I work in uses a different environment on a commo basis. This is rather used between the designers, who prototype the solutions in Figma - they just have it as a workbook/notebook for their ideas. However, if those need to be shared with stakeholders or other organization members, the designers are expected to use a different environment.
We have Workware installed on different computers in our office that were supposed to be great for presentation but we had issues after a user connected their laptop then they no longer had access to our server. If they had files they needed for the presentation they had to save them to their desktop to make sure they were accessible.
FigJam works best in pair with Figma, as it allows you to keep track of your project in one place, supporting all phases of the process. The functionality is more intuitive, quick, and efficient. Visually, I also prefer it more —it’s more enjoyable and playful, making the experience much more engaging.
FigJam saves a lot of time ... it's nice to have all my visual notes/sketches within Figma itself where a lot of design work lives
The project organization and other features contribute to the ease of answering that age old question ... "where can I find that mockup?"
Dev Mode is pretty cool. Not many use it, so some designers may spend unnecessary time spec'ing out things that no one will appreciate, let alone look at.
