6 min read
Notes from a week without Figma
Paper, a pencil and a printer showed me which parts of my process were thinking and which were habit.
Last spring I closed Figma for a week and worked on paper, in the browser and with a printer. It was meant as a detox. It turned into an audit of my own process.
What paper was good at
Flows and hierarchy. With a pencil you cannot fuss over corner radius, so you think about what comes first and what can go. I cut two screens from a checkout before drawing a single button.
What it was bad at
Motion, spacing and anything that depends on real content. Those went straight into the browser, where the real text and real widths told me more in an hour than a day of mockups.
I went back to Figma on Monday, but I open it later in a project now, once I know what I am drawing.
