IT Blog

For years, people have been using the web-based collaborative platform Figma to brainstorm raw ideas, roughing them out in visual form as one might do on a conference-room whiteboard. They did so even though Figma—officially an interface design and prototyping tool—was never meant for that particular purpose. But when the company saw its customers embracing its product for whiteboarding, it put creating something optimized for the task on its to-do list.

And for a long time, there it stayed. “We never quite prioritized it,” says Figma’s cofounder and CEO, Dylan Field. “Then the pandemic hit.” With Figma users abruptly deprived of actual physical whiteboards in conference rooms, Figma had the incentive it needed to put other projects aside and build an equivalent in virtual form.

It unveiled the results—which it dubbed FigJam, a great name—at its online Config conference in April 2021.  To ramp things up quickly and get plenty…