# Figma

> A design tool in the browser where whole teams design apps and websites together.

- Level: Basic
- Topics: Tech companies, Software
- URL: https://tidbit.legios.com.ar/figma/
- In Spanish: [Figma](https://tidbit.legios.com.ar/es/figma/)

**Figma** is the tool where most app and website screens are designed today. Designers draw buttons, menus and whole screens on a big canvas, link them into clickable prototypes, and hand them to developers with exact sizes, colors and spacing. It was founded in 2012 by Dylan Field and Evan Wallace, who met at Brown University, and opened to the public in 2016.

Its key bet was to run entirely in the web browser, at a time when serious design software had to be installed on a powerful computer. That made **real-time collaboration** possible: several people can be in the same file at once, each with a visible cursor, like in a shared Google document. Developers, product managers and clients can look, comment and copy what they need without installing anything. Teams keep shared libraries of components, so a button changed once is updated everywhere.

Figma also makes FigJam, an online whiteboard, and has added AI features and tools that help turn designs into code. In 2022 Adobe agreed to buy Figma for roughly 20 billion dollars, but the deal was dropped in late 2023 after objections from regulators in Europe and the United Kingdom. Figma stayed independent and went public on the New York Stock Exchange in 2025.

## An analogy

A big shared drawing board in a room where the whole team can stand at once, each with a different colored marker, instead of mailing sketches back and forth.

## Keep in mind

- Founded in 2012 by Dylan Field and Evan Wallace.
- Runs in the browser; many people can edit the same file at once.
- Used to design and prototype app and website interfaces.
- Adobe's planned purchase was abandoned in 2023; Figma went public in 2025.

## Go deeper

- [Figma (official site)](https://www.figma.com/)
- [Figma on Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Figma)

## Related terms

- [Website](https://tidbit.legios.com.ar/website/): A set of web pages under one address, stored on a server and opened in a browser.
- [Web browser](https://tidbit.legios.com.ar/web-browser/): The app that fetches web pages from the internet and draws them on your screen.
- [Google](https://tidbit.legios.com.ar/google/): The search company that gives most products away and makes its money on ads.
- [Artificial intelligence](https://tidbit.legios.com.ar/artificial-intelligence/): Getting computers to do things that, until recently, only people could do.
- [Adobe](https://tidbit.legios.com.ar/adobe/): The company behind Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere Pro, Acrobat and the PDF format.