Professional Documents
Culture Documents
(↦ /author/buzz-usborne)
This isn’t a love letter to Figma or a harsh review of Sketch. Instead, it’s a
cautionary tale for anyone who is thinking of moving tools. This is the story
of how everything panned out, and the specifics of migrating a design
system from one platform to another.
The first thing to consider is that there’s a cost involved in switching tools (↦
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/switchingcosts.asp) — a consideration not
usually factored into the conversation whenever there’s a #designtwitter
(↦ https://twitter.com/search?q=%23designtwitter&src=typed_query) pile-on. Only one-
person teams can afford to change design tools at will; for busy teams, it’s
not so easy.
(↦ https://cloud.netlifyusercontent.com/assets/344dbf88-fdf9-42bb-adb4-
46f01eedd629/8303eaf4-0e75-4fe2-89d9-d370114caf40/02-migrating-design-system-from-
sketch-to-figma.png)
Contributing to Help Scout’s design system happened through GitHub. (Large preview (↦
https://cloud.netlifyusercontent.com/assets/344dbf88-fdf9-42bb-adb4-46f01eedd629/8303eaf4-
0e75-4fe2-89d9-d370114caf40/02-migrating-design-system-from-sketch-to-figma.png))
There’s also a financial cost involved in someone (in this case, that’d be me)
taking the time away from business-as-usual work to research and
document all this good stuff. Point is, if you work in an established design
team, you’ll know that changing tools is about as easy as moving offices.
But that’s how this works. Tools are “sticky” just by virtue of being hard to
leave. Suffice to say, this wasn’t going to be a decision we made lightly.
Unsurprisingly, no.
It turns out that Figma and Sketch — while similar in layout and
functionality — have some key differences in how they allow components
to be overridden. This was the kicker. Figma allows for color, type and
effects (shadows, etc.) to be customized by the user, whereas Sketch will
only allow pre-determined overrides. Because of the limitations Sketch
imposes on overriding components, we’d built our original design system
around that — allowing full color, border and style control using a complex
system of masks and building-block components.
Here’s a simple card symbol in Sketch which was made from five nested
symbols that were necessary in order for us to achieve the level of flexibility
we required. This is the exact kind of thing that doesn’t import well into
Figma.
(↦ https://cloud.netlifyusercontent.com/assets/344dbf88-fdf9-42bb-adb4-
46f01eedd629/5a2a273e-ceec-40a6-bdd7-2f0542a3b51c/03-migrating-design-system-from-
sketch-to-figma.png)
Given the above, my initial decision was that although I thought Figma was
the better tool, the stronger company, and the safer long-term bet, it was
going to be too difficult and costly to switch. Re-building entire libraries is a
big job! It was like breaking up before we’d even given it a chance.
How To Switch
So it’s possible that you might be in the same spot I was; you want to move
tools but are faced with the monumental task of rebuilding hundreds of
components, styles, and a load of documentation. Well, friend, you’re going
to need to take a deliberate and systematic approach to this. Your mileage
may vary, but this is how I moved Help Scout’s entire design system to
Figma in just a week.
07 Go All In (↦ #go-all-in)
1. SPLIT YOUR LIBRARIES
This applies to creating Sketch libraries too, but I strongly suggest splitting
design systems into separate sub-libraries that cover different parts of
your ecosystem. In our case, we have Core which contains components
applicable to any designer (brand assets, illustrations, icons, etc.), then
domain-specific documents. This approach makes migration a bit easier to
handle when you’re moving things over in organized chunks.
(↦ https://cloud.netlifyusercontent.com/assets/344dbf88-fdf9-42bb-adb4-
46f01eedd629/4279ea51-da80-4a59-a8b9-c352e46619f6/04-migrating-design-system-from-
sketch-to-figma.png)
In our case, migrating to Figma involved beginning with the Core elements
— which were then used to build out subsequent libraries.
(↦ https://cloud.netlifyusercontent.com/assets/344dbf88-fdf9-42bb-adb4-
46f01eedd629/fa9bbb38-a167-4133-9014-e33c9a91bb1f/05-migrating-design-system-from-
sketch-to-figma.png)
An example of how styles are documented within each library (Large preview (↦
https://cloud.netlifyusercontent.com/assets/344dbf88-fdf9-42bb-adb4-46f01eedd629/fa9bbb38-
a167-4133-9014-e33c9a91bb1f/05-migrating-design-system-from-sketch-to-figma.png))
Since Figma allows much greater control over how components can be
extended, you’ll probably end up with fewer components than you had in
Sketch — instead of “button solid color” and “button outlined,” in Figma you’ll
just need “button”. Because of this, I found that it was important to
document the different ways a component can be extended directly within
the library itself.
An example of how a single Figma component can construct an entire conversation (Large
preview (↦ https://cloud.netlifyusercontent.com/assets/344dbf88-fdf9-42bb-adb4-
46f01eedd629/aff57154-7915-4270-b83f-37569b95bfc3/06-migrating-design-system-from-sketch-
to-figma.png))
4. ORGANIZE PROPERLY
At this point, I gave a 20-minute demo video explaining Figma, some basics
on how to use it, and some of the cool improvements they’ll find to their
workflow when using components. This turned out to be a hit and
definitely softened the blow for people who were perhaps a little hesitant
about the move at first.
The original video that I shared with my team
7. GO ALL IN
Of course, the Sketch libraries still exist; they’re just no longer documented
nor updated. And in terms of migration, in-flight projects continue to use
Sketch files (although some designers have chosen to migrate their work to
Figma), whereas new projects use Figma. It’s a clean break.
It’s hard to conclude an article like this without sounding like I have all the
answers — which I most certainly do not. But my advice to anyone
switching tools is to take it slow. Put in the research, make a plan of attack,
figure out the cost then weigh up whether you’re prepared to pay it — this
applies whether you’re moving to Figma, Sketch, InVision Studio, Adobe
XD, Framer X or some other trendy new tool I haven’t heard of yet.
For us, time will tell, but I’m still pretty confident we made the right call!
FURTHER READING