Note: If you have a different UI than in the course, you can change it back by clicking the '?' in the bottom right corner of Figma and select 'Go back to previous UI'. Happy Figma'ing!

How to use sections for prototyping in Figma

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Course info

177 lessons / 16 hours 46 quiz questions 21 projects Certificate of achievement

Overview

Hi there, aspiring Figma enthusiasts! Are you ready to embark on an exhilarating journey with me, Dan Scott, as we unlock the full potential of our Figma skills in the dazzling realm of UX/UI Design using Figma Advanced?

Try Figma for free by clicking here.

This course is tailor-made for those who have already mastered the fundamental principles of UI/UX Design using Figma. If you've triumphed over my Figma Essentials course or have a sneaking suspicion that there's a treasure trove of unexplored tools, tips, workflows, and updates awaiting your discovery, then look no further! This course is your golden ticket to taking your UI/UX prowess to the next level.

Together, we'll start by delving into the depths of multilevel nested autolayouts, and unravel the secrets used by UX professionals by learning:
- Workflow techniques, managing design assets, styles, components, grid and column layouts like true virtuosos.
- Learn how to use Variables and put them to work creating even more complete prototypes.
- Use variables to make Light & Dark Modes + Compact & Comfortable spacing versions of your components. 
- You’ll then take your new knowledge of variables to understand and create your own Design Tokens. 
  • - Unleashing the magic of advanced animation techniques, captivating users with animated background gradients and Houdini Text.
  • - Harness the power of Lottie animation files, breathing life into your designs.
  • - Crafting responsive elements that effortlessly adapt to any device, proving your design prowess knows no bounds.
  • - Unleashing the full potential of powerful images & video masking techniques, amplifying the visual impact of your creations.
  • - Mastering advanced typography features, transforming words into captivating works of art.
  • - Embracing the realm of AI, infusing your process with its genius to elevate your skills as a UX designer.
  • - Elevate your prototyping game, conducting user tests with finesse using advanced techniques.
  • - Unveiling sticky scroll buttons that stack, animated anchor points and booleans, and a host of other captivating effects.
  • - Creating enchanting dropdown menus, hover grow effects for images, and expanding search bars.
  • - Discovering the right accessibility tools & techniques, ensuring inclusivity and usability for all users.
  • - Becoming a variant boss, expertly taming unwieldy variants to just 1 or 2.
  • - Unveiling the secrets of seamless collaboration with designers, developers, and stakeholders.
  • - Mastering the art of exporting production-ready assets, bringing your designs to life beyond the realm of Figma.
  • - Unearthing professional workflow tricks & shortcuts, saving you precious time and skyrocketing your efficiency.
  • - Plus much more exciting advanced Figma goodness along the way!

As you journey through this course, you'll acquire the skills wielded by UX professionals, gaining a profound understanding of the UX Design industry. From concept to a highly polished finish, you'll confidently manage your own UX projects ideal for your portfolio.

Throughout the course, I'll assign assignments and projects that nurture your skills and empower you to create your very own unique UX design masterpiece for your portfolio. Don’t worry if this all seems overwhelmingly advanced right now, because the BYOL crew stands ready to support and guide you, ensuring your questions get answered.

It's time to embrace the call to upgrade yourself and transcend from being a good UX Designer to a bona fide Figma UX Superhero! Unlock your potential, save the day, and let your design prowess soar!

Requirements:

- A copy of Figma (a free plan is available on the Figma website).
  • - Basic knowledge of Figma is required. I recommend watching my Figma Essentials course prior to embarking on this epic adventure.

Who this course is for:

  • - UX/UI adventurers who already have a basic understanding of Figma.
  • - Self-taught Figma enthusiasts yearning for structured guidance.
  • - Graduates of my Figma Essentials Course, hungry for more knowledge and skills.
  • - Visionaries who have developed their own unique Figma approach but crave exploration of the vast universe of tools, updates, and time-saving techniques.

What you'll learn:

  • - Diving deep into multi level nested autolayouts. 
  • - Robust components that are easy to update and hard to break. 
  • - Component properties. 
- Variables
- Design Tokens
- Advanced Prototyping using Variables
  • - Learn Workflow tips and tricks for managing your design assets, styles, components, grid and column layouts.
  • - Advanced animation techniques
  • - Animated Background gradients. 
  • - Houdini Text
  • - Animate along a path in Figma
  • - How to add Lottie animation files in Figma
  • - Build responsive elements ready for any device size.
  • - The best shortcuts & plugins to make you a more efficient UX designer.
  • - Absolute Positioning of Autolayouts. 
  • - Powerful images & video masking techniques. 
  • - Advanced typography features. 
  • - Learn to use AI in your process to make you a better UX designer. 
  • - Advanced prototyping techniques to level up your user tests. 
  • - Make prototypes better and faster using tricks & shortcuts. 
  • - Sticky scroll buttons that stack. 
  • - Video playback controls. 
  • - Animated anchor points and booleans.
  • - Create a Dropdown menu
  • - Create a hover grow effect for images.
  • - Create and expanding Search Bar 
  • - Learn the right accessibility tools & techniques  
  • - Become a variant boss. Cutting down those 100 variants to just 1 or 2. 
  • - Learn the best ways to work with other designers, developers and stakeholders. 
  • - Build a UX project from beginning to end ready for your portfolio.
  • - Export production ready assets.
  • - Learn professional workflow tricks & shortcuts.
  • - Forum support from me and the rest of the BYOL crew.
  • - All the techniques used by UX professionals
  • - 160 videos of detailed Figma Advanced Content.
Daniel Scott

Daniel Scott

Founder of Bring Your Own Laptop & Chief Instructor

instructor

I discovered the world of design as an art student when I stumbled upon a lab full of green & blue iMac G3’s. My initial curiosity around using the computer to create ‘art’ developed into a full-blown passion, eventually leading me to become a digital designer and founder of Bring Your Own Laptop.

Sharing and teaching are a huge part of who I am. As a certified Adobe instructor, I've had the honor of winning multiple Adobe teaching awards at their annual MAX conference. I see Bring Your Own Laptop as the supportive community I wished for when I was first starting out and intimidated by design. Through teaching, I hope to bring others along for the ride and empower my students to bring their stories, labors of love, and art into the world.
True to my Kiwi roots, I've lived in many places, and currently, I reside in Ireland with my wife and kids.

Certificates

We’re awarding certificates for this course!

Check out the How to earn your certificate video for instructions on how to earn yours and click the available certificate levels below for more information.

Downloads & Exercise files

Transcript

Hi everyone, hey, we are going to look at using Sections in Figma... to do some fancy prototyping, well, I think it's fancy, anyway... to give you a quick demo of what we're doing... you need to have your concentration face on, you ready? What normally happens when we're wiring something up... is we kind of step through a flow, and it's all very linear...

what we can do though is, normally you do this, you buy a 'Ticket'... you get to the 'Checkout', go to 'Next' page, get to the Attendee Info... get to the last page, and go to 'Payment'... and once you're back here, and you want to get back into it... you have to start again... kind of work your way through in a linear fashion, but...

watch this, because we've used sections I can say, 'Buy Ticket'... keep an eye on, 1, 2, I added the numbers there, to make it easier. So we get to 1, we get to 2, and you're like... "Hmm, you know what, I'd like to go back and check some details before I pay"... so you can do that, and in the past, with our previous skills... if I click 'Buy Ticket', you go back to number 1, but watch what happens...

straight back to number 2, no way... that is the secret power of the Section in Figma... let me show you how to get it going. To get started I took our Events Details page that we made earlier... I put a button on it, randomly in the top... then I was like, I'm going to do a Cart flow, Checkout, Add Tickets...

Attendee Information, and Payments, and you can see... I started with a little bit of vigor, and then got bored... for you to make this work all you need is three pages... call them 'Cart 1', 'Cart 2', 'Cart 3'... and maybe just put these titles on... and you can fill up the other details later on...

let's just make it work. Now let's wire this up as we would normally, without our secret trick... 'Shift E', Prototype mode, this button... when it clicks, I start the Checkout flow... then once I get to the next step, that goes there, and then it goes there... so that is pretty normal.

The other thing I'm going to do is, these titles here... I'm going to say, nope, you're going to go here... so when somebody tries to escape my Cart... they're going to go back to this Event Details one, so let's test it. So I'm going to go, so I'm going to go and add a flow starting point... just to make sure...

it starts on the right page... and this is normal, right? I guess I need to show you what's broken... to show you why this cool section thing is the fix... so if I go here and I get to Checkout, and I go to, halfway through... Attendee Information, I'm like...

"Actually, I need to really check the event details"... so I click back here, and then I'm like, "Oh no, yeah, that's perfect"... so I click on, back to 'Buy Tickets', it jumps right back to the beginning... it doesn't know where I came from. So to make it remember we use sections... so I'm going to leave it all as is, except...

I'm going to create a section, 'Shift S', or from this drop down up here... I'm going to say, you, is... 'Command R', let's rename it, and let's call this one "Checkout Flow"... hit 'Esc' to get out of the naming... double click the edge so it wraps around nicely... and all we're going to do is say, you...

instead of going to that first frame... I'm going to say, you, actually go to the section... and that's where the magic happens... oh, there's two things, delete the second one... so when this button is clicked it is going to go to there... and I think that's all we need to do, let's preview it, let's check our flow.

So same thing as before, let's go, I'm going to 'Buy Ticket', it doesn't work... you wait there, you saw it, I didn't see it, On Drag... not sure why On Drag was there... 'On Tap', please, thank you, try it again... so when I click this one... it's still broken, it's because I'm using Smart Animate...

so let's not smart animate it... why? Because these buttons have the same name, I should change them... called Frame 9, that one's also Frame 9... but let's forget any of that happened... "Does he know what he's talking about?," kind of.

So let's go back to the beginning of our flow, I'm going to hit 'R' for reset... and I'm going to say, 'Buy Ticket', great... get halfway through, add my tickets, go to the next part... and I'm like, "Hmm, I wish I knew-- what date was it again?"  So I can go back to the beginning, and I'm like... "Oh yeah, the date's perfect"... so I can go back into buying a ticket, but I can skip that step...

look at that, it jumps back to where you left it... ah, so good, is it good? I don't know... I think it's genius. What else can we do? We looked at earlier on...

remember, there was a flow in here that said, Back... there was that one, and I said, to kind of leave it for later... now's the later, so what it means is, let's add a button... so I'm going to open my last plugin, I'm pretty sure it's Icon 8... 'Command Option P', 'Ctrl Alt P' to open up the last plugin... mine didn't open, I'm not sure why...

all right, is that the right shortcut? Let's close it down... it is, anyway. So I'm using Icon 8, and I'm going to find a Back button  and I'm going to use this one... remember, there's a free account, you can do free stuff with this... I've got a paid account...

you get the link here on the screen, if you do want to go sign up for Icon 8... I've got an affiliate deal with them... and you get a discount as well, if you do want to sign up for it... but I've got my Back button, I'm going to say... actually, I'm going to do this properly, I'm going to cut it... I'm going to hit 'Shift 1', I'm going to go to here, 'Shift 2'...

and I'm going to say 'Paste', so it's going to go into my components... where did it go? There it is, down the bottom, hello... make it a component, 'Command Option K', 'Ctrl Alt K' on PC... and I'm going to say, when you are clicked, go back... so just drag it out, and it comes up, or you can do it over here...

so On Tap, go back, and this is... because we're using the sections... is going to help us do the, back to where we last were... does that make sense? Not really, Lets show it... so forget that we're in a Cart now...

and just think we're in a bunch of different pages... I'm going to go to my Assets, and in here I'm going to get my arrow out... and I'm going to put this one here, I'm going to go, 'Copy'... you, you, 'Paste', because the component says, Back... the cool thing about that is, let's say... we're going to go do this now, so we're going to go...

start at the Overview page, I'm going to go here... move on to the next page... hit Back, '←', goes back to the last page I was at, if I hit '←' again... look at that, it jumped that whole page... because it kind of knows the flow that you went in... now of course, in this particular exercise you'll be like...

I probably just wanted to go back in the Cart... and along that flow, and that's okay... but I don't want to build out a whole new set of pages... just to hit the Back button, you get the idea, right? It operates more like the back button on a browser... there's times where you want that to happen.

So that is using sectioning... using these sections to do prototyping, the fancy prototyping... man, these noodles get busy after a little while... but anyway, very cool... all right, that is it, I will see you in the next video.
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