Your two tools
- Figma — the design tool: precise screens, components, prototypes. Weeks 3–12 live here.
- FigJam — the whiteboard: sticky notes, diagrams, voting, workshops. Messy thinking, welcome mess. Weeks 1–2 (and every research/synthesis moment after) live here.
Both run in the browser, save automatically to the cloud, and are collaborative — several people can work in one file live, each with a named cursor. The free tier is all this course needs.
Set up your workspace (do this now)
- Create your account at figma.com (use an email you'll keep — your work accumulates here).
- Create a project (a folder for files) named
Product Design Course. - Inside it, create your first FigJam file named
W1 — Problem Framing. - Naming convention for everything this course:
W# — What it is. Twelve weeks of files will thank you.
FigJam essentials (all you need this week)
- Sticky notes — press
S, click, type. One idea per sticky, always. - Sections — draw labeled areas to group stickies.
- Connectors — drag arrows between things.
- Stamps & voting — react and dot-vote on ideas (the sprint lab uses this).
- Text and shapes — headers and simple diagrams.
That's genuinely the whole toolkit for now — FigJam's power is that it stays out of the way of thinking.
A habit that starts today
Files, pages, and layers get real names from day one. W1 — Problem Framing beats Untitled (3). In Week 11 you'll hand files to a "developer," and file hygiene is graded all course — cheap to build as a habit now, expensive to retrofit.