The Problem
How might we make giving and receiving design feedback in Figma more engaging, visible, and actionable for team collabration?
Getting Lost in The Noise
Implementing a structured feedback loop can lead to a 30% reduction in revisiting earlier stages of the design process.
Teams that receive regular feedback experience a 14.9% increase in productivity.
Feedback is essential in design, but in real teams, it gets lost.
During my time working across multiple design teams and projects, I witnessed the same problem repeatedly: scattered comments across Figma files, critical feedback buried under dozens of threads, and talented designers paralyzed by the sheer volume of unstructured input.
The cost of this chaos isn't small. Teams waste hours trying to synthesize conflicting opinions, stakeholders repeat the same feedback because no one saw their original comment, and great ideas die simply because they're invisible among the noise.
Understanding the Landscape
To research this problem more, I conducted a competitive analysis of feedback systems across design and collaboration tools:
What exists:
Figma's native comments: Rich threading but no prioritization
Notion reactions: Quick but context-light
Miro voting: Engaging but separate from design files
Abstract branches: Version control without preference tracking
The gap: No tool combines the immediacy of social upvoting with the context-richness of design collaboration.
Key Pain Points
Along with this I also interview a small group of product designer's and product managers to get there input on how this affects their work flow. Main takeaways:
Comments scatter across hundreds of layers with no hierarchy or priority
Teams can't quickly identify which designs resonate most with stakeholders
No visual way to compare design variants or track preference trends over time
Designers struggle to synthesize feedback into actionable next steps
Autumn Yeats, Product Designer
"I have 47 unresolved comments. I don't know which feedback actually matters."
Main Insight: Designers don't need more feedback, they need better signal-to-noise ratio.
Goals
This clear problem space led to the idea for my gamified feedback plugin: a way to turn feedback into a playful, interactive system where components can be upvoted, scored, and ranked, making it clear what works and what doesn’t.
Increase engagement: Make giving feedback feel rewarding, not like a chore
Surface insights instantly: Show which designs the team prefers at a glance
Track momentum: Reveal how preferences shift as designs evolve
Stay invisible: Integrate seamlessly without disrupting existing workflows
Planning
To kick off prototyping, I started by mapping out a user flow to organize my ideas. Making the flow helped me see the experience from start to finish and think through every part of the plugin. I began by outlining the onboarding process, from installing the plugin to starting to vote on an exisiting file/layer.
Prototyping
To ensure Props would feel native to Figma users, I studied dozens of popular plugins, from Lottie Files to Unsplash to Contrast, analyzing their interaction patterns, information architecture, and visual design.
One thing I noticed most was the best plugins solved one problem exceptionally well rather than cramming in features.
This became my design constraints: Props needed to focus one feature and do it exceptionally well.
Final Result
Every design decision in Props stems from three principles learned through research: Make it effortless (voting in 2 clicks), Make it visible (insights at a glance), and Make it rewarding (celebrate great work).
The final design brings these principles to life through a clean sidebar interface, playful interactions, and data visualization that tells stories instead of just showing numbers. Here's the complete experience, from first vote to final export.
What I Learned
1. Solve One Problem Exceptionally Well
My initial wireframes tried to handle voting, commenting, version control, and analytics. This felt overwhelming and people wanted a tool that did one thing brilliantly, not five things adequately. I learned that saying "no" to features is often more important than adding them.
2. Design for the Ecosystem, Not Just the User
Props doesn't exist in isolation it lives inside Figma, alongside dozens of other plugins. I learned to design for the context users are in: rushed, multitasking, switching between tools constantly. This meant honoring Figma's design patterns, respecting canvas real estate, and ensuring Props felt like a natural extension rather than a disruptive addition.
3. Data Without Narrative is Just Numbers
Early versions showed vote counts and percentages, but users still felt lost. They needed the data to tell them something. I learned to design narrative into the interface: The same data became actionable when wrapped in story.
