The day I stopped using auto-layout for everything and actually planned my frames first

I was about six months into using Figma for my middle school's yearbook layout (which, by the way, is a nightmare of 200+ photos and random quotes from kids). I kept fighting with auto-layout, trying to cram every single element into these rigid boxes. Then my mentor from a local design meetup in Minneapolis looked over my shoulder and asked why my text boxes were all set to "fill container" when I clearly needed fixed heights for photo captions. It hit me like a brick - I had been using auto-layout as a crutch instead of a tool, you know? I was letting the computer decide spacing instead of thinking about what each section actually needed to communicate. Now I rough out my frames manually first (like a sketch on paper, but digital) and only add auto-layout for the repetitive stuff like name tags or date stamps. Has anyone else had that moment where a feature you thought was helping was actually making your work harder?

2 comments

2 Comments

oscarm243d ago

Read a talk transcript from a UX designer at Chicago Design Week who said they spent two years over-engineering responsive tables before realizing their users just scanned them on mobile anyway. Auto-layout is the same trap sometimes, it gives you this false sense of progress when you're really just making an unreadable mess look technically "perfect." Planning frames first forces you to see the actual hierarchy before the computer adds its own logic, which is a totally different mindset.

wadeyoung3d ago

And it's the same thing with how people organize their kitchens or even their garages, spending hours on fancy systems when they really just need to find the spatula or the hammer quickly. We get so caught up in making something look organized that we forget the whole point is just to use it easily.