My thoughts on the new Figma Component Properties

My thoughts on the new Figma Component Properties
In this article I share my thoughts on using the new Component Properties feature in Figma.
Photo by Destiny Ayodele / Unsplash
Ok. So I'll not be the first one here to draw your attention to the new features that Figma announced at Config2022. It was back in early May, after all.
Figma launched around 15 new features at Config, including improved Auto-Layout (gotta love that Absolute Positioning option), Variable Fonts, and Dark mode (finally). Still, the big one that got everyone's attention was the new Component Properties feature, which I'll focus on in this article.
Now. Some folks think Component Props (to give them their snappier title) are the best thing to happen to Figma since, well, Figma, and others who think it's a half-baked, backwards-step from what was available previously.
Me? Well, after spending nearly two months working with this new feature (hence the delay between the Config announcement and this article), I've now decided its time to voice my opinion and share with you my thoughts on their pros and cons, as well as give you some handy tips to follow for when you decide to integrate them fully into your workflow.
Let's dive on in…

Don’t always be dazzled by shiny, new features.

I’ve always found, and with more than a few years doing this designing thing, that even when our design tool of choice brings shiny new gifts, they’re not always as life-changing as they might seem (at least in their first iteration).
That’s how I found the new Component Props feature in Figma.
Don’t get me wrong. Figma is onto something really good here. They’re working on making larger design files (especially design systems) much easier to work with, but that’s not to say the old method was a chore. It wasn’t and worked perfectly fine, just with a few extra steps needed, but there’s not a massive chasm in time saved between ‘before component props’ and ‘after component props’.
As with any new key feature that a design tool brings, I feel that you shouldn’t get swept away with the hype when looking at the first iteration of a new feature like Component Properties, or you may be a little disappointed.
We can all get dazzled by that new shiny, shiny feature and assume it crushes all those other methods we used previously, but this is rarely the case, and that’s how it feels for me currently with this first iteration, but saying that, the foundations have been laid by Figma and there’s now something to be built, and improved upon.