What is the great feature of Figma? I tried to use it for illustration and it did not feel great at all compared to software like Affinity Designer. How were you using it that it feels like such a great loss to you?
Figma is mostly used for website and app prototyping. It's very popular because it allows for multi-user collaboration, like a Google doc. Older prototyping tools like Invision or Sketch did not have this, and it was a major differentiator.
You can create different screens and set up click points, such as a button. Clicking the button navigates you to another screen in your design. This is called "interactive prototyping".
Figma puts these interactive prototypes on the web, so designers can create a visual prototype that can be tested on mobile and desktop devices. It's more realistic than simply looking at pictures of mockups. The biggest advantage is that it does not require developers to write working code and deploy a whole app just to click around and test it out.
Not illustration - design (UI design, specifically). It's fantastic for maintaining styles/themes, collaborating, iconographic design, flows, and especially composable/configurable/modular UI components. The components are one of the standouts for me, as compared to other software. They are more powerful, and yet somehow less confusing/complex than in other software. In general, I always run into some kind of limitation or bug or confusing behavior in other software - Figma has by far given me the least trouble. They obviously have both enormously talented designers and enormously talented engineers in charge. Also, they appear to actually think about what the team-based UI design pipeline looks like in practice.
Edit: As others have pointed out, it's not so much the existence of a feature that's missing from other software - it's the design and implementation of features.
Edit: Their autolayout implementation is incredible. And their tutorial videos! My god, they're incredibly discoverable and informative and SHORT. I'm going to stop because I could keep coming back and adding edits to this comment all day.
Product (software specifically) design is where Figma shines. Auto layout, prototyping, etc. are second to none. Sketch had all of these features for years, but Figma’s implementation and depth of execution is unrivaled.
Figma's biggest strength is in UI design. Open illustration, while possible is not so great. (I still love Illustrator for this purpose, others may disagree or have other favorite tools). Figma allows UX/UI designers to speak a congruent language with UI developers. A design system or component library can be mutually understood. Things like, "we're using our 80% gray button here" can be very easily communicated. That's not at all impossible in other tools, Figma just takes it to a very nice level.
