Dear Figma —

I’d love to be your new Design Director, Enterprise—and here’s why I think you’ll love to have me:

First: I’m a strong, creative leader comfortable being a voice for design while advocating for the interests of others, too—someone you can trust with taste, execution, and mentorship.

I empower and protect my team 💂🏻‍♂️. At Twilio, I turned the Creative team from a neglected service org.—one that made logos bigger and reacted to last-minute requests for image assets—into a valued partner built on trust, service, and integrity. While there, I improved cross-functional effectiveness with tiered SLAs, streamlined brief templates, and launched self-serve solutions; all of it increasing the number of projects we support by 466% with no increase to fixed costs.

Second: I’m a clear communicator and one who can quickly identify the right blend of speed to execution, keeping costs down, and maximizing quality no matter the brief or audience.

I’ve made it all: presentations for (and to) C-levels, web design systems that increased page performance by 80%, multi-channel global campaigns delivering $2.3M in attributed revenue, visual identity governance for teams of 70+ designers, event designs for 10,000 attendees, print production that automated 3,000 sticker sheets with variable data, and stadium animations for 20,881 Chicago Bulls fans. Recently, I led 8 designers across 15 campaigns per month and 3 web pages per week, collaborating with developers, analysts, program managers, and content writers.

What’s more, I help everyone breathe the brand. I care about integrity and how it anchors successful teams. To me, unsung work is the strongest proof of integrity; by distilling company values into actionable design-specific quality standards, to asking the right questions along the way, to robust internal documentation. Even when these might never go to market, I’m rigorous in my principles and I help get everyone on the same page about where the bar is so that we can celebrate when we cross it and make changes when we don’t.

Thanks for reading. Hopefully this gives you a sense of who I am, what’s important to me, and how we could help enterprise companies believe the value in Figma 👨🏼‍🎨.

— Sky MacFadyen

[A question from the Greenhouse application]

Why do I want to join Figma?
The exposure to the world's most creative communities seems unparalleled. I want to work beside and be challenged by the best—right in the middle of it; helping each other, pushing our collective assumptions, making valuable things, and protecting room for the cool.

[My, work-in-progress, point of view of the Figma Enterprise position resulting from experience and research as part of this application.]

Value scrutiny

When comparing the entire feature list between the Organization and Enterprise plans the following observations arise:

  1. Enterprise plan is 66% more costly than the Org. plan

  2. Efficiency through analytics & scale with custom integrations

  3. Deployment of systems

  4. Control over company data

How might misunderstanding of the plan(s) value-add arise?

The current enterprise narrative in Figma marketing surfaces product features (the what), but not the how or why. More specifically, the above observations are connected to the who: 1) Finance, 2) Design Ops, 3) IT Administration, and 4) Legal. These groups tend to exercise the most scrutiny over Figma licenses. Therein lies the opportunity: embrace their voice and build advocacy within all stakeholders of a purchasing decision at the enterprise level.

The value of #2 to the Design Ops is when the CFO asks, “why has the Figma line item gone up over the year?” they get to attribute the output to the cost. This could be the success story of Design Ops. What could be the success stories of the other parties?

Plan comprehension

While Figma has cultivated excellent content about these topics in events, blog, video series, testimony—they deep in the acquisition funnel. Rightfully so, that the community is sharing insights about how they use such a versatile tool. Another opportunity for Figma; bring the how and who further forward in the consideration phase for enterprise companies.

A couple of random examples that may be hindering plan comprehension:

SaaS seats are beating hearts

While true-ups may offer Account Renewal Managers leverage for growth, the reality is headaches for Design Managers who are busy shipping work to audit every user, every three months (Yep—I have been asked to do this by IT in a Google Sheet). Or worse, end users having their permissions changed without their input (I have seen this, too).

The trouble with the current sentiment is that Design teams are left to entrench the tool’s value. Furthermore, to feel the touted Collaboration, non-design functions want edit permission; seats bloat, get culled, and repeats. At the very least, communication and education ahead of any changes to plans could curb negative perception.

The current marketing narrative for the enterprise seems to rely on enterprise companies having:

  • Engineers dedicated to Design Ops initiatives

  • Clear, timely communication between departments regarding tooling

  • A technical understanding of permission strategy and user groups from admin to employees

Would Figma integration of permission architecture with Google Workspace, Workday, etc. offer inherited understanding of who is doing what work, not just the cost of doing so?

So, with great curiosity, I would start by leaving this question on the table:
How might the Figma Enterprise narrative better reflect the lived experience of the people within?

Highlights:

Education in Economics empowers my appreciation for financial implications of plan billing. 📈

Extensive experience within Enterprise design teams. 🏢

Permission and spreadsheet nerd at heart. 🤓

Grows as I go—self-taught Designer. 🌷