When I open someone else's Figma file, I try not to judge immediately. Files are living documents — they accumulate decisions, reversals, and deadline shortcuts. They're not meant to be tidy.
But after a minute of looking, I do form a picture. Not of the person's talent, but of how they think.
Here are the things I actually notice.
Layer names
The first thing I look at is whether layers have names. Not good names — any names.
A file full of Frame 4742 and Group 17 tells me one of two things: either this person works very fast and cleans up later (fine), or they never think about structure at all (not fine for collaboration).
Named layers are a communication act. They say: I thought about what this thing is. They make handoff readable, they make revisiting your own work faster, and they make it possible for someone else to understand what you were building without asking.
I name layers as I go. It takes almost no extra time and changes everything about how findable the work is later.
Auto-layout usage
Auto-layout adoption tells me how a designer thinks about responsive and systematic design.
A file with no auto-layout — just manually positioned elements everywhere — suggests the designer is thinking about what things look like at one specific size, at one specific moment. That works for a portfolio piece. It doesn't work for a product being built by engineers.
Conversely, auto-layout applied indiscriminately — everything constrained, nested, and parametric — can mean the structure is fighting the content. Sometimes things don't need to flex.
What I'm looking for is intentional use: auto-layout where the structure needs to adapt, fixed positioning where it doesn't. The judgment of when to apply it is itself a design skill.
How edge cases appear
Or don't.
If the file has one frame per screen with no empty states, error states, or loading states, it tells me the designer was solving for the happy path only. That's usually fine at early exploration. It becomes a problem at handoff.
I look for evidence that edge cases were considered — even if handled roughly. A frame labeled "empty state — TBD" is better than no frame at all. It means the designer knows they're not done.
Component usage
Are components being used, or are things being copy-pasted?
Heavy copy-paste creates files that are hard to update and easy to get inconsistent. But I'm also skeptical of files where everything is a component, including things that appear exactly once. Not everything needs to be componentized. The judgment of what to make a component is a design decision in itself.
What I want to see: components for things that repeat, raw frames for one-off layouts, and a pattern that shows the designer was making choices rather than following habit.
The comments
If there are comments in the file, I read them.
Comments in Figma are a window into the collaboration that happened. They tell me what was contested, what was unclear, what needed explanation. A file with zero comments isn't necessarily cleaner — it often means decisions happened outside the file in Slack threads no one can find later.
I've started leaving more comments in my own files as a practice. Not just "this is the button" but "I went with this because the alternative had X problem." That context is almost always lost otherwise, and context is what makes a design reviewable.
None of this is about judging people based on their file hygiene. Files get messy, timelines are tight, and personal working styles vary. But shared files — handed to engineers, reviewed by PMs, inherited by the next designer — are artifacts of how you communicate. And communication clarity is most of the job.
Credits & further reading
- Brad Frost, Atomic Design — the underlying logic for thinking about components as intentional systems rather than copy-paste collections. His hierarchy (atoms → molecules → organisms) is a useful mental model for deciding what to componentize and what to leave as a raw frame.
- Figma documentation on auto-layout — the shift from manual positioning to constraint-based layout is a skill floor that separates designers who think about flexible systems from those thinking about fixed canvases. Worth reading even if you've been using auto-layout for years.
- The observation that "shared files are artifacts of how you communicate" connects to ideas in Articulating Design Decisions (Tom Greever) — that design work is only complete when others can engage with it. Files are a communication medium. They should be treated as one.