Upskilling 120+ Designers: Leading a High-Impact Migration to Figma
Project Overview
When I joined PwC Digital, the design department was deeply entrenched in the Sketch, Abstract, and InVision ecosystem. My previous experience at a smaller company (with a team of five designers) had prepared me for this type of transition—I had recently helped migrate that team from Photoshop and InVision over to Figma, where I co-led the construction of the company's first design system. However, at PwC, this would be a much larger and more complex undertaking, involving over 120 designers.
Timeline
1 year for migration; 2+ years of ongoing development
Skills/Tools Used
Figma Miro
Role
Senior Designer, Design System Manager
tl;dr
The PwC design team faced inefficiencies and collaboration challenges using outdated tools like Sketch and InVision. To resolve this, I led a department-wide migration involving 120+ designers to Figma. This included securing leadership buy-in, piloting the tool, rebuilding 30+ design system components with atomic design principles, and creating 100+ pages of training and process documentation. The move eliminated versioning conflicts, cut prototype development time from weeks to days, and saved costs by removing the need for multiple software subscriptions. Designers became more efficient and collaborative, empowering them to work independently and streamline delivery.
The Challenge
Our design system and workflow, reliant on Sketch, Abstract, and InVision, had become too slow for our growing needs. Designers were frequently overwriting each other's work, dealing with slow file syncs, and unable to effectively collaborate—an issue that became even more prominent in a remote, global workforce. We needed a more efficient and scalable solution. My goal was to guide the entire design department through a tool migration, moving us to Figma while maintaining productivity and reducing friction during the transition.
Goals & Objectives
Business Goal
Improve the design workflow by reducing inefficiencies and outdated processes, ultimately increasing the speed of production and quality of design outputs.
User Goal
Enable designers to work collaboratively and in real-time without version conflicts, ensuring we had a single source of truth for our design system.
My Approach
Phase 1: Pitching and Piloting
I began by researching Figma extensively and creating presentations for leadership to highlight its benefits. One major advantage was that Figma provided a single source of truth for our design assets, reducing inconsistencies that were common with Sketch and Abstract. To demonstrate value, I built rapid prototypes and showcased Figma's collaborative capabilities through multiple decks and presentations. I gained approval to pilot Figma on a new project, which helped prove its value in a real-world context.
Phase 2: Rebuilding the Design System
With approval for the pilot, the next challenge was transitioning our existing design system. Importing Sketch files to Figma wasn't enough—we needed to take advantage of native Figma features to maximize the benefits of the new tool. Alongside another designer, I audited over 30 components from our design system and rebuilt them in Figma, adopting Brad Frost's atomic design principles. We decomposed elements like buttons into smaller components (icons, labels, variants) and built comprehensive interactions, including hover, focus, and pressed states. This work was done in parallel to my regular responsibilities.
Solution
- Deliverables:
- Rebuilt over 30 components to adhere to atomic design standards.
- Produced interactive prototypes using Figma's native features to showcase advanced interactions.
- Created over 100 pages of documentation covering internal processes, compliance, brand standards, and Figma best practices.
- Design System Contribution:
- Migrated and restructured the design system to fit Figma, leveraging variant interactions to enable comprehensive prototyping and modularity.
Impact
- Efficiency Gains: Reduced the time designers spent fixing versioning issues or redoing lost work from an average of 3.5 hours per week to nearly zero. Designers could now work concurrently without conflicts, accelerating delivery timelines.
- Cost Savings: Eliminated the need for three additional software subscriptions (Sketch, Abstract, InVision), reducing overhead.
- Team Empowerment: Launched company-wide "Figma office hours" with biweekly sessions for six months, providing training, answering questions, and producing dozens of video tutorials. I created over 100 pages of documentation to align with internal processes, compliance, and brand standards, enabling teams to work independently.
- Rapid Prototyping: Reduced prototype development time from weeks to a matter of days, allowing us to meet client needs with advanced interactions.
Reflections
- Key Learnings: Leading the migration for a large team underscored the importance of clear communication and the need for phased, hands-on training. The "Figma office hours" initiative was instrumental in ensuring designers felt supported and confident during the transition.
- What I'd Do Differently: I'd start by forming a core group of "Figma Champions" earlier—having a few key advocates in different teams could have accelerated the onboarding process and distributed knowledge more efficiently. We did eventually form this group, but formally establishing it earlier and socializing this initiative would have been even more beneficial.
The transition to Figma allowed the design team to become more autonomous and significantly improved the speed and quality of our output. Today, our design system remains strong, scalable, and efficient, and our team is capable of rapid, sophisticated prototyping—all made possible through this migration.
Words from my colleagues
Jamie Sutton
Senior Manager
“Our UX team migrating to Figma really took shape when Luke presented an initial Figma [design system name] library. Luke helped lead the charge creating the remainder of the library, guidance materials, helped test drive the tool in UX strategy projects and has served as a SME/Admin for Figma Org set up. Because of these efforts, which are in addition to Luke's day to day responsibilities, the team was able to complete the research/exploration, get leadership approval, set up the [design system name] libraries and get the team set up in a fairly short amount of time. Luke provided the spark this effort needed.”
Jeremy Wheat
Manager
“Luke has been the driving wheel for our smooth transition from the Sketch design tool to Figma. Starting with gathering feedback on the teams needs and goals, working with the designers…to build in parallel a [design system name] library for Figma, while creating ongoing training guides and workshops We have been able to onboard the entire UX team to a new tool, with confidence that training and support is available. This move will improve the overall quality of our product deliverables allows and upskill the entire team.”
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