Figma Variants: The Key to Designing Scalable Mobile App UI

Figma has quickly become the go-to tool for modern digital product design, and for good reason. Its powerful yet intuitive feature set, real-time collaboration capabilities, and browser-based accessibility have made it a favorite among designers and developers alike. One of Figma‘s most game-changing features is Variants, which allow for the creation of flexible, scalable UI components.

In this in-depth guide, we‘ll explore the ins and outs of Figma Variants and how they can revolutionize your mobile app design workflow. We‘ll cover key concepts, best practices, real-world examples, and even dive into some code. Whether you‘re a seasoned UX designer or a full-stack developer looking to level up your design chops, this article will provide you with valuable insights and practical tips.

Understanding Figma Variants

At their core, Figma Variants allow you to create multiple versions of a component that share the same base properties but may have slight variations. Imagine you‘re designing a mobile app that uses a consistent button style throughout. With Variants, you can create a single "Button" component with properties like size, color, and corner radius. You can then create Variants of that button for different states like "default", "hover", "active", or "disabled".

Here‘s a simplified look at how that Button component might be structured in Figma:

Button (Master Component)
│
├── Default (Variant)
│   ├── Size: Medium
│   ├── Color: Primary
│   └── Corner Radius: 4px
│
├── Hover (Variant) 
│   ├── Size: Medium
│   ├── Color: Primary Hover
│   └── Corner Radius: 4px
│
└── Disabled (Variant)
    ├── Size: Medium
    ├── Color: Gray
    └── Corner Radius: 4px

The beauty of this structure is that any changes made to the master Button component will propagate down to all its Variants, ensuring consistency across the design. But each Variant can also override specific properties as needed, allowing for flexibility and modularity.

Why Use Figma Variants?

The benefits of using Figma Variants are numerous, especially when it comes to designing at scale. Here are a few key advantages:

1. Consistency – Variants ensure that all instances of a component remain consistent and aligned with design guidelines. No more worrying about slight discrepancies creeping in as the design evolves.

2. Flexibility – Variants allow for easy customization and adaptation of components to different contexts and states. Need a button with a different color or size? Simply create a new Variant.

3. Efficiency – By centralizing component definitions, Variants drastically reduce the time and effort needed to make global design changes. Update the master component, and watch those changes propagate across the entire design.

4. Collaboration – Variants make it clear to all stakeholders, including developers, exactly what each component variation should look like and how it should behave. This reduces miscommunication and speeds up the design-to-development handoff.

5. Scalability – As the complexity of a design grows, Variants keep things organized and manageable. You can even nest Variants within each other for maximum flexibility and hierarchy.

The impact of these benefits is hard to overstate. In a 2020 survey by Sparkbox, 69% of respondents said that using a design system increased the speed of development, while 67% said it improved the overall quality of the final product. Figma Variants are a crucial tool in building and maintaining such design systems.

Variants in Action: A Mobile App Example

To better understand how Figma Variants can streamline mobile app UI design, let‘s walk through a more complex example. Suppose we‘re building a social media app that heavily features user avatars. We‘ll likely need avatar components in various sizes and states throughout the app.

Here‘s how we might structure our Avatar component using Variants in Figma:

Avatar (Master Component)
│
├── Size (Variant Property)
│   ├── Small
│   ├── Medium
│   └── Large
│
└── Status (Variant Property)
    ├── Offline
    └── Online

In this setup, we have two Variant properties: Size and Status. Each property has its own set of possible values. By combining these properties, we can generate a matrix of Avatar Variants:

Size	Status
Small	Offline
Small	Online
Medium	Offline
Medium	Online
Large	Offline
Large	Online

Here‘s a real-world example from the popular mobile app, Discord. They use a similar Avatar component structure in their design system:

As you can see, Discord‘s Avatar component has Variants for size, status, and even additional properties like "Clyde" (their mascot) and "Animated". This modular structure allows their designers to quickly insert the appropriate Avatar Variant anywhere in the app with just a few clicks.

Variants and Code

One of the most powerful aspects of Figma Variants is how seamlessly they translate into frontend code. If set up properly, each Variant in Figma can map directly to a corresponding component state in your codebase.

Let‘s revisit our Button example from earlier. Here‘s how those Figma Variants might look as a React component:

import React from ‘react‘;
import styled from ‘styled-components‘;

const ButtonBase = styled.button`
  padding: 12px 24px;
  font-size: 16px;
  border-radius: 4px;
`;

const PrimaryButton = styled(ButtonBase)`
  background-color: ${props => props.theme.colors.primary};
  color: white;

  &:hover {
    background-color: ${props => props.theme.colors.primaryHover};
  }

  &:disabled {
    background-color: ${props => props.theme.colors.gray};
    cursor: not-allowed;
  }
`;

export default function Button({ children, disabled }) {
  return (
    <PrimaryButton disabled={disabled}>
      {children}
    </PrimaryButton>
  );
}

In this code snippet, we define a base ButtonBase component with common styles, then extend it for the primary button variant. The PrimaryButton has specific styles for default, hover, and disabled states, which map to the Variants we set up in Figma.

By mirroring the Variant structure in our code components, we create a bidirectional flow between design and development. Designers can hand off Figma files with confidence knowing that their Variant setup will translate cleanly into code, while developers can more easily reason about and implement the intended design variations.

Advanced Variant Techniques

Once you‘ve mastered the basics of Figma Variants, there are several advanced techniques you can explore to take your design system to the next level.

1. Nesting Variants – Just as components can be nested within each other, so too can Variants. This allows for even more granular control and modularity. For example, you could have a "Card" component with Variants for "Size", and within each size Variant, further Variants for "Type" (e.g. "Blog Post", "User Profile", etc.).

2. Interactive Variants – By combining Variants with Figma‘s prototyping features, you can create interactive component states that mimic real user flows. This is especially useful for mocking up dynamic UI elements like dropdown menus, hover states, and animated transitions.

3. Design Tokens – Variants become even more powerful when combined with design tokens – centralized style values like colors, typography, and spacing. By using design tokens as Variant properties, you can ensure that your components always stay in sync with your broader design system.

4. Auto Layout – Figma‘s Auto Layout feature allows for the creation of responsive, flex-box style components that adapt to different screen sizes and content. When used with Variants, Auto Layout can enable truly modular and scalable UI design.

Integration with Design Systems

Figma Variants are a core building block of modern design systems, but they‘re just one piece of the puzzle. To truly achieve scalable, consistent UI design, Variants need to be integrated into a broader ecosystem of tools and processes.

One key aspect of this is documentation. By creating a centralized design system repository (often called a "style guide" or "pattern library"), designers can provide clear guidance on when and how to use each Variant. This documentation might include:

• Descriptions of each Variant‘s intended use case and behavior
• Visual examples of each Variant in context
• Code snippets or references for developers
• Links to relevant Figma source files

Tools like Storybook, Zeroheight, and even Figma‘s own "Inspect" panel can help streamline the creation and maintenance of such documentation.

Another crucial consideration is governance. As a design system grows and evolves, it‘s important to have clear processes in place for proposing, reviewing, and implementing changes – including changes to Variants. This might involve regular design system team meetings, contribution guidelines, and versioning strategies.

By integrating Figma Variants into a holistic design system practice, teams can ensure that their UI remains consistent, scalable, and maintainable over the long term.

Learn More

To dive even deeper into Figma Variants and scalable mobile app UI design, I highly recommend checking out this comprehensive full UX course on YouTube. In this 5-hour video, experienced UX designer Ahmet Efeoglu walks through the entire process of designing a mobile app in Figma, with a heavy emphasis on Variants and design system best practices.

The course covers topics like:

• Setting up design tokens and styles in Figma
• Creating Variant components for buttons, inputs, cards, and more
• Combining Variants into complete mobile app screen designs
• Prototyping and testing the final app flows

Along the way, Ahmet shares tons of pro tips and insights drawn from his years of industry experience. It‘s a fantastic resource for anyone looking to level up their Figma skills and design system thinking.

Conclusion

Figma Variants are a tremendously powerful tool for creating scalable, consistent, and flexible mobile app UI. By leveraging Variants in combination with other design system best practices, teams can streamline their design workflows, improve collaboration, and ultimately build better products faster.

But Variants are just the beginning. As the field of UI design continues to evolve, so too will the tools and techniques we use to create amazing user experiences. By staying curious, experimenting with new approaches, and continually refining our craft, we can all play a part in pushing the boundaries of what‘s possible.

So go forth and create some Variants! Your future self (and your users) will thank you.