Case Study: Upskilling with Advanced Figma & Customized Coaching

EnergySage, a leading marketplace for solar energy installers, masters advanced Figma functionalities to increase efficiency and team-wide collaboration.

Emilyann Gachko
Emilyann Gachko
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Jan 27, 2025
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5
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Background

EnergySage is a leading online marketplace that connects homeowners with solar installers, offering multiple quotes to ensure competitive pricing and transparency. Their product team plays a pivotal role in ensuring a high-quality user experience for their customers. 

Members of EnergySage’s product design team recently decided to level up their skills by participating in our Advanced Figma course. The goal was to increase their command over Figma’s advanced features to become more efficient and collaborative in their workflow.

Challenge

Although EnergySage's design team was familiar with the basics of Figma, they were not fully utilizing the tool's complex functionalities, such as creating auto layouts, using components, and prototyping dynamically. The team needed advanced training to leverage Figma comprehensively and elevate their design processes to match the company's strategic goals.

“I came on board about a year and a half ago and I've been building up a team. It became apparent as I started getting into doing more high-level design work, and started pulling bits of the designer’s work from Figma, that they weren’t using all Figma has to offer, such as auto layout, the different ways you can prototype, stringing things together. And I thought learning those fundamentals would really help designers add real value right to the product design process”, shared Eric Sagalyn, the Head of Design at EnergySage who helped put together the training.

Image of EnergySage's site showcasing how it allows for users to easily compare solar energy providers in their area.
EnergySage's site allows for users to easily compare solar energy providers in their area.

Solution

EnergySage enrolled its design team in Designlab’s 4-week Advanced Figma course. To supplement the learning, EnergySage also added live, online coaching sessions with Blake Arnsdorff, Designlab mentor and Figma expert, to focus on continued learning with Figma’s advanced features, including prototyping. 

“As we move into 2025, we're really focused on delighting our users,” shared Eric. “Being able to prototype the interactions the way we want them, the way buttons should work, the way loading screens should work, and being able to show that to our engineering team and our PMs, is going to be hugely important to actually delivering.” 

"[Participating as a group] gave them a common core of understanding that they could talk about and have conversations about. And I think that that really drove them to cohere more as a team, which was wonderful.”

On the team participating in the training as a group, Eric also noted “[Participating team members] could talk about things that they did, and they met even without me to do the coursework together. It gave them a common core of understanding that they could talk about and have conversations about. And I think that that really drove them to cohere more as a team, which was wonderful.”

Exampled of how Designlab's Advanced Figma curriculum focuses on how to effectively utilize Figma's auto layout feature through examples, videos, and hands-on project work.
Advanced Figma focuses on how to effectively utilize Figma's auto layout feature through examples, videos, and hands-on project work.

Key Outcomes

  1. Streamlined Design Processes: By implementing auto layouts and reusable components, the team could work faster and more cohesively, significantly reducing the redundancy in their work.
  2. Enhanced Collaboration: The common understanding of Figma’s capabilities fostered by the course enabled designers to effectively share and troubleshoot files within the team, promoting a collaborative work culture.
  3. Increased Prototyping Efficiency: The focus on rapid prototyping allowed the team to test and refine ideas quickly, leading to more effective user testing and quicker product development cycles.
  4. Cross-Functional Integration: The improved prototyping skills led to better communication with the engineering and product management teams, making it easier to translate design concepts into actionable development plans.

“We sometimes work across multiple teams and people are responsible for different features and functionalities,” Eric added. “For instance, if we have messaging as one part of the platform, and somebody is building another page that shows quotes and they want to take the messaging component and build it into their prototype, they can easily now grab that messaging component from the designer who made it and reuse it without having to rebuild it. And that’s a huge step forward for us.” 

Conclusion

The Advanced Figma course and personalized coaching from Designlab significantly enhanced EnergySage's design team capabilities. Improved workflow efficiency, innovation, and execution of complex projects have resulted. Additionally, the team can now communicate ideas more effectively within their team and across departments, positioning EnergySage to better meet user needs and maintain an industry edge.

For our team, I have a hard time imagining us not having had this course. Now that I've seen how the team is operating with this new knowledge, I wish I had done it sooner.

Of the overall outcome, Eric shared “For our team, I have a hard time imagining us not having had this course. Now that I've seen how the team is operating with this new knowledge, I wish I had done it sooner.”

Interested in Designlab training for your design team? Learn more about our training options for design teams, or set up a time to talk with us one-on-one.

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