Finding a forever home for FigPals

What happens when you give a rock two eyes and a smile? Suddenly, a compression of sediment transforms into a pet—something to nurture, dote on, and connect to. We saw this in the 1970s with the pet rock fad; in the 1990s, there was the Tamagotchi obsession; and for two weeks in April, FigPals pulled at our heartstrings and brought joy to our work.

FigPals are companions that you can create, customize, and name in all Figma products. There are over 9,000 possible variations, from a blue puffer fish with a leaf hat to a piece of toast with a beanie. Whatever form your FigPal takes, it will follow your cursor and allow you to interact with other pals in the file.

FigPals are photogenic and eager to pose for photobooth snaps that can be saved as a keepsake.

“Many designers spend a majority of their work day staring at Figma files, and it can get lonely and repetitive,” says Product Designer Galaxia Wu, who designed FigPals. “We thought it would be nice for people to have their own little buddies in Figma to keep them company.”

The nostalgia factor

We introduced FigPals to the world on April 1, which is known around here as April Fun Day. Rather than spending the day on stunts and pranks, Figma embraces this yearly ritual by tapping into the whimsical side of work, often through a nostalgic lens (last year, we released old-school cursors). Nostalgia runs deep at Figma; our Co-founder and CEO Dylan Field often cites Neopets as one of his early product inspirations. That spirit of nostalgia is how we ended up with a promo video that looks like this:

We partnered with Night Shift, a creative production house that brought to life the wackiest of videos, inspired by ads for iconic toys like Furby. Head of Social Yosub Kim says, “The goal was for it to feel like a '90s commercial you’d watch over and over. We wanted it to be fresh, zany, a tiny bit unhinged, vintage but modern.” Just like our FigPals.

Brought to you by the power of play

The most popular pal is the pink cat with the heart speech bubble—in, fact 13% of all saved FigPals are cats.

FigPals began as an experiment at Maker Week, our annual tradition where Figmates are encouraged to spend an entire week exploring projects outside of their normal work. The unstructured, spontaneous nature of Maker Week allows us to fully lean into one of our core values: play.

At Maker Week 2023, Galaxia, who was an intern at the time, came up with the idea for Figmagotchi, Tamagotchi-inspired creatures that Figma users could raise in their files by feeding them sticky notes. The following year, another group iterated on this concept by creating FigPets, pixelated pets that ran around file toolbelts. The seeds of these projects ultimately sprouted into the plan to fully build out FigPals for a limited release.

A small group of Figmates across engineering, product, and design came together to design and build FigPals, iterating quickly toward a working v1. And while the pals alone are inherently fun, the team didn’t stop there—they sprinkled a number of easter eggs throughout the experience, like the ability to feed FigPals layers and nodes, or surprise them by detaching components.

“I first got into programming by making fun stuff on the web,” says Noah Finer, a software engineer who worked on FigPals. “Having the opportunity to build out FigPals brought me back to that childlike feeling of flow utilizing my engineering skills to make something incredible.”

The FigPal frenzy

In the week since we introduced these delightful companions, users have saved over 1.5 million FigPals. And we're happy to report that they're well cared for; users have fed their pals over 250,000 times.

There are some unique FigPals out there, too: five pals have been saved as the only existing permutation of their model, color, and accessory.

Community members have expressed their love for FigPals from all corners of the internet:

The bonds between Figma community members and their FigPals quickly became very real. As Noah says, “There was a moment in development where I finally made the red snake follow my cursor around, and I kept it on for the rest of the day. When I started seeing myself literally becoming attached to this creation, I knew we had built something special.”

The user who’s designed the most pals has currently saved 210 of them.

Galaxia echoes that sentiment: “It's really heartwarming to see how many people can relate to this intense feeling of affection for what's ultimately just a collection of pixels.” Yosub adds, “There have also been people who have said they modeled their FigPal after their own pets, and that’s incredibly touching. That’s how you know the community really loves them.”

FigPals live on in sticker packs

As the fun came to a close, we saw a groundswell of support for more time with FigPals:

There’s even a petition—over 2,000 signatures strong at the time of writing—calling for FigPals to become a permanent part of Figma files. This overwhelming support led us to extend our FigPals’ presence by an extra week, but we knew that wasn’t enough. In response to the community, we’ve created a dedicated space to forever commemorate and admire them in a new form: our FigPal sticker pack.

Add FigPal stickers to your Figma files as a reminder of the good times you shared over the past two weeks. And if you’re attending Config this year, keep an eye out for a special FigPal surprise.