At Poliigon there was a number of product projects that required up to map out user flows ahead of time. Sometimes solutions were easy to discover, but other times they were not. When working on these more complex flows, we quickly realised that we needed a robust solution.
The vision was simple: Let's create a user flow system that lets us create complex diagrams, without compromising the ability to brainstorm and experiment. As a stretch goal, we wanted the system to be useful to not only members of the product team, but also the engineering team.
To begin, I listed out all the different components that I would need to design to make up this new system. The only real challenge I saw about any of these components was the interconnecting arms, as I saw this as the main friction point in creating these designs quickly and easily.
I ended up modifying the arrows from this user flow template kit, making mostly cosmetic changes and producing a few different options I could use. I found this much easier to manage than the Autoflow plugin from the Figma community, as it allowed me full control over their style and position.
After I had designed up all the components, I initially set up some frames to house them. These eventually became autolayout blocks that would resize to however large your user flow became. This made the process of creating flows much faster and you didn't need to bother with resizing any frames to fit your design. The one downside I noticed after implementing this was that that you needed to lay out the flow boxes/modals in vertical autolayout grids instead of freely placing them to maintain a clean layout. This ended up being less of an issue as it had the side benefit of making sure the document had both vertical and horizontal consistency.
The main bonus of this system over other more manual solutions is that you can link individual screens to each stage of the flow diagram. This lets you fully visualise not only what the flow looks like, but also what the flow looks like in practice through UI.
This means that you can still implement user flows at the start of product/feature design process, but come back to them later in the project to link them to finished designs. It also lets you use the flow diagram as a real reference, making sure you don't miss any design work.
Once the user flow diagram is created, and the high-fidelity designs are linked, it is the perfect product to send over to developers. They have exact user flows to follow, and almost a checklist of screens to implement. The transition blocks also outline any specific interactions, providing clarity at all stages of the flow (including in between states).
The finished system has been very successful at Poliigon, implemented across many different complex projects. It really shines when solutions are convoluted and complicated, really letting users see the path to product success. The user flow system components are also part of the larger Voxel Design System at Poliigon, allowing us designers to create these user flow diagrams in any Figma document.
For some more detail about the user flow system and to see it in action, view my LinkedIn post about it here!
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