Case Study: University of California, Berkeley achieves accessible, collaborative design education with Figma

How Figma Transformed This Berkeley Design Class

The University of California, Berkeley’s CS 160 course (An Introduction to Human‑Computer Interaction) struggled to teach digital design at scale: students came from different OS environments (Linux, Windows, Mac), some lacked laptops, and teaching tools like Adobe required steep training. To solve access and collaboration problems, the school adopted Figma’s collaborative, cloud‑based design application — free for students and usable on any computer.

Figma’s real‑time multi‑user editing, built‑in prototyping, version control and in‑context commenting let students learn the tool in about an hour and focus on design principles instead of software mechanics. As a result, teams became more collaborative (everyone could contribute to wireframes and prototypes), TAs could leave targeted feedback directly in files, and class projects iterated faster — outcomes Berkeley attributes directly to Figma’s ease of use and accessibility.

University of California, Berkeley