Every tool I use for design lives in either Figma or a browser tab. And yet there’s still a stack of printer paper on my desk every single day.
Paper isn’t faster. That’s not the point. When I’m working through the beginnings of a complex flow or a layout, sketching it out on paper does something that Figma doesn’t. It removes the temptation to make things look finished before they are. There’s no auto-layout, no component library, and no temptation to bury myself in the weeds. It’s just the idea, rough and unpolished.
This matters more than people think. Figma is great at making things look resolved, and sometimes that’s exactly what you don’t want early in a problem. When something looks done, people react to it like it’s done. You get feedback on execution instead of direction. Paper doesn’t have that problem. Nobody looks at a paper sketch and thinks it’s finished.
I also think less linearly with a pen in my hand. I’ll sketch 6 variations of the same screen in 10 minutes without overthinking any of them. On screen I tend to draw one or two, pick one, and run with it. With paper, I stay in divergent mode longer, which usually leads somewhere better.
A few specific moments where I almost always reach for paper:
- The first hour of a new problem: before I know what I’m solving, I don’t want my tools steering me in a direction.
- When I’m stuck: if I’ve been staring at the same Figma frame for too long, paper breaks the loop.
- When I need to communicate structure quickly: a rough sketch in a meeting moves faster than anything else.
I’m not saying go back to paper prototyping everything. Use the tools. But if your process goes straight from Jira ticket to Figma, you might be skipping something.