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Zotero helps you collect, organize, and cite sources in one place. It generates citations in styles like MLA, APA, and Chicago. With its browser extension, you can save sources directly from websites.

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Just need to create a quick bibliography?

Zotero is a free, easy-to-use tool to help you collect, organize, annotate, cite, and share research.
Download
Available for Mac, Windows, Linux, and iOS

Just need to create a quick bibliography? Try ZoteroBib.

Collect with a click.

Zotero automatically senses research as you browse the web. Need an article from JSTOR or a preprint from arXiv.org? A news story from the New York Times or a book from a library? Zotero has you covered, everywhere.

Organize your way.

Zotero helps you organize your research any way you want. You can sort items into collections and tag them with keywords. Or create saved searches that automatically fill with relevant materials as you work.

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Zotero instantly creates references and bibliographies for any text editor, and directly inside Word, LibreOffice, and Google Docs. With support for over 10,000 citation styles, you can format your work to match any style guide or publication.

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Zotero can optionally synchronize your data across devices, keeping your files, notes, and bibliographic records seamlessly up to date. If you decide to sync, you can also always access your research from any web browser.

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Zotero lets you co-write a paper with a colleague, distribute course materials to students, or build a collaborative bibliography. You can share a Zotero library with as many people you like, at no cost.

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Zotero | Your personal research assistant

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Zotero is a free, easy-to-use tool to help you collect, organize, cite, and share research.

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Mendeley helps you organize, manage, and generate citations in styles like APA, MLA, and Chicago. It also creates bibliographies and suggests related research based on your library!

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Access your library, everywhere

Add papers directly from your browser with a few clicks or import any documents from your desktop. Access your library from anywhere. Windows, Mac, Linux and all browsers.

Learn about the library >

Easy referencing

Generate references, citations and bibliographies in a whole range of journal styles with just a few clicks.

Learn about citing >

Career development

250,000 science, technology and health jobs to advance your career.

Advance your career >

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Mendeley - Reference Management Software

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Add papers directly from your browser with a few clicks or import any documents from your desktop. Access your library from anywhere. Windows, Mac, Linux and all browsers. Learn about the library > Generate references, citations and bibliographies in a whole range of journal styles with just a few clicks.

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MyBib is a free citation generator that supports over 9,000 styles, including APA, MLA, and Chicago. It helps you quickly create citations for books, articles, and websites.

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What is MyBib?

MyBib is a free bibliography and citation generator that makes accurate citations for you to copy straight into your academic assignments and papers.

If you're a student, academic, or teacher, and you're tired of the other bibliography and citation tools out there, then you're going to love MyBib. MyBib creates accurate citations automatically for books, journals, websites, and videos just by searching for a title or identifier (such as a URL or ISBN).

Plus, we're using the same citation formatting engine as professional-grade reference managers such as Zotero and Mendeley, so you can be sure our bibliographies are perfectly accurate in over 9,000 styles -- including APA 6 & 7, Chicago, Harvard, and MLA 7 & 8.

Quick features:

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📖 MyBib - A New FREE APA, Harvard, & MLA Citation Generator

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Automatically create bibliographies, references, and citations in APA, MLA, Chicago, Harvard, and more with our fast and free citation generator.

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EasyBib helps you create citations and bibliographies in multiple styles. It also includes a plagiarism and grammar checker, making it great all-in-one tool for writing!

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EasyBib®: Free Bibliography Generator - MLA, APA, Chicago citation styles

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Automatic works cited and bibliography formatting for MLA, APA and Chicago/Turabian citation styles. Now supports MLA 9.

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Grammarly isn’t just for checking grammar—it also has a citation generator that quickly creates citations in APA, MLA, and Chicago styles, making it easy to format sources while you write.

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Grammarly makes AI writing convenient. Work smarter with personalized AI guidance and text generation on any app or website.

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Notion Desktop App for Mac & Windows | Notion

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Enjoy an infinitely flexible and adaptable workplace that optimizes around your personal and team needs. Download the Notion desktop app for Mac and Windows

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Google NotebookLM | AI Research Tool & Thinking Partner

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Meet NotebookLM, the AI research tool and thinking partner that can analyze your sources, turn complexity into clarity and transform your content.

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A simple Pomodoro Timer app that works on a desktop & mobile browser. Pomofucus will help you manage your time and let you focus on any tasks such as study, writing, or coding.

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Write, sketch and explore big ideas, then see where they take you.

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Relax with Calm, a simple mindfulness meditation app that brings clarity and peace of mind into your life

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Build self-love, nurture self-confidence, and manifest your desires with I Am.

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Foster self-love and self-acceptance while alleviating negative emotions with powerful, inspiring affirmations.

Select categories that best represent the areas of life you'd like to improve and practice deep, meaningful affirmations daily.

Make I Am yours with a custom background. Adjust reminders and install widgets to have your daily inspiration at your fingertips.

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This is an app everyone should have. It changes your thoughts, feelings, moods, and days. I Am helps me appreciate who I am and motivates me. I send daily affirmations to my teenage daughter.

I'm enjoying these daily affirmations during my self-reevaluation. They aid in my journey to connect healthier with myself, bringing abundance and helping me spread joy to others.

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Build self-love, nurture self-confidence, and manifest your desires with I Am. Scan this toget I am onyour phone Foster self-love and self-acceptance while alleviating negative emotions with powerful, inspiring affirmations. Select categories that best represent the areas of life you'd like to improve and practice deep, meaningful affirmations daily.

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Meditation and Sleep Made Simple - Headspace

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Live a healthier, happier, more well-rested life in just a few minutes a day with the Headspace app.

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I Love Hue - Out now on the App Store and Google Play

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A gentle journey into colour and perception.

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Waterllama: Water tracker app & drink water reminder

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Build your healthy hydration habit with the Waterllama app. Cute animal characters, cool widgets, motivating challenges, Apple Watch app and much more!

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How to Digital Detox: 8 Ways to Disconnect from Technology - THE SAGE

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A digital detox is a great way to reconnect with yourself & maintain a truly balanced lifestyle. Here are 8 ways to unplug & begin a digital detox.

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Finding Balance: Digital Detox in a Tech-Obsessed World

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While technology provides us with convenience and opportunities, it can also overwhelm us. We can find it difficult to truly connect with other people or disconnect from work and responsibilities.

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Life during the most connected era in human history has many positives — faraway family members are just a FaceTime session away, and the answer to nearly any question that pops into your mind is at your fingertips.

But too much technology — whether it’s time spent on smartphones, social media, or in front of other digital screens — can have unintended consequences.

“Excessive technology use can take away time from activities such as sleep, exercise, and socializing, which are all important for well-being,” says Carol Vidal, MD, PhD, MPH, an assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore.

A review published in June 2020 in Dialogues in Clinical Neuroscience noted that frequent technology use has been linked to heightened attention-deficit symptoms, impaired emotional and social intelligence, technology addiction, social isolation, impaired brain development, and disrupted sleep in some cases.

RELATED: Are the Stresses of Social Media Too Much for Teens and Young Adults?

Technology is not inherently bad, says Madeleine George, PhD, a public health research analyst at RTI International, a nonprofit research institute, in Durham, North Carolina. “Technology and social media can have positive or negative effects, depending on what someone is doing online and who they are.”

Other research suggests, for example, that social media use can help you build and maintain connections when you’re more actively interacting with others, but tends to have the opposite effect when people use it more passively, such as when scrolling through an Instagram or Facebook feed without interacting with the content, according to a review published in February 2018 in Current Directions in Psychological Science.

You’ll know you’re overdoing it if technology interferes with your work, relationships, mental and physical health, or finances, according to Brittany Becker, a licensed mental health counselor and the director of the Dorm (a holistic treatment center for mental health, substance use, and life coaching) in New York City.

RELATED: Are the Virtual Interactions of Social Media Busting or Boosting Your Stress?

Dr. Vidal agrees. “When something is consuming a lot of your thoughts and conditioning your behaviors, and when it is interfering with your life — like your job or schoolwork or your relationships — it may be time to consider cutting back on its use,” Vidal says.

Scaling back may have positive effects.

A study published in 2021 by the Libyan Journal of Medicine found that students who completed a social media detox reported positive changes to their mood, sleep, and anxiety. And another study, published February 2020 in Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, found that women who quit Instagram reported higher life satisfaction and more positive affect than women who continued using the social media app. (It should be noted that both studies were small.)

7 Ways to Cut Back on Your Tech Use (Without Pulling the Plug Entirely)

For most people, ditching technology altogether isn’t going to happen. “Cutting down seems like a more realistic approach,” Vidal says.

To do this, make a plan, Becker says. Pinpoint your unhealthy habits and then decide which ones you want to change. “I think it is really helpful to get a clear picture of your tech use and review the time spent on your phone,” Becker says. “How that time is divided up with different applications is a great place to start, and then you can identify which areas to begin to limit.”

Dr. George suggests cutting back on anything that makes you feel worse or stressed, or that takes away from your life rather than adding to it. And remember, what constitutes healthy technology use varies from person to person. “There’s no magic amount of screen time that is good or bad,” George says. “You have to find out what works for you and your family.”

Here are seven strategies to help you manage your technology use and experiment with your own personal digital detox.

1. Schedule Time Away From Screens Throughout the Day

If you work at a computer, it’s hard to avoid screens, which means it’s all the more important to prioritize breaking away. Set up time in your calendar or with an alarm on your phone to remind you to go for a walk or to eat lunch away from your desk, Becker says. And remember to leave your phone behind.

2. Take Periodic Breaks From Technology

Breaks can reduce stress, particularly among heavy users, Vidal says. She says more research is needed on digital abstinence before there can be specific recommendations on what this looks like and how long it should last. But it could mean joining others who are committed to disconnecting through events like those run by Digital Detox (a company that leads tech-free retreats) or deleting problematic apps from your phone, temporarily or for good.

“If the Facebook app is something that you click on often and find yourself scrolling through for long periods of time, getting rid of the app and having to go through the search browser takes an extra step and allows for a moment to pause and decide if it is a good time to engage in this activity,” Becker says.

3. Downgrade Your Phone

If you’re having trouble staying present, eliminate the distractions by replacing your smartphone with a simple cell phone that cannot support apps. “It can absolutely be helpful to downgrade from a smartphone if that is possible,” says Jennifer Kelman, a licensed clinical social worker with JustAnswer based in Boca Raton, Florida. In fact, this is what she has for her children. “They have simple call or text features and that’s it,” she says.

4. Turn Off Your Phone at a Specific Time

Try powering down before dinner and until the next morning. Or, Apple users can enable Do Not Disturb, which silences alerts, notifications, and calls. Becker says it’s a good idea to take advantage of the tools that are built into your devices.

5. Adjust Your Phone Settings to Limit Certain Apps

iPhone users can set limits with Screen Time (find it in your phone’s settings) and schedule Downtime, when only phone calls or specific apps are allowed and specified apps have a time limit. Digital Wellbeing works similarly for Google devices. People who didn't use these features were more likely to experience problematic smartphone use and worse well-being than those who did use them, according to an analysis published August 2020 in Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking.

RELATED: How to Recognize When a Self-Care Practice Is No Longer Self-Care

6. Create No-Phone Areas

Kelman believes that setting limits on certain apps doesn’t always work. Instead, she says to remove yourself from device use completely. Banning phones and screens from the bedroom, for instance, can keep screens from interfering with your sleep, Becker says. And if you have to go into a different room or part of your home to use a device, it may deter you from mindlessly scrolling.

7. Consider Reaching Out to a Mental Health Professional

“We are all using technology constantly, and therefore it can be hard to always know the difference between having a problem or not,” Becker says. If your behaviors with or feelings regarding technology or certain apps and sites begin to interfere with your daily functioning, it may be time to seek professional help, Becker says. Kelman adds that if your self-esteem plummets or you find yourself dealing with anxiety or depression, it’s time to talk to someone.

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It may be unrealistic to pull the plug entirely on your technology. But these strategies can help you get into healthier use patterns.

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Have you ever opened your email inbox to check for one message and wound up so caught up in the onslaught of new messages that you forgot why you logged on in the first place? Have you ever ended up spending way more time than you planned to checking your Twitter or Facebook feed? Does it happen all the time?

There's research on both sides of the argument as to whether or not social media use contributes to or helps protect against stress. But many experts who study it agree that being more intentional about your virtual habits - and being more mindful about how much time you're spending on your tech devices - is usually to your benefit.

Studies suggest, for example, that more intentional use of social networking websites (when you're using it to strengthen personal relationships with people you know in real life) may benefit well-being, while using these online tools in a more passive, non-connection-forming way ("Facebook stalking" your ex, for instance) may not, according to a 2017 review published in the journal Current Direction in Psychological Science.

"If we're looking at long-term ways to support our self-care efforts, then it's even more important to look for ways to use technology in a more conscious, mindful way," says Alex Soojung-Kim Pang, a business consultant based in Menlo Park, California, and author of The Distraction Addiction and Rest: Why You Get More Done When You Work Less.
RELATED: How to Start a Self-Care Routine RELATED: Self-Care Tips for Taking Care of You During the Pandemic
You don't have to delete your social media accounts and go for days on end without looking at a screen, he explains. For most of us, that's probably not even realistic considering work responsibilities and being able to connect with friends and family we don't live with (and the current health crisis that has replaced many of our in-person interactions with virtual ones).

It's about being more mindful about when and why you're reaching for your smartphone, laptop, or other devices, so you can be pickier about choosing to do so. "Focus on usage that makes you feel uplifted and informed, rather than seeing tech as some necessary evil or distraction habit," Pang says.

It's this kind of mindset shift that Jennifer Ashton, MD, chief medical correspondent for Good Morning America and ABC News, decided to try out for herself and write about in her book, The Self-Care Solution: A Year of Becoming Happier, Healthier, and Fitter - One Month at a Time. She felt like she was fighting against her devices, rather than them working for her, according to her book.

"Going off the grid entirely isn't an option for me. Ever," she noted. "But when I began to think about my day-to-day tech consumption, I knew I had a problem. ... The worst of it was that I knew my phone was interfering with my personal relationships and preventing me from enjoying the moment, noticing my surroundings, and fully appreciating my food, family, and friends."

Dr. Ashton spent a month focused on being more deliberate about when and how she used her digital devices. Here are some tips from her, Pang, and others about how to kick start your own habit of more mindfully using your digital devices:

1. Become Aware of When and How You Use Your Devices

Any repeated behavior creates habit loops. For example, you likely follow the same sequence when brushing your teeth or making your morning coffee. They're one way the brain automates actions to be more efficient, explains Loretta Graziano Breuning, PhD, author of Habits of a Happy Brain, who is based in Oakland, California.
RELATED: What Is Mindfulness - and How Can It Help Your Health and Wellness
But these loops can sometimes switch our behavior into autopilot mode. You might reach for your phone whenever you find yourself waiting in a line, check email before getting out of bed in the morning, or open Instagram whenever you get a notification. "Creating awareness of these automatic habits is helpful, even if you choose not to change anything," says Dr. Breuning. "You'll have a greater sense of control, just from being more conscious of your behavior."

If it's an option, take a single day "off" from checking your email, social media accounts, and using other devices; and simply notice what happens, Pang says. That's when you'll see how you're really using your tech.

2. Make a Plan

As you would with any behavior change - from starting a workout routine to changing up your meal prep - a solid first step is setting some specific intentions and goals, suggests Tanya Dalton, a productivity expert in Asheville, North Carolina, and author of The Joy of Missing Out.

"To create healthy boundaries and better habits, it's always good to cultivate a deeper sense of purpose, and make a plan," she says. "That's what allows you to take ownership of how you're spending your time."

Your plan for more intentional tech use will probably look different from that of a friend's or family member's. What's important is that it's the right plan with the right goals for you. Maybe your plan includes a maximum amount of time you want to spend per day looking at a screen, or maybe it's a matter of a certain number of "checks" of social media each day. "Do what makes you feel nourished, and change your usage when you stop feeling that way," says Dalton.

3. Use Tech to Control Your Tech

Consider apps that help you tame distractions, such as Dewo - which blocks all notifications and triggers "Do Not Disturb" mode on chat apps. Or try FocusMe, an app that lets you block specific sites or apps (like Facebook and Instagram) for certain periods of time. The app also allows you to set reminders for specific tasks and activities, like going for a walk or taking a mindfulness break.

And purposefully set up your phone to make it less distracting. Turn off notifications that might prompt you to open an app without thinking. Move app icons to the second page of your home screen, so they're a little bit more difficult to navigate to and open. Try putting your phone on airplane mode during meals or when socializing.

4. Think Differently

"Instead of seeing [your devices] as a hindrance to 'real life,' ask yourself: What do I want to learn?" Pang says. They're tools that can increase creativity, boost social connections, streamline your workflow, and teach you new skills, he explains. Redefine how you think about technology: "What can I do today that will be made easier by using this tool? Focus on that, instead of aspects that are just killing time."

And then use technology for those purposes.

5. Prepare to Be Fidgety

Yes, you might find yourself at a loss for what to do when you're not on your phone, as Ashton found when she started limiting her usage. In her book, she describes how setting a better, screen-free evening routine meant she had plenty of free time - and it actually made her feel uneasy at first.

"I felt out of sorts, like I wasn't doing something that I should be," she notes in her book. But after recognizing this newfound time, she quickly found ways to fill it that felt more rewarding: she logged more steps, she spent time with her kids, and practiced being more present.

The bottom line: Technology isn't all good or all bad. It all comes down to how you feel when you're using that tech, Pang says. Do you put your tech down feeling irritated and drained? Or are you energized and appreciative? Aim for the latter and you'll be on the right track.

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How to Get Into a 'Mindful Tech' Self-Care Habit | Everyday Health | Everyday Health

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Have you ever opened your email inbox to check for one message and wound up so caught up in the onslaught of new messages that you forgot why you logged on in the first place? Have you ever ended up spending way more time than you planned to checking your Twitter or Facebook feed?

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Self-Care for the Modern World: Balancing Technology and Mental Well-Being — Sulis Skincare & Spa

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In this digital age, technology has made our lives so much easier but it has also taken up much of our time and attention. We’re glued to our screens, checking notifications, emails, social media feeds, and browsing the web without even realizing it. And while technology has given us so much, it can

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How to use the NEW Microsoft Teams: Beginner's Tutorial

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How to use the NEW Microsoft Teams :Beginner's Tutorial

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Let's face it: we've all run into problems working on group projects. Coordinating meeting times in-person or figuring out where to upload files can be a huge hassle.

Enter Microsoft Teams. In Teams, group members can collaborate on projects in many ways. Here are some of the top ways you can work together in Teams.

Note: Some of these features may not be available in Microsoft Teams depending on your school or district's settings.

1. Collaborate in the Conversations tab

The Posts tab in any team's General channel acts a little bit like a social media thread, but for getting work done.

Start conversations and get people's attention by selecting New conversation and @mentioning their names in the Compose box before posting your message. Select Attach to share files, pictures, and anything else your group needs to reference for the project. Everything you add will be automatically saved in the Files tab of your channel.

2. Create your own team

Microsoft Teams isn't just for the classroom. Organize your own study groups by inviting your classmates to a team. Select + Join or create team > Create a new team and choose the Other team type. The app will walk you through a few steps to name your team and invite some members. From there, you're set!

3. Group video calls in Teams

Not able to meet up together in-person as a group? No problem! Select the audio or video call icons from a group chat to launch a call right now. You'll be able to share screens and discuss them as you chat, too.

4. Collaborate on documents

Microsoft 365 file types like Word, PowerPoint, and Excel can be coedited right from Teams.

Select a document to open it, then select Edit in Teams. Select the Start conversation button to move your document over and start a conversation to the right of your file. Exchange ideas there while looking at the document together.

5. Work on notes together in OneNote in Teams

If your class team is using a linked OneNote Class Notebook, navigate to the class and select Class Notebook. There, you and your classmates can brainstorm together in the Collaboration Space. Any channels your educator has added to the team will show up as sections in the Collaboration Space, too.

If you're working in your own team, go ahead and select Add + > OneNote in a channel to add a new tab and create a OneNote notebook for your whole team to share.

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Learn how to collaborate on school projects using conversations, video calls, and shared files in Microsoft Teams.

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Track the moving parts with Microsoft To Do - Microsoft Support

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Learn how to use the Microsoft To-Do app to track homework due dates, projects, and any other list.

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Collaboration-it's hard to define, but easy to feel. When the right people get together with the tools they need, conversations flow more easily, ideas grow faster, and work just seems to work. We built FigJam, our online whiteboard, to help teams collaborate and work better together across projects, disciplines, and geographies.

In this guide, I'll walk you through best practices and share strategies for collaborating in FigJam throughout the entire design process-from your first brainstorm to your final review.

The brainstorming phase of a project is an exciting one. But underneath that blank slate feeling, the key to a successful brainstorm is structure and preparation. Here are a few steps to organize your brainstorm and ensure that your team is empowered by possibility, not overwhelmed by it.

First, you need to define the purpose of your brainstorm and arrive on a few goals. Being crisp about what you're looking to get out of the session will help you choose the right template, or create one of your own. To get you started, we'll walk you through a few templates from the Figma Community: Mind Map, Crazy 8s, and Brainstorms.

Mind Map is great for visualizing concepts and organizing inspiration. In this exercise, your team groups images inspired by a specific prompt and comes up with keywords that highlight emerging themes.

In Crazy 8s, your team has eight minutes to come up with eight ideas for solving a given problem. For example, you might prompt exploration with the question, "how might we make this experience delightful for our users?" The goal is to quickly generate ideas without getting too caught up in details or practical implementation. At the end of eight minutes, each teammate shares their ideas and discusses the ones they'd like to explore further.

This Brainstorms template encourages each participant to individually come up with as many ideas as possible. At the end of the session, the group comes back together to deliberate and identify common themes.

To help your brainstorm session run smoothly, it's important to set up your FigJam file in advance. A well-prepared file should give everyone the context they need to be successful, including the purpose of the brainstorm, the agenda for the session, and instructions for each activity. While many templates include some of these elements, you should customize them to fit your needs. You can also save setup time by sharing a link to the FigJam file in advance.

If you have multiple exercises in a brainstorm, we recommend creating a separate space and time estimate for each to help your team stay on track. If the FigJam file is already organized, it'll be easy for others to reference it later and navigate through the file independently.

Now it's time for the brainstorm. As the facilitator, it's your job to keep the session moving and provide guidance along the way. Your participants should be doing most of the talking, sharing their ideas on stickies, drawing with the pencil tool, or pasting images and designs into FigJam. They can vote on ideas with stamps and stickers, or react to ideas in real time. Throughout the workshop, you can use FigJam's built-in timer, audio chat, and cursor chat to communicate with your team without switching between FigJam and video conferencing tools-that way, you don't distract them from the task at hand.

In the meantime, your participants should be engaging in conversations and letting their ideas flow. Participants can then vote on ideas as they're being presented.

Depending on what you do with the ideas collected in your brainstorm, it might help to embed the FigJam file in your project documentation, export stickies populated with your brainstorm ideas to a CSV, or copy it over to a Figma design file.

Diagramming bridges the gap between ideation and implementation. It helps you get organized before you get going. While it might be tempting to skip this step, seeing everything laid out in a single place with connections and interactions can make the entire design process smoother.

To build a diagram in FigJam, drag in a few shapes from the toolbar, click the connector tool, and draw the connections between them. From there, customize your diagrams with different shapes, colors, strokes, and text. Once you have the hang of it, you can speed up the process by using the "+" icon to add more nodes with pre-built connectors.

Now that we've covered the basics, let's dive into some specific use cases: sitemaps and user flows.

Sitemaps allow designers to think through the information architecture of a product at the highest level. This includes the priority and organization of your content, as well as the links that support user journeys (more on that below). A solid sitemap ensures that navigating your product is intuitive and that all of your content aligns with the product's main goals.

Many designers are already familiar with building sitemaps, but what makes this process great in FigJam is that it's built for collaboration. You can create sitemaps in real time alongside your product partners to investigate a new feature, think through high-level architecture, and map out specific feature interactions. Having your sitemaps so close to your designs has the added benefit of providing guidance as you develop your final screens in Figma. As your designs evolve, you can continue to update the sitemap diagram with your updates, linking specific Figma frames to nodes in your diagram. Alternatively, you can also export your sitemap as a JPG, PNG, or PDF to use in slides or documentation.

FigJam is also a great place to develop and test user flows, which map out the specific steps a user will take to navigate through your product. When building a new flow in FigJam, use shapes to represent individual product screens and connectors to represent user actions. You can further organize your diagram by color coding your shapes and connectors-like using color to indicate a screen's depth in the site or a related feature. Similarly, you can use shapes to group your nodes and communicate their relationship with each other. Make sure you include a legend for your diagram to clarify what different colors and shapes signify.

After building out your diagram, you can also use FigJam's text, stamps, and stickers to highlight specific parts of the user's journey-for example, pain points, moments of success, or places where further design work is needed.

Figma and FigJam are both great places to hold design reviews and solicit feedback. Depending on your goals for the session, there can be a few key advantages to moving your designs to FigJam.

Altitude. By bringing your designs into FigJam, you can signal that you're looking to keep things high level. Whereas in Figma, you might be tempted to design live or move components around in real time, FigJam elevates the conversation to keep things on track.

Reactions. FigJam has tools like stickies, stickers, and stamps to help you react the same way you might if you were gathered around a whiteboard with your team.

Cleanliness. When you hold reviews in FigJam, you don't have to worry about cluttering your primary design file with feedback, doodles, or edits. This way, you can keep Figma as your single source of truth for designs.

Artifacts. FigJam can easily function as a centralized place for artifacts of the design process, from brainstorming and ideation through feedback and iteration. You can even embed your FigJam files in other documentation tools such as Coda, Notion, and Dropbox Paper.

Much like leading a brainstorming session, the success of a review process often hinges on its structure and format. As a result, the steps are quite similar:

Before you start putting pen to paper, it's important to know what you want out of the session. Consider the goal of the review, the kind of feedback you want, and the audience you'll be speaking to (eg. executives, designers, engineers, etc). These factors will all influence how you conduct the review session and the type of materials you will need. For example, if you want to do a review where your team generates new ideas based on their feedback, you might consider building in a whiteboarding space for each person.

Next up, you'll want to get your FigJam file organized and ready for review. You can bring the designs you want critiqued from Figma into FigJam by copying and pasting, and communicate the flow of your screens using FigJam's connectors.

Using components can help standardize the format in which you collect your feedback and lower the barrier to entry for participants to submit feedback. This also has the added benefit of reducing the impulse for participants to get distracted by things like colors or font size. Alternatively, if you only want certain types of feedback on specific parts of the flow, you might create a custom feedback card component that participants can fill out.

To make a component for FigJam, simply build it in Figma, publish the library, and then add it into the components tab in FigJam. If you build components with auto layout in Figma, they will still resize responsively in FigJam. You can also switch between different variants in FigJam.

You can use a component to populate important background information (as pictured below) or use FigJam's text and hyperlink features to add descriptions and link out to relevant documentation, prototypes, and design files.

Once your feedback session is structured to your liking, it's time to bring your team into the fold. As a facilitator, you can, again, use FigJam's built-in timer, audio chat, and cursor chat, to communicate with your team seamlessly. Your participants can leave feedback in any way they want-doodles, stickies, text, stamps, and components are all in play. The pre-built stickers in FigJam can be particularly fun to use when providing feedback or highlighting certain aspects of the work.

Before ending the session (or immediately following), it's important to align on decisions and next steps. This way your team has a clear direction as you continue iterating on your designs in Figma.

Figma and FigJam work side by side to make collaboration seamless throughout the entire design process. With tools that keep ideas and conversations flowing, FigJam makes the brainstorming, diagramming, and feedback phases easy and fun. And, there are all kinds of use cases beyond the ones I shared here-teams have told us how they use FigJam for team bonding, user testing, sketching, games, and more.

Check out more templates to get started.

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Best practices for working together, from brainstorm to ship

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Before you start FigJam is available on any team or plan Use FigJam from anywhere with the FigJam for iPad app Explore FigJam files FigJam is an online collaboration tool you and your team can…