Adobe Inc agreed to buy cloud-based designer platform Figma for $20 billion on Thursday, raising investor concerns about the high price, causing the Photoshop maker's market value to fall by more than $30 billion.

The cash-and-stock transaction, the largest buyout of a privately held software startup, will give Adobe ownership of a company whose web-based collaborative design and brainstorming platform is widely used by tech firms such as Zoom Video Communications (ZM.O), Airbnb Inc, and Coinbase (COIN.O).

The $20 billion exit represented a significant victory for Figma's venture capital backers, which included Index Ventures, Greylock Partners, and Kleiner Perkins.

Adobe investors were less impressed, with the company's stock dropping 17% on Thursday. Many of them said they understood the strategy, but that Adobe overpaid for a company that was valued at around $10 billion in a private fundraising round a little more than a year ago.

Adobe stated that the transaction would be accretive of its earnings three years after they completed it. It said that Figma's total addressable market in design, whiteboarding, and collaboration would reach $16.5 billion by 2025.

Adobe is one of the most acquisitive companies in Silicon Valley, having purchased numerous businesses over the years to defend market share against competitors. Prior to Figma, the company's largest acquisition was Marketo for $4.75 billion in 2018. It has also acquired other companies in the last 24 months to focus on collaboration tools, such as video collaboration software Frame.io, social media marketing startup ContentCal, and collaboration tool maker Workfront.

Subject to regulatory approvals, the transaction is expected to close in 2023.

Figma, based in San Francisco, will continue to be led by co-founder and CEO Dylan Field and will operate independently. If either company cancels the agreement, they will be required to pay a $1 billion termination fee.

Meanwhile, according to Refinitiv data, Adobe's fourth-quarter revenue forecast of $4.52 billion fell short of the $4.58 billion predicted by analysts.

The company's third-quarter profit dropped nearly 6%, owing to a stronger US dollar and higher costs.

Empathizing and iterating may not be the first words that come to mind when you think about User Experience (UX), but they should be. After all, empathy is a prerequisite for understanding a user's behavior, even on a basic level. 

UX design is an approach to designing a product that focuses on the needs of users and the value they receive from using a product. More than just aesthetics, UX design considers how people actually use an interface before it's created or changed.

We place much attention on competitive advantage, creating new products, and satisfying current customers when it comes to delivering a good user experience. It is also important for businesses to consider how effective users are when interacting with their brand. User experience relies on understanding the users' emotions and desires, along with other aspects that involve interacting with an organization's products or systems. Empathy is one of the most potent tools in a UX designer's toolkit.

Iteration is an essential element of any product development process. All products must go through an undetermined amount of development cycles to land on the proverbial "sweet spot" in order to satisfy as many users as possible with their primary goal of becoming easy, efficient, and pleasurable to use closer to fruition. Iterating through actionable research is the only sure way to meet users' needs and see them happier and satisfied.

Some experts focus more on interaction design (how we interact with something), whereas others focus more on information architecture and patterns. It is a wide-open field with plenty of opportunities for those new to the industry.

Feel free to leave comments below and tell us about your UX journey.