CONFIG 2024

Top Takeaways

Andrew
+ AI's here to stay and it will affect the entire product development workflow. We will have to adapt.
+ The creation and maintenance of our design system are extremely inefficient and unrefined. Other orgs have already achieved with success what we're striving to. We need improved operational leadership and collaboration to get this done.
+ Creating space to explore farfetched ideas will help us to innovate and not grow stale. It's easy to rinse and repeat and expect success until success doesn't come—then we're behind.

Su
+ looking to nature for inspiration, changing perspective
+ design should show personality, and have a personal touch (not for all cases)
+ Guam red rice is fire

Sarah
+ Figma is actively listening to their user's pain points and they have developed so many new features over the past few years.
+ It is almost impossible to stop the involvement and development of AI in design tools.
+ The gap between developers and ux designers are getting smaller!

Aye
+ How design thinking can be applied to everyday things (Eames sessions with borscht story)
+ With marketing, the purpose should be to entertain than promote, personal connection over polished content (building for and with gen z)
+ How to leave fingerprints/a human touch to the digital world (designing for everything)
+ Advocating for something is all about the pitch (advocating and designing for human needs)

Cat
+ There's so many fun plugins I have yet to try
+ It's important to find a balance between the hustle of doing the work, the reflection and the celebration of team's accomplishments
+ Jenny Arden surfaced a quote from John Hoke: nobody remembers a deadline or a budget
+ They remember how good the work was
+ Matt D Smith: failure still provides growth, opportunities and learnings; failure is not just inevitable but invaluable; celebrate the flaws, it might not change the world but it might change your world
+Replika: focus on building a future where AI complements human interaction not substitutes it
+ Tregg Frank has an amazing formula for pitching accessibility; Designers are supposed to have empathy but we lack it, if we don't consider this audience; Accessibility is just user experience
+ The Browser Company: Don't be afraid to retreat from the world for a while and see what comes in silence
+ Lane Patrick - great product teams learn by making, not talking; Create cathedrals, not bricks - https://coda.io/blog/product-teams/principles-of-great-product-teams/cathedrals

Philip
Was a litttleeee underwhelming this year a whole. Updates felt a little lackluster compared to variables last year and component props the year before. Also very disappointed that there are no updates to variables from last year which still feels a half baked and is still in beta after a year. Tons of limitations still and buggy but feels like they abandoned it for more trendy (still half baked) features.

Team dinner – CHamoru Food

Highs

Andrew
+ Spending time with the team
+ Lots of quality of life improvements in Figma

Su
Definitely watching the opening keynote live! It was so thrilling and exciting to see Dylan unveil the new launches one after another, and the crowd's reactions and cheers made it even better.

Sarah
Suggest Auto-layout, Code Connect, responsive view, and Figma Slides (FLIDES) excited me from Config this year. Learning auto-layout was such a big learning curve for me even after using figma for a few years, so this is truly great to see. In order to make every design to flow well and be nested seamlessly, designers must still learn how to use auto-layout, but I think this would be a great introduction for beginner figma users to click through and try. I believe that code connect and responsive view will help and encourage designers and developers to collaborate even more. This is something that I needed when I was working with developers in a team! I am just now getting into front-end development, so being able to see the code in real-time in figma will also help me understand how each code lines get transferred into design on the screen. Finally, FLIDES! This is a game changer.

Aye
I am excited about using the new features such as suggest auto layer and rename layers. One session I particularly enjoyed was "In defense of an old pixel" by Marcin Wichary. I learned a great deal about pixel fonts and it was amazing how exciting and engaging the talk was.

Cat
Overall I felt like the talks I attended were much more inspiring than last year's - structure was solid, subjects were relevant, presentation skills were amazing.

Philip
Feature updates were fun.

Lows

Andrew
+ Overcrowded, long lines.
+ Still no access to the new Figma features.

Su
I felt really drained by the second day. Didn't help that the coffee lines were super long and it was a hassle to go out and go thru the security line to get coffee outside.

Sarah
Figma's generative AI prompt—I was already anticipating AI to be involved, but I didn't think they would include a prompt tool. I do believe that this tool won't be extremely effective to the point of replacing designer's roles in many industries since Framer also includes a generative AI prompt tool and it generates similar designs repeatedly. However, when watching the livestream, Figma AI seemed to be much more thorough in terms of including design systems and even auto-layouts in the generated design. It may be helpful for beginner designers to gain inspiration and start learning faster, but I do fear that the principles of art and design may get lost over time as AI tools get heavily trained and generate complex designs. Art and design are subjects that are so incredibly human and reflect empathy, communication, and perspectives. I believe that designers and artists should still gather inspirations from art around the world. Strangers that we meet at the street, movies, books, architecture, nature, conversations, travel, and more! Online tools such as pinterest, behance, and dribble have amassed uncountable amounts of resources and I do love them so much and use them almost everyday, but at the core of my design philosophy, I find so much more value from doing activities that make us human. I think many designs will end up looking the same if we solely depend on online tools. I went off a tangent a little; I think if AI is used well, designers can grow even more and utilize the tool to extend our capabilities but I am not so happy about generative prompts. (Adobe's Generative AI tool also concerns me.)

Aye
The lines were ridiculously long and the amount of people was a little overstimulating.

Cat
The lines and the lack of coffee abundance. It was a design conference after all?!

Philip
Web experience felt like a second thought. Tons of rescheduling and buggy/laggy video streams which wasnt communicated. There was a chat experience where everyone complained and then they removed that in day 2.

Surprises

Andrew
Overcrowded, long lines. Talks were great, but felt like the operation of Config took a step back.

Su
By the line to get all the freebies 😆 and to even get inside the figma store

Sarah
FLIDES! Very surprised that they developed an entirely new way of making slides in figma. I expected them to include presentation notes, but very happy with this feature. I do think it won't immediately convert Google Slides users to convert to Figma, but this is extremely useful for existing users and kudos to Figma for considering how so many different users from different industries are using Figma for presentations! Loveee the addition of clickable prototype.

Aye
I was not expecting Figma Slides as one of their new features/products but it was a nice surprise. I'm excited to start using it! I was also surprised by how 'normal' the name was. I was expecting something a little more creative like figjam.

Cat
Figma UI Redesign was a surprise for me. It's great to see them put effort into making the platform more approachable and immersive when it comes to editing.

Philip
Didn't expect a UI redesign which I'm a big fan of