A Q&A with Figma's VP of Product

Image from www.figma.com on 2021-08-14 at 1.37.58 PM.png

Since we launched FigJam back in April, teams having been using it to grow all kinds of ideas into great designs. We recently caught up with Figma's VP of Product, Yuhki Yamashita, to hear what it was like to build FigJam and how things have changed since then. Here, he reflects on the evolving role of design and product management, what it means to welcome “non-designers” into the process, and the future of FigJam.

  1. ​Stretching the product​
  2. ​Engineering, design, and product management​
  3. ​Embracing the mess​
  1. Stretching the product

    When we’re thinking about where to take our product next, we actually take a lot of inspiration from our customers and the Figma Community, to see how they’re stretching our product in interesting or unexpected ways. We saw this happening in the early days of the pandemic. Our users were starting to use Figma for everything from brainstorming ideas to running team warm-up activities, to even putting on social events for people to get to know each other. We saw a lot of use cases that got us thinking.

    1. ​All sorts of ways to use the machine​
    2. ​Hacking is the opposite of marketing​
    3. ​In ways you didn't anticipate​
    4. ​This tactile form of doodling​
  2. Engineering, design, and product management

    The boundary between engineering, design, and product management is blurring. Some of us used to have a mental model in which roles and responsibilities dictated how things work—that designers do one thing and engineers do another, for example. Increasingly, more people are crossing team lines to problem solve together...Now, it’s not about who “owns” what—it’s more of a collective endeavor. And the roles have become more interlocked, and I think that’s fundamentally a good thing.

  3. Embracing the mess

    Design is non-linear. At Figma, we often talk about “embracing the mess,” and that really means leaning into the chaos and complexity that makes the design process what it is. Even once you have the seedling of an idea, you need to explore and iterate, then pull back and evaluate to see what’s working and what’s not. Sometimes you’ll scrap an idea after a brainstorm session, and other times you’ll get pretty far with a concept, but still need different perspectives and input to move forward.

    1. ​The Design Squiggle​