Dylan Field live at Config: Intuition, simplicity, and the future of design

0:02Today, I'm excited to bring you a very special episode which was recorded live at Figma Config with Figma CEO and co -founder Dylan Field in front of a live audience at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. This is the first ever live recording of this podcast, and it was so much fun. If you watch this on YouTube, you can see the epic stage that they built specifically for us to recreate my podcast studio. I could not be more thankful to the config team for making this happen. In my conversation with Dylan, we dig into how he builds and refines his product taste and intuition. How intuition is a hypothesis generator, the future of product management, how Dylan attempts to operationalize keeping Figma simple and to continue simplifying the experience, much of stories from the early days of Figma that I've never heard before.

0:47Also he shares his favorite AI tool called WebSim which is Wild. And if you wait till the very end, you can see a very young child actor Dylan Field in a clip that I found online that was hilarious. If you enjoy this podcast, don't forget to subscribe and follow it in your favorite podcasting app or YouTube. It's the best way to avoid missing future episodes and it helps the podcast tremendously. With that, I bring you Dylan Field. Dylan, thank you so much for joining me and welcome to the podcast. Thank you, Annie. Hi all. Hi all. Is this your first live podcast? This is my first ever live podcast.

1:26Also a big thank you to the config team who set up this crazy studio. I had no idea this was going to happen. I feel like I'm in my studio here with a thousand people watching us. It's very impressive. I very much dig the background and also the mic said, may or may not be wired. Don't say that. Don't tell me. There's no wires coming out of them. There's no one behind the curtain either. Okay. So Dylan, I want to start by just checking in on how you're doing. So config is about to wrap up. We're not at it for two days now. I know how much lift goes into doing these sorts of things. I imagine you've been thinking about this for a long time now.

2:02I'm just here as high you're doing. Any surprises? Any highlights? Any little lights? The highlight is the community and just incredible, incredible people here at config. Yeah. Y 'all are awesome. I don't know why I keep talking to Mike like this. It's instinctual. But seriously, it's just the most amazing community to be part of and I feel so lucky. And then in terms of how I'm doing this exact moment, like exhausted, but riding on caffeine and whatever, this is like really cool probiotic drink is. Any surprises from the past couple days, anything that's like, oh, that went a lot better than I thought, maybe less will.

2:49Yeah. So like the Emil and Mejiko were phenomenal and it was just so awesome to see them do their demos and present materials. And then, yeah, I was just really pleased with the conversation. I think that's getting started at config around AI. And I think that I was like, you know, online on social media. And I think people are already kind of like zero in the right conversation, which is, yeah. Okay, in the world of, you know, more software being created by AI, what does that mean? And you know, the impact on craft and the impact on quality and the need to have more unique design and how design is a differentiator.

3:37And I think some people are saying I agree with that. Some people are saying they're disagree with that. And that's exactly the bounds of what the conversation I kind of imagined would emerge from yesterday. You know, it was funny to make design feature. You know, we, I think that I said on the keynote, I was like, this is going to give you the most obvious thing in the most obvious form possible. And then people online are like, it's just going to give you some obvious thing. I agree. This episode is brought to you by WorkOS. If you're building a SaaS app, at some point your customers will start asking for enterprise features like Samo authentication and skim provisioning.

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6:22From there, you can route data to your backend systems and to the correct fields in your PDFs via API. Complete the process with a white labeled e -signature. The best part about Anneville is the level of customization their SDK provides. Non -technical folks love Anneville's drag -and -drop builder and developers love their flexible APIs and easy to understand documentation. Build documents software fast with Anneville. That's useanville .com slashlennie to learn more or start a free trial. That's useanvil .com slashlennie. Let's keep talking about design. You once said that the definition of design is art applied to problem solving.

7:05You just add a bit more to that. What do you mean by that? That's an amazing line. Well, I don't think it's my original line. I think it's what else I did. But there's a lot of definitions of design out there too. There's also design and dialogue or design and problem solving. You can go straight there. I can go with like ten more. But yeah, I like art applied to problem solving because I think that design is often there is some component of creativity to it. And unique expression that you're trying to provide and create and put out into the world. But you are also trying to do it and match it to a user need a problem that needs to be solved.

7:43And I think that it's not pure art. And if you lose the art and you're just solving the problem, it's totally utilitarian. And it has a lack soul. And so the combination of those two things is to me really beautiful. I'm going to pivot to a very hard -hitting question. I hope your PR people don't kill me for asking this. Many people ask me to ask you this question. Okay. Very important. Please explain a Figma tradition called Reckoon Feet and Muffin Hammer. Okay.

8:20I should probably just leave this interview now. Okay. So this is a conversation. I'm not sure exactly where it started, but it started early Figma. And basically we had these lunch tables at Figma where we would just kind of all gather and have very long interesting meandering conversations before we got back to work. And one of the questions that was a would you rather was, would you rather have raccoons for feet or muffins for hands? And I think this is a deeply philosophical question. I've pondered it. Since I've heard it, I still don't have one answer. If you've got an answer, I'm curious what it is.

9:02I've got follow -up questions. Do the raccoons, can you control over the raccoon, take you or are they just deciding on their own? I think that raccoons probably wouldn't even agree with each other where to go. Okay. That's complicated. I mean, if you had raccoons for feet right now, do you think that it would interfere with this podcast? But Muffin hands would also interfere with my newsletter and it's like I'd be out of work. I don't know if you can type. I need a special keyboard. Okay. This is very difficult. You haven't even thought about the upsides this yet. What are the upsides? We can get there.

9:35Maybe you could eat some of the case for optimism. Some cakes? Yeah. If you have muffins for hands, maybe if you're hungry, do they regenerate, appetize, eat them? That's a good question. Okay. There's no answers here. Just questions. Do your nails grow? Yeah. Oh, okay. Interesting. It's deeper than you might think. Okay. Okay. I'm going to play a short clip with Rick Rubin and then have a question about it. Okay. So we'll see if that plays. But exactly what he does and how is difficult to describe. Do you play instruments? Barely. Do you know how to work a soundboard? No. There's no technical ability.

10:18And I know nothing about music. You must know something. Well, I know what I like and what I don't like. And I'm decisive about what I like and what I don't like. So what are you being paid for? The confidence that I have in my taste and my ability to express what I feel has proven helpful for artists. Okay. So I'm not going to say this as you. You need to grow the beard. But I think this is a little bit you because what I've heard from a number of your colleagues is that one of your superpowers is intuition and product taste. And someone said that you have the sixth sense for what's going to work when you're designing Figma and you're making decisions in the product.

11:05So I'm curious how you've built and refined your intuition and product taste when it comes to Figma and then even broadly. Well, that's a lot kinder than I thought you were going to be. I thought you were going to be like, you don't know how to code and you don't know how to design. No. But I mean, I think, you know, here's my framework for it. I think intuition is like a hypothesis generator. And you're constantly generating these hypotheses and others are generating hypotheses as well. And you then take these hypotheses and you put them forward and you debate them. And you try to find data to support them or negate them.

11:41And then you wind it down into like, what is our working hypothesis? And from that, you move forward. I heard that you read every tweet that mentions Figma and share them with folks and there's a Slack channel repaced them. I imagine that is a part of this where you're just constantly watching what people are saying about Figma, what people are complaining about. I mean, I definitely look everywhere trying to constantly ingest information about Figma and is not just like Twitter slash X, whatever that's called now. But, you know, anywhere on the internet, support channels, etc. And yeah, I'm always trying to understand.

12:23I also ask a lot of questions and I try to get to root problems and understand where people are coming from and what are they actually trying to solve. Sometimes people are saying, hey, I need X, but they really want Y or Z. And, you know, trying to do that myself and kind of engage and dive deeper there, but also to encourage our team to do that. I think weeds to really get outcomes in terms of what we ship. Is there something you've changed your mind about kind of building on that? Either based on customer feedback or some employee just like making a case and like, okay, you're right. If there's something comes to mind if something you've changed your mind about recently.

13:04Um, somebody said fly. When you start out flies. I have no idea. It's Figma slides. Um, I, well, it's not recent, but like one good example of me changing my mind is that you all have pages in Figma. You're welcome. Um, but like, I think I have deep skepticism about pages still. Like, I'm not, I'm not sure they're like, if you could freeze time and I could just go in with my team work on Figma for a very long time. I'm not sure we come to the same implementation of pages that we are at today. I just don't think it's like the most all -again solution in the context of like the entire system of product design that you could create.

13:53The world told me and our team that, that did not matter in the needed pages. And don't worry, we're not unshipping pages. But, but yeah, I'm, I'm still very skeptical of them. And I think that in general, probably my team would tell you that, um, I don't always change my mind. But I also, I, like, build trust with people in deep ways. And I think across our organization, if things are not going to be fatal, then if I hear from someone, hey, I really think we should do X. Then I'll say, okay, just go with it. And here's my feedback. Here's what I'm skeptical of. Let's see what happens. And then, you know, sometimes they come back to me and they're like, see I was right, but usually they're pretty polite about it.

14:48Just to, just to build on that. Something a lot of people try to work on is being good at influencing leadership, execs, yo's. What do you find helps you, help works to change your mind. What do people come to you with that helps you, like, okay, you're actually right. I think the more concrete an artifact is, or the more you can debate something, the better. I, like, ask for examples a lot. I try to ask follow -up questions about things, um, and make sure I fully understand it. And I think where I get stuck sometimes is if I, like, ask follow -up questions and we don't have answers yet. And then, my response might be, let's go find the answers to these questions.

15:30And then let's go back to this conversation. If I think it's something that's really important. And I think for some people, they might go, okay, this is actually really obvious. Like, I can't believe you're so dense and you don't get it yet. And sometimes they're right. And they come back and they're like, okay, here's the data and now we move on. And we do. We move on and they're right. And, uh, and yeah, I just think that, um, it's important, though, to just really understand something from first principles, uh, for, for a lot of decisions. And maybe it's just a perfectionist quality. But, uh, repeat over time.

16:09I think it's, it, it leads to good outcomes, uh, as long as you make sure it's not bottlenecking the organization. Okay. So kind of following up on that. Let's talk about product management. Okay. So last year, you had Brian Chesky here. I think maybe on the stage, maybe a bigger stage. And he, he kind of said that they got rid of product management at Airbnb and everyone cheered and all the PMs were very sad. And he didn't actually mean they got rid of product management. They changed the function and evolved it. I'm curious just to get your take. Yeah, it's funny. Um, let's hear we have you here, let me show you.

16:41It's your answer, no? Yeah, I had a one before and after all. Surprise. We're still here. We're still here. Um, I want to get your take on product management. Uh, you all have amazing product managers at Figma. I've had three of them on the podcast already. I'm curious just what value you find the best product managers bring to Figma. It was really funny. Uh, last year after that interview. So Yuki, uh, our chief product officer had invited me to a dinner for our PM team. And you know, it took a while to get out of config, uh, at the end of the day. And I, uh, eventually made the dinner, but I was like 40 minutes late.

17:21And I walk in and Michika, uh, who was on stage yesterday, I was in slides. Figma slides. Slide, slides. Uh, she was, she was like standing up and doing a mock, uh, Brian Chesky impersonation. And she, she's like, stand up in front of the entire product team and she goes, and then Brian Chesky is like, they don't need to be any PMs. And Dylan's like, ooh. And I'm like, hi, Michika. And you know, I'd never seen her so red. Uh, and then I gave like a, you know, like quick, APM team. I believe in you. Thank you for your hard work. Uh, seriously, I, um, uh, I think that if you kind of zoom out, it's always tricky whenever you're asked to formally define what is the separation between a product manager, a designer, and an engineer.

18:22It's, it's always hard to actually create those clear lines. And I think in many organizations, they're boring. But, within the day, you know, a PM and a designer, they need to have some technical expertise, or at least understand how the systems work, uh, to probably create the best things they can possibly make. Um, you know, designer engineer, they should probably have some sense of the business objectives. They should have some sense of what users want. Um, engineer and a product manager, they should have, you know, taste and craft and, uh, and, and some sense of the option space. And, uh, some ability to care about or, or desire to care about the visual implementation.

19:06Um, so I, and I think you can include research in there too. If you want to make it four legs of the stool rather than the trio. Uh, and you can talk about, you know, all three probably should have exposure to users and be talking and dialogue with users. So, so I think that, um, if you think about sort of that, that group holistically. Each is important. If you think about a team, there's all these qualities that you have to have to make a great product. And that's that I think for product managers and the product function. And what I think it, sometimes when you see people that fall down in that function is because they treat it too much like process.

19:47Uh, which is very important to, don't be wrong. Good process, uh, can help support good outcomes.

19:58But I think that you can't lose sight of the problems that you're solving. You have to go talk to users and you have to actually have a strategy. And if you're really good, you should have a point of view. And some point of views are going to need to get outcomes and some point of views aren't. And there's, so there's some sense of taste. And you also have to bring everyone together and make sure that they get to the objective that it's celebrated. Uh, and that, uh, then the project. But when you complete a milestone, everyone stoked. Otherwise, it's not going to be a team that gels. You're not going to get to the next outcome.

20:35Even if, you know, you get to an outcome and, you know, it's milestone. But if everyone's unhappy, like you kind of failed. And so somehow good product people are able to do all this and they're able to create great frameworks that bring everyone along with them. And so everyone's able to have a shared headspace around what it is they're trying to get to. So when one said that if a PM, if PMs disappeared or if a PM goes on vacation, uh, everything's okay for like a week or two or three. And then things start to crumble a little bit because they're, they kind of glue everything together. Do you, I don't know, do you find that sort of thing?

21:10Let me actually ask a different question along those lines. Are you bearish or bullish on the future of product management? Do you think PMs will continue the way they are? Do you think PMs will dwindle any sense of the future of product management? Um, I think probably everyone's learning to do a bit more of everyone else's job in this current moment. Uh, that said, I definitely think there's still immense value in product, immense value in design, immense value in engineering. And so I think those roles will continue to exist. So maybe just, I just want to come back to the question of just the, what the best PMs that you work with, do you find what value do they most bring?

21:51I guess is there anything that's like, here's what would be gone if we didn't have these PMs? The best PMs, I think, again, create those frameworks that bring everyone else along and those frameworks also have a point of view in a strategy associated with them. So you're able to kind of like take the strategy, take the point of view, wrap it all up in a framework, and then make it so that everyone knows what the destination is and how to get there. Awesome. Okay, so kind of along these lines, something I've heard you're really big on is simplification. Uh, somebody told me that when you're in a designer view and things just feel too complex to you, uh, quote, you furrow your brow and insist there must be something simpler.

22:36Why simplification? So top of mind for you. Why is it so important for you and just why is it so hard to do? Oh gosh. Well, I think probably anyone here who's like worked on product knows how hard it is. It's, I think the more that you add, the harder it is to create something that's coherent. You know, the one essay that Evan, my co -founder introduced me to early on in famous history, I think from Stevie's Drunken Ball grants or something like that, uh, it contains the term irreducible complexity. And it's based this idea that like one plus one does not equal three. It sometimes equals like one and a half.

23:16Uh, and the more that you add and the more that you continue to put in something, um, the more complex it gets and the worse it gets. And I think this is definitely true for tools. So in the context of Figma, uh, we can make it more powerful, but to do that in a way that's not making it more complex at the same time is extremely hard. And we have to always be paid attention to how complex or how simple things are. Uh, because if we don't, it just kind of becomes a monterrasticity really fast. And there's parts for our product that I don't want to dive into that part of the conversation in the self critique, but, um, definitely like as I'm in conversation with a bunch of our product leaders at Figma, there's parts where it's like, okay, this thing is too complex as a system.

24:04And we made like all the right local decisions. And yet together, there are two complex and they're not working anymore. And let's go revisit the system now. This episode is brought to you by user testing. Transform, how you build products and experiences with user testing. Get fast feedback throughout the development process so that you can build the right thing the first time. Make better decisions that lead to better business outcomes. Companies are being asked to do more with less. They need to move quickly to build experiences that may change in customer expectations and do so faster than ever, all while minimizing risk and costly rework.

24:43With user testing, you have a trusted partner in experience research. They empower user research, product, and design teams to make higher confidence decisions with human insights. Learn more today at usertesting .com slash Lenny. I know you just redesigned Figma. Imagine part of that came from things are just getting too complicated, not as simple as we want. Is there anything that's been like the bug in you in the old Figma? This is way too complicated. I really want to simplify this thing. Yes. Okay. What's that? Move on, but I... Many things. Sounds good. In terms of how to keep things simple, so I had Darmesh Shaw on the podcast.

25:25He's the co -founder of HubSpot. The way he described it is that you're always fighting the second law of thermodynamics, entropy, just the product getting more complicated. He sees himself as part of the solution. If you top down, you have to be on top of that. Is that the way you see it? That's your role to keep things simple. Do you think people further down the ladder can do that? Absolutely. Everyone's responsible for simplicity. I think they're quote that is not mine, but a really good one is keep the simple things simple, make the complex things possible. I think that's a really important principle to hold as your design tools.

26:04I'd say that it's really easy to make the simple things complex, unfortunately. I want to pivot to talking about early days, Figma. Sure. I don't know how many people know this, but it took three and a half years to launch Figma from when you were beginning to work on it. Don't do that. This is my question. It took three and a half years to launch, and then five years to get your first customer. Dylan, what the hell were you doing all that time? I don't think it took five years for first... Okay, first paid customer. Yeah, okay, fine. Slightly less, but approximately five years to get to the roundup.

26:45If I had been probably better at hiring and recruiting, I see Nadia in the audience, making eye contact with her the entire time for some reason. She's our key people officer. She had been at Figma from day one. We would have hired probably faster. We would have gotten to market faster. I think it was a hard product to build and to get everything to come together with. I also see show. I think for a show as a director of engineering, he's a VP of product. Again, people can wear many hats. He was someone that joined Figma and said, hey, we all need to ship this thing. He was really close. He really helped catalyze us to ship in that moment.