Craft is Counter-Intuitive

In the age of AI, we all know that craft and taste is more important than ever.

I lead the design teams for FigJam, Slides, and other new, top secret things at Figma.

I’ll share a few stories behind some of our features and launches, and how we had the conditions for great craft to happen. The catch is — these conditions are pretty counter to the design process we’ve preached a lot in the design industry. Things like, starting in high-fidelity, flexing intuition, getting deeply into the details in design crit (and not just focusing on the problem), changing things at the last minute, and not shying away from the details as a leader.

They’re uncomfortable, but we can’t stay comfortable to create great craft.