About Ann Tarry
Ann is a Designer based in Richmond, Virginia.
This site uses cookies to enhance your browsing experience and deliver personalized content. By continuing to use this site, you consent to our use of cookies.
COOKIE POLICY
Config 2025 kicked off with a bang on Day 1. Figma’s annual conference brings together designers, developers, and all those involved in the making of a product. The 2-day event has a stacked lineup of accomplished speakers ready to share their insights on the world of product building.
At today’s opening keynote, the Figma team, led by CEO Dylan Field, announced four exciting new products and one new feature for Figma Design:
Following the opening keynote, I stuck around for the Figma Draw Deep Dive and got a better look at the breadth of features Draw has to offer. I then moved to the Level 2 stage, where I heard from Cheechee Lin on the power of prototyping to influence decisions, Subham Agarwal on the process and impact of killing a product, and Wojtek Dziedic on how to create an engaging pitch.
Prototyping is a key communication tool for designers. By showing stakeholders or team members our ideas in action via prototyping, we can start more productive conversations about what works and what doesn’t.
Before killing a product or feature, Read, Assess, Decide, Act, and Review. Do your homework on what’s going wrong, assess both the customer impact and the business impact, decide to pause, reiterate, or kill the product, communicate the decision to your team and users, and finally review what could be done differently next time around.
While ideas are obviously the genesis of any product build, they can’t take off without the right pitch. Unless we communicate our ideas clearly and keep our pitches interesting, we’ll lose the faith and attention of our stakeholders, thus leaving our ideas in the dust.
The closing keynote included talks from Linear’s Karri Saarinen, Meta’s Andrew “Box” Bosworth, and the production designer of Apple TV’s Severance, Jeremy Hindle. Hindle’s talk was a major highlight, as he shared his design process from inspiration to execution. It was fascinating to see how his diverse artistic references translate into his unique point of view as a designer. His attention to detail and fusion of past and present influences motivated me to pay particular attention to the iteration phase of design and look for inspiration in unexpected places.
After an eventful first day at Config 2025 full of incredible speakers and warm introductions to people shaping the product design space, I’m looking forward to seeing what Day 2 has to offer.
Ann is a Designer based in Richmond, Virginia.