A Digital Strategy Podcast

Figma Config 2025 Review: Was It Worth the Trip?

Episode Summary

Config 2025 is over, and Symon, Marcello, and John are back to debrief. Before the trip they rated it a six and a seven. Did it hold up? In this follow-up episode, the team unpacks Figma Config 2025 from the ground: what the conference is actually like at 10,000-person scale, why the AI overload was real but Figma smartly let agents take a backseat in the keynote, and the talks that genuinely stuck with them. They get into Waymo's psychoacoustics, street art as a living design system, low-tech lessons from the 2000s, Anthropic on language as design, and a Stripe designer's case for density. Then they close with a final rating. A two-part Config preview and follow-up. This is part two.

Episode Notes

💡 Key Topics:

• What Config is really like in person, and why Toronto has no local equivalent (RGD, Tech Week, Web Summit gaps)
• AI fatigue at the conference, and audiences literally clapping when a talk wasn't about AI
• Why Figma let agents take a backseat in the keynote, unlike last year's AI-heavy product slate
• John on the new production and motion features, and where designers will push them
• Anna O on UX for robots and seniors, plus the idea that taste comes from the people you're responsible for
• Ella Rochelle Lawton on street art as a design system, and real data on murals improving communities
• The Waymo talk: designing for a driverless car and using the note E for calmness (psychoacoustics)
• Jezebel DC's "low-tech" talk: why 2000s design was better before attention became the product, with Lego and Animal Crossing as case studies
• Chelsea Larson (Anthropic) on language as design, prompts as UX, and AI as cars rather than the Industrial Revolution
• A Stripe designer (Matthew) on density in design and the ink-to-meaning ratio, plus "prove the question is a bad idea before dismissing it"
• The post-conference verdict versus the pre-trip guesses

📖 Chapters:

• 0:06 — Back from Config: first impressions
• 0:51 — Conference scale, and why Toronto has nothing like it
• 2:18 — Was it AI overkill? First day vs. second day
• 3:07 — Why Config is valuable: industry direction and art-based talks
• 3:44 — AI burnout and the crowd clapping for non-AI talks
• 4:14 — Why Figma let agents take a backseat this year
• 5:00 — John on the product release: production and motion
• 5:47 — Favorite talks begin
• 6:47 — Anna O: UX, robots, and design for seniors
• 7:43 — "Taste comes from the people you're responsible for"
• 9:01 — Ella Rochelle Lawton: street art as a living design system
• 10:14 — The Waymo talk and psychoacoustics (the note E)
• 12:10 — Jezebel DC: low-tech lessons from the 2000s
• 13:11 — Lego, Animal Crossing, and designing without dependency
• 14:53 — Chelsea Larson (Anthropic): language as design
• 16:25 — AI as cars, not the Industrial Revolution
• 18:50 — The Stripe density talk and the ink-to-meaning ratio
• 21:45 — "Prove the question is a bad idea before dismissing it"
• 23:33 — The secret second talk: too much talking about craft
• 24:40 — Final ratings: 9, 9, and 9.5

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