Boz To The Future # 25: The Future According to Dylan Field

What this episode is about

Dylan Field, CEO and co-founder of Figma, shares insights on the future of design and technology, emphasizing the importance of humility, curiosity, and a commitment to craft. He discusses Figma's journey in disrupting established design tools, exploring how innovation can emerge even in seemingly saturated markets, and expresses optimism about the potential for future advancements through careful design and exploration.

Key takeaways

• In the face of design incumbents, Figma's secret weapon was WebGL – a tech many deemed too niche.
• Dylan Field's journey shows that sometimes innovation lies not in new ideas, but in reimagining existing technologies.
• Who needed data? Figma's instincts about design growth outpaced the Bureau of Labor Statistics' narrow view!
• Adobe abandoned Fireworks, and Figma seized the moment, proving that good timing can outshine great planning.
• From drones to Figma, Field teaches us: sometimes shutting down ideas opens doors to your true calling.

Who speaks in this episode?

• Dylan Field (Host) · 32 min speaking

What is discussed, and when

1. 0:00 – 5:00: Adobe, Flipboard, Inc., Dylan Field, WebGL
2. 5:00 – 10:00: Belinda Pino, Dropbox, Tim Vanaman, Neopets
3. 10:00 – 15:00: Doug Engelbart
4. 15:00 – 20:00: Artificial Intelligence
5. 20:00 – 25:00: Artificial Intelligence

Notable quotes from "Boz To The Future # 25: The Future According to Dylan Field"

• Field, the CEO and co-founder of Figma, a company he started when he was 19 years old. now 13 years later is really the de facto design standard in our industry. You have a…

  about Figma · at 0:20

• Been, if not solved, at least fully colonized, right? There's a set of tools. There was Adobe. It was like very established. And a lot of times when you see these big shifts…

  about Adobe · at 1:34

• Really having an insight about WebGL, a WebGL ability to use the GPU on your computer in your browser. WebGPU is the successor technology.

  about WebGL · at 2:32

• And I remember the first two folks that really gave us a heck yes on it were Tim Vanam, Belinda Pino because they were doing pair design at Dropbox. so after leaving Facebook.

  about Belinda Pino · at 9:31

• Well, and also if it were moving to the cloud, you now have instead of managed servers for most people. Yeah.

  about AWS · at 13:12

• Stage at config but you go back to like Doug Angelbart and you think of as you know one of the real pioneers of human interface design computer mouse all these different pieces…

  about Doug Engelbart · at 14:01

• You guys were riding. It's this technology enabler. It's a kind of crazy curve. So the you know we've talked about kind of the 13 years of past like where do you see it going…

  about Artificial Intelligence · at 16:51

• And when one product we recently acquired, it's called Weevi. We now we're calling it Figma Weave. And it's something we're really excited about because it basically creates that.

  about Weevi · at 26:08

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

People

• Dylan Field — Person · Main guest · 1 mention · first at 0:18
  Primary interview subject; discusses founding Figma, the shift to browser-native collaborative design, and how AI changes creative workflows.
  Conversations kind of can be very surface deep and very broad. and I am thrilled to be joined today with Dylan Field, the CEO and co-founder of Figma, a company he started when…
• Doug Engelbart — Person · Referenced expert / historical pioneer · 1 mention · first at 14:01
  Used as a historical reference point for human-interface design philosophy (powerful interfaces, training users) to contrast with modern usability and AI-assisted interfaces.
• Belinda Pino — Person · Referenced practitioner / early adopter · 1 mention · first at 9:36
  Cited alongside Tim Vanaman as an early enthusiastic adopter who validated multiplayer design collaboration while at Dropbox.
• Tim Vanaman — Person · Referenced practitioner / early adopter · 1 mention · first at 9:40
  Cited as one of the earliest strong validators of Figma’s multiplayer collaboration concept due to doing pair design at Dropbox.
  And I remember the first two folks that really gave us a heck yes on it were Tim Vanam, Belinda Pino because they were doing pair design at Dropbox. so after leaving Facebook.

Companies & orgs

• Figma — Company · Business focus · 4 mentions
  Primary company discussed, focusing on its founding, growth, and future with AI
• Adobe — Company · Competitor · 2 mentions · first at 1:38
  Mentioned as a competitor and historical context for Figma's rise
• Dropbox — Company · Early adopter · 1 mention · first at 9:40
  Early adopter of Figma's multiplayer design features
  And I remember the first two folks that really gave us a heck yes on it were Tim Vanam, Belinda Pino because they were doing pair design at Dropbox. so after leaving Facebook.
• AWS — Company · Technology enabler · 3 mentions
  Mentioned as part of the cloud infrastructure enabling modern software
• Flipboard, Inc. — Company · Previous affiliation · 2 mentions · first at 3:18
  Mentioned as a place where Dylan Field interned before starting Figma
  And with Flipboard, we were using a combination of tools, but mostly Adobe Fireworks, which was Macromedia Fireworks original.

Products & tech

• Weevi — Product · Acquired product · 3 mentions
  Recently acquired by Figma to enhance AI-powered design workflows

Concepts & topics

• Artificial Intelligence — Concept · Core topic · 2 mentions · first at 15:42
  Central theme of the episode, discussing its impact on design and creativity
• WebGL — Concept · Key technology · 1 mention · first at 2:32
  Early technology that enabled Figma's browser-based design tools

Media & podcasts

• Neopets — Media · Cultural reference · 1 mention · first at 8:56
  Mentioned as early internet community experience influencing Figma's multiplayer approach
  Kind of online movements and thinking about how that affects tools development yeah I mean I was playing Neopets a lot as a kid so like the idea of a community online that you…
• World of Warcraft — Media · Cultural reference · 1 mention · first at 8:56
  Mentioned as early multiplayer experience influencing Figma's collaborative approach
  As a kid so like the idea of a community online that you could go interact with or you know from World of Warcraft or you using other tools in multiplayer absolutely it just kind of for me and Evan I think it made intuitive sense.

Full transcript with timestamps

0:07 Welcome to Bos to the Future, a podcast I started so that we could get a little deeper uh on a few topics because so often I find in our industry these conversations kind of can be very surface deep and very broad. Uh and I am thrilled to be joined today with Dylan Field, the CEO and co-founder of Figma, a company he started when he was 19 years old. now 13 years later is really the de facto design standard in our industry. You have a hugely impressive bio. I'm not going to get into it because I find people can go look it up.

0:34 What do you think is the most important thing for people to know about you? I really like the pursuit of craft um and just uh finding in different places and trying to figure out like what the future holds, understanding where I get things right, where I get things wrong. Uh so yeah, that's why I was excited to come on too.

0:52 Well, I'm so glad you did. And I think it's funny that the the audience will get from that a thing that is everyone about you will know which is you're incredibly humble about the the the your approach to the world and it shows in the work the curiosity you approach everything with. Uh we were just before this we started rolling I wish we've been rolling already we're talking about data centers in space and how they're going to manage the thermal energy and these environments. um you you every conversation I've ever had with you, tremendous amount of curiosity and also kind of uh optimism about where things can go if we design them carefully. Um you know this it's it's such an interesting thing to think about Figma.

1:28 when you started this company, the world, certainly our industry kind of considered the space you were in to have been, if not solved, at least fully colonized, right? There's a set of tools. There was Adobe. It was like very established. And a lot of times when you see these big shifts from uh an incumbent to somebody who's who's an upstart, it's accompanied by um a structural shift. What do you think it was that? And again, and not that you're entirely competitive, obviously there's a lot of ways in which these tools all work together, and it's a kind of tremendous malange, but you found a niche that very few people saw um and have grown from that. Um, and I just think it's like so fascinating. I'm kind of curious to get, and this is a prelude to a question about AI. Kind of curious to hear like your retrospective. What was it that you saw that maybe everyone else didn't see at the time that allowed

2:19 you to get to where things are today? Yeah. Um, and I'm curious where the prelude ti goes. So yeah, we'll get there next, I guess. Um, I think that it started with my co-founder actually, so I got to give him all the credit.

2:32 Yeah. Really having an insight about WebGL, a WebGL ability to use the GPU on your computer in your browser. Uh, WebGPU is the successor technology.

2:41 And Evan was really deep on WebGL very early, had shown that you could actually use it for real things. Now, showing that you could use it for a real big production application, that was different. All right, we had to test that out. But then it was a question of, okay, if we're going to go into WebGL, and by the way, I was advocating for drones in 2011. Evan shut that down fast. Um, uh, also very WebGL.

3:05 Two good ideas, by the way. Yeah, I Well, I think drones would have actually been too early. So, um,

3:10 yeah, he he was right. But, uh, for WebGL, I think the main question was, okay, where do we go with it? Ironically, I'd been interning at Flipboard the summer before on the design team and the summer before that uh as a sort of engineer data analyst type person

3:27 and building recommendation engines and doing some like old school ML. Yeah. Sure.

3:31 And with Flipboard, we were using a combination of tools, but mostly Adobe Fireworks,

3:36 which was Macromedia Fireworks original. That's right. That's right. And got acquired in

3:40 and I left Flipboard, started working on Figma. We're starting to explore all this stuff that was really cool combinational photography, but it was basically get like 85% of the way there until we had deep learning and couldn't get all the way there,

3:52 right? And uh eventually we said, "Okay, we got to ship something for real." Like it's been too long of making demos.

3:59 And we started to really focus in on um first photo editing in the browser. Yep.

4:05 At some point like wait a second, everyone's going to take photos on their phone. Why are we do this in the browser if it's not supportive of RAW?

4:10 Right. And uh then Adobe actually killed fireworks, right? And at that point I was like, well, this is a good starting point. We can go build out from there into other places.

4:22 And at the time it was interesting because we were thinking it' be all these other creative tools, you know, very much in the Adobe platform world. What actually ended up happening is we ended up building into the product design development workflow.

4:32 Yeah. And so I think it was like we had two things wrong. First, we underestimated how big the market could get. M

4:40 uh we had an instinct that design and the number of designers and the amount of software being designed and the value of design it was all growing at a potential rate

4:50 and we really couldn't back it up with data though. It was like the Bure of Labor Styistics had 250,000 designers in the world.

4:57 Um it's like that's not a big market. Sure. And we had a sense that people were hiring more but you know it was just these small local examples. It wasn't like we had did some broad research survey.

5:06 Yeah. You didn't hire Mackenzie to come in and check her. Yeah, we're we're already uh you know, freaking out about our $3,000 or whatever it was for rent in Palto. Um you know, maybe a little less than that. But

5:20 anyway, uh that instinct turned out to be not just right, but like really right. And the way that design hiring grew over the next decade ahead was wild.

5:29 Yeah. And um also I think the instinct of WebGL led us to okay cloud and the instinct of collaboration just like the native primitives we were used to

5:39 totally when it came to uh multiplayer games uh online communities and Google docs and uh wave which I was a big fan of

5:48 uh and unfortunately since that way too soon all those sort of like inputs that we've had through our lives that we came from that perspective made us go oh yeah multiplayer could make a lot of sense here. We don't know exactly how it'll be used, but that's like native to the browser.

6:03 It's probably something we'll have to do. Yeah, for sure. And then uh that also unlocked a lot of possibility.

6:08 There's so much there. It's actually worth getting into it. Three things that stand out. One that's interesting is how many pieces um of the future you and Evan were thinking through things that would eventually come to pass. Computational photography obviously had a tremendous kind of uh rise and and really has hit unbelievable levels now. Um uh yeah, drones have this huge kind of arc. Uh even inside the design space, a bunch of pieces. Um but timing is everything. You point about Wave and a bunch of other pieces. There's a bunch of quite a few people who've kind of come in and and tried to do these things in in one way or another and probably did a good job, but they just weren't the market wasn't ready for them. And there was this explosion of design that happened. You know, when we started early at Meta, you know, uh Aaron Sitig and Cleo Quervo, our first designers, were kind of our only designers for like

6:54 a long time. And then Chad joined a few other people, but it was a small, incredibly small. Yeah. Julie, of course, like small, highly leveraged team. And it was and like you wanted to get time with them. Like that was like that was gold, right? Because like they were you can unlock a huge amount. You could go work for hours and hours and hours if you could get like a little bit of a vision from them.

7:11 And at some point everyone figured out we should hire more. Like that seems like a good idea. Um and I remember so vividly when we did get to the point where we had so many designers that actually the workflow, the collaborative workflow was a problem. Yes. And so you had people like Alex Ro going in and doing and Figma didn't exist yet. And shout out to shout out to Dream uh to to man Dreamw Weaver, my first one before Firework. Shout out to early Macromedia Dreamw Weaver work when I was uh teenagers were really incredible.

7:37 Yeah. Yeah. We started building these like hacking together these internal collab tools.

7:41 Pixel Cloud. Pixel Cloud. Remember that? Yeah, that's right. Lee Byron. Yeah, Lee Byron was the dude.

7:45 We looked at that. We're like, whoa. Yeah. Actually didn't look at it because we couldn't see it, but we kept hearing about it. heard you heard

7:51 we kept talking about how everyone we talk about talked to about it like outside of meta or Facebook then inside of Facebook everyone's like pixel cloud

7:59 well it's so it's it's my point being it's interesting to think about how much timing plays these important roles you can have all the right ideas but the timing also has to be right um and so that's part of it but part of it again in such a such a humble way of bringing it you guys really executed beloved tools uh for a community that's frankly very tough on its tools you know uh like any community in the arts, photographers, u uh painters, they have strong opinions about the tools that they're using and why they're using them and how they should be used. And to some degree, it's like the highest calling inside of these um disciplines to be the tool, a tool manufacturer. People had like to have a relationship with the person making the tools. Um and you guys really built a suite of tools that very quickly took over. Um and so I think yeah, you're right. the internet native that's the third piece is the internet

8:47 native piece is a huge part of it too so you're using experience from yeah from multiplayer gaming and these other kind of online movements and thinking about how that affects tools development

8:56 yeah I mean I was playing Neopets a lot as a kid uh so like the idea of a community online that you could go interact with or you know from World of Warcraft or uh you using other tools in multiplayer

9:07 absolutely it just kind of for me and Evan I think it made intuitive sense uh then we went to the market and everyone uh was very skeptical. I mean, it was like really I think one or two out of a hundred people we talked with actually leaned in and said that would be awesome. Everyone else was like, "Huh?"

9:24 Yeah. Why would I want that? It was against the mental model of being it wasn't their flow they've been trained on. It wasn't what they've been doing for professionally.

9:31 And uh I remember the the first two folks that really gave us a heck yes on it were uh Tim Vanam, Belinda Pino because they were doing pair design at Dropbox. Um, so after leaving Facebook went to Dropbox, hired both of them.

9:46 That's right. And uh, you know, they're working together side by side and they're like, "Yeah, of course went multiplayer. We're already doing it."

9:52 That's awesome. Um, they're the only ones. Really? It's funny. And we launched and people basically were totally averse to the idea. Uh, you know, I've said it many times, but I remember back for the comments for our first launch post, and you know, some people were like, "Is this the future of design? I'm changing careers." Oh no.

10:12 Um, a camel is a horse designed by committee. Oh my goodness. But I don't know, one of the engineers on our team, John SM, uh, he always used to say, look, if you're getting a lot of love and a lot of hate, like that's a good thing.

10:23 Uh, because that means that you can maybe take the haters and turn them into lovers and evangelists and uh, and make them advocates for you and you just got to solve their problems. And then uh actually there's a designer who is is uh actually quite amazing and he was having some fun the internet. He was kind of trolling a little bit and he's like oh multiplayer let's have a multiplayer party and so he sp up a Figma docu

10:50 and everyone joined it making fun of us and um did it together. They're making memes, they're drawing it, they're you know doing whatever and it went on for like three days. Uh, and we were just like trying to make sure the servers don't melt.

11:04 Yeah, of course. We never anticipate this much load on a single file. Yeah. And uh, it was this weird moment of like people are making fun of the thing that they're using. Oh yeah.

11:13 And it's like, wait a second. They're like introducing themselves to the use case and I'm pretty sure this is like really positive even though the tone is like super patroly.

11:21 Yeah. They're pro they're proving the point. This Yeah, this happens so often in our space. Um, reminds me of like newsfeed when everyone hated newsfeed but they were using the newsfeed to find out that everyone hated newsfeed.

11:31 Exactly. Is we the system works like we've done it. It is kind of such a um such an a powerful example because um the conviction that you guys had you're trying this thing new people come in. The worst response you can get is no response. Right. Like you would definitely rather have people debating you maybe even somewhat viciously online than just like the news passes without comment.

11:54 Exactly. Right. like the worst outcome you can have is just like no one cares. No one cares. That's the thing you don't want to have happen.

11:59 Um yeah. No, I think that's I really think that's true. Yeah. I think it's like uh the lesson I kind of extracted from it, you know, especially with hindsight at the time it was just like we got to make sure people know what we're doing.

12:11 Yeah. But now I look back and I'm like, "Oh, okay. We had a really clear point of view."

12:15 And I think that's one of the most important things now. If you want to stand out, you have to have that point of view.

12:21 Yeah. uh addition to you know craft and everything else and when you do you're going to have people who don't like it because your point of view by definition of being interesting has can't be consensus. It can't be like the thing that people already expect.

12:33 Yep. Otherwise you wouldn't be creating any disproportionate value. Exactly. Right. So to some degree you had these macro trends then you're internet native in a way that I think uh was un people didn't expect that you identified a key technology that you know webgl was kind of made fun of at the time you you know when everyone was getting deep like that that was like a technology oh what are we going to do you know games in the in the in the browser like all this kind of stuff and so you had you identified the key technology that was going to unlock that thing but then you're absolutely right there the macro shifts software engineering had already happened we knew software was eating the Nobody drew the natural if software's eating the world, someone has to design that software.

13:12 Well, and also if it were moving to the cloud, uh you now have instead of managed servers for most people. Yeah.

13:19 You've got uh AWS. Totally. And if you don't have box software, you've got app stores. That's right.

13:25 And uh developer tooling is getting better. It's like movie value is actually a movie of the stack.

13:29 That's right. Yeah. Uh and it's all about actually how do you make great software? And uh you know ironically given there are very few designers at Facebook at the time uh experiences like Facebook Gmail these good consumer experiences were starting to come into play.

13:45 That's right. And expectations were changing. So it's like wait a second I'm going home and I'm using these products and they're great. Why aren't why isn't all the software I interact with great and that was also I think driving the change too.

13:56 Yeah. uh goes back we we briefly touched on this actually when we spoke uh on stage at config but you go back to like Doug Angelbart and you think of as you know one of the real pioneers of human interface design um computer mouse all these different pieces and he had this construct that he wanted humans he actually wanted to he actually didn't want the interface to be easy to use. He wanted the interface to be incredibly powerful and he wanted to train humans for dozens and dozens of hours to become capable of using the full power of the machine. Um, and we didn't do that. Like it's not this that's not the path we took and it's not crit that path would have ever worked. Like going and taking every human being like here we're going to put you through like hundreds of hours of rigorous like training to like learn this specific capability as opposed to like what we've chosen to do as a society which is like let us bring

14:40 this capability to people. Yeah. There are counter examples of course you know it's uh a smaller number of people that would go for them but you know some people use D'vorak keyboards

14:50 like the wig tablets is not easy to learn. Uh, you know, there's plenty of examples of things that are very hard, but then you get some efficiency because of it and power.

14:58 Yeah. I don't I I'm a I'm a Vim wizard, although I don't know why it was so important to my professors that I learned in Vim. It's to this day not entirely clear to me. The first time I opened like Visual Studio and used that was my senior year. Yep.

15:10 And we had gotten because we were students, we gotten a license to use Visual Studio and we were doing like a web services thing. And I was honest to god outraged at my entire education to that point when the only editor I was allowed to use was you use Emacs or Vim was Vim. And I was like I was just outraged. I was like you I could have been tab completing this whole time. Are you kidding me? You see the drop down of all the objects on this is crazy. This is exactly the transition I was hoping for because so here we are arguably poised for another shift and it affects all of these pieces we've talked about.

15:42 Um, you think AI has this very interesting last mile capability to bring functionality to consumers where,

15:49 hey, set aside Vim, even whatever complexities exist inside of Microsoft Word and formatting documents correctly, like a bunch of these things that are still kind of arcane that the everyday consumer comes into interface with.

16:02 Yep. Small aside, I can't help myself. You know that meme recently, the best meme of all time where the woman is like organizing her furniture and moves the the moves the coffee table like one

16:11 centimeter and the entire room is like upside down and it's like formatting documents in Word. The reason that became a widely popular meme is because every human has come across this and it seems to like we know as computer scientists why layout is a hard problem. Like we understand why layout is a hard problem and also that's totally insane. Like any reasonable software would not do that thing. So I think of this all the time. AI stands to be this interesting bridge to close to unlock the full capability of the machine without causing the user to have to do elaborate. They may not sometimes still benefit from it to your point but they don't have to do it to unlock the full power.

16:45 It's also feels like a macro curve in the same way that the internet was this macro curve and and and social collaboration was its macro curve that you guys were riding. It's this technology enabler. It's a kind of crazy curve. So the you know we've talked about kind of the 13 years of past like where do you see it going forward? I think first of all, you know, the exponential curve we're on, I mean, the reason we're talking about data centers in space was because you're saying, "Oh man, you know, if uh we keep going four or five years from now, we'll be using the all the power of uh you know, a sun or multiple suns."

17:20 That's right. You know, if it's like we have to get to Alpha Centuri uh in order to you know, build another Dyson sphere.

17:28 That's right. Of course, there'll also be like I'm sure tons of research improvements along the way, new architectures that are more efficient, but yeah, at the same time, uh there's obviously some ceiling of power that could be consumed, right?

17:39 Um and so I think it's unclear to me exactly where things, you know, tap out a bit. Uh I think the next year or two that exponential on the power consumption side, uh is clear.

17:51 Uh on the progress side, you know, is it possible we'll hit a wall somewhere or start to see diminishing returns? you probably know better than I do. Um, but yeah, I think that even with today's technology, it is incredible what can be done. And that's applied to, you know, language, uh, to images, to, uh, media. Um, and I think that's just obviously the start. Um, there's so many more domains to apply it to. There's so much that you can do even just by prompting. Like if you're really good at prompting, you can actually do incredible stuff that others are completely wowed by.

18:29 That's just literally not even doing post training or fine tuning. It's just a good prompt.

18:33 Yeah. Uh and then when you get into actually, okay, what will be the application of all this? I mean, you start to get to a world where not only is there um more efficiency on, you know, all sorts of tasks that are really laborious and burdensome, the drudgery right now.

18:50 Uh but I think you also go so much further in terms of what people can make, what they can create, the systems that they can cause to exist in the world, the agency that any individual has. And I think what's critical is the mindset of it can't be a crutch. Like it's so easy, especially as the systems get really good. I'm always reminded of uh this dinner I was at with a family uh that's a sort of like family friends and their neighbor and I was at this dinner and you know two parents, two teens and um the son was talking about how he uses AI to basically help a lot with his homework.

19:29 Yeah, of course. By that I mean like you know it's mostly writing it for but mostly the homework. Yeah, that's right.

19:32 And then the daughter's like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah. I have it like drill me on problem set so I can be really prepared for my exam. I think it like really encapsulates the difference

19:40 in one in one dinner table. You've got both sides of it. And I'm just like I think this is literally the dichotomy of how people will use AI.

19:46 If you're using as a crutch, I don't think you're using it to max potential. What you should be doing is trying to figure out okay how it could be a source of inspiration, a way to actually think further to learn more. Um and then with that you can go so many places.

19:59 Yes. So you end up with a stratification um where like you know for some people you can get the minimum viable bar faster.

20:05 Yep. And that's all they were going to do anyways. They're just getting there faster. But the and minimum viable viable bar doesn't necessarily change but the effort required to get there does

20:15 but for the other people it raises the actual ceiling. Like the ceiling goes up because they can do more. for you. Like it's interesting. We talked in this a little bit about the market for designers growing so much has two nice properties of course. One of which is you got a bigger customer base to to appeal to. The second one is the new ones are more likely to adopt the new tools. They're not dogmatically attached to the old tools and there's a disruptive force there.

20:40 But there's been this interesting trend as well kind of interdisciplinary work. So when I early at Meta when it was like I knew I wasn't going to design the feature we certainly had some very designoriented engineers Jerry Morgan Stern Eddie and a few others but like we really wanted to have you know Aaron say like this was good you really wanted to have the kind of the state of state of approval to feel really great about it

21:03 but over time because I worked with them for so long I started the green greater instinct in the space of design and be able to get a lot further on my own and likewise you know that was in a generation of designers where they really would do basic coding uh because they really understood that and at the time interactive tools were interactive design tools were pretty important.

21:22 And also you uh took on courts composer turned to studio and I mean that was a really interesting thing to be pushing on and also uh investments people forget like paper for example.

21:34 Oh yeah. Uh which I thought you know it's like you play with it and it was like this is an alien interface from the future

21:39 and it became I mean what Mike Madison was doing there was just amazing. That's right. And and that became while paper itself didn't proliferate as such. A lot of those design pieces both at our company and other companies became you know

21:51 it was a stake in the ground. It was like this is the future. Yeah. What this could be.

21:55 So I think one of the one of my concepts here is like things get more interdiciplinary over time and and so you had designers who were coding. you had coders who are starting to design and that seems like it's accelerating a lot and and the LLM's help with that because it's like a lot easier for me to feel like I'm getting inside of an iterative distance of a credible design with the help of of a model. Um, and I I really see that a lot in how I've approached, you know, working places like Figma. There's some other new kind of fun companies like Korea and a few others that that are, you know, do different pieces. Um, and I think it's pretty interesting. I'm curious for you is is this a is it a threat? Is it an opportunity? Is it is the bigger market a lot more people playing the game and that's cool. There's also kind of a muddling of who the market was before.

22:39 Yeah. How do you guys look at the the growth of people for whom these tools are relevant?

22:43 Yeah. I think like we both saw AI coming. Yeah. Uh and you know well before Chacht I was in my head.

22:51 Yeah. Totally. And I'm like okay is this a 10x 100x for Figma? Is it a 110th 100th? Yeah.

22:58 Like which direction is it headed? And I think where I got to eventually is just the framework has to be okay. As the models get better and as what you can do with the models gets better, you have to get better too.

23:12 Yeah. And that's the basic rule. Yeah. And so if there's some place in the business where that's not true or could not be true, if model capabilities improve, you have to fix it.

23:20 Yeah. And so, um, I think though that it's really exciting if people can get their ideas out. I mean, that's like the entire premise we started with.

23:31 That's right. That's the point of Figma, right? Yeah. Fred Victor was a huge inspiration. And one of the things he said was that uh, you know, basically when an idea uh, goes undiscovered or falls by the wayside because someone can't bring it to life, that's a moral wrong.

23:45 Yeah. And I really thought that was an interesting propagation. And uh now we're in a world where yeah, you can go from imagination to actually something being real very quickly. And uh you can have your idea evaluated on its merits rather than okay, does it meet, you know, just like the visual style that we're going for. That does not mean that your output is going to be the thing that you're going to want to ship. Yeah,

24:15 like if anything the role of designer is greater because again going back to the start like the thesis for the last decade for us has been values moving the stack design matters more that was the thesis before AI that's the thesis now with AI too and I think it's so true and you go look at something like paper

24:33 where you put that stake in the ground is this is the future and then the ideas percolated well

24:40 that caused your products to stand out right it made it so that people use them and they were delighted. Yeah,

24:46 you had a point of view. You had impeccable visual craft and execution. It was dynamic. Uh and I see that across many of the products that you pushed over time. Uh that attention to detail and making sure it's a great great experience.

25:03 Yeah. And I think the investment in that craft and that design, that point of view, but also brand. Yeah. uh and overall how you show up in the world. It only increases right now because that's how you stand out.

25:14 Yeah. Uh and I I think it's a really important moment to be leaning into that. Yeah.

25:19 And that's the across creative disciplines. I think um you know a lot of creatives um rightfully so have been very spooked by um the models getting better.

25:30 Yeah. But I think what will end up happening as we look back 10 years from now is that actually the model outputs are really um more of like a new medium and you can shape that medium like clay

25:44 and you can create just like in origami studio uh you can create these processes uh to make it so that you're able to transform and mutate these uh outputs in order to get to a sit uh an output that you think is really incredible. And the first prompt should not be the final destination. You should push it to the final destination

26:04 and add your own feedback, add your own thought. And when one uh product we recently acquired, uh it's called Weevi. We now we're calling it Figma Weave. And it's something we're really excited about because it basically creates that nodebased workflow

26:17 uh in order to make it so you can really chain together different models, different outputs, transform them, and get to it final destination. I think that's like really what's needed is that process and creating those pipelines for the future of creativity.

26:31 Yeah, there's there's a bunch of interesting pieces here. I mean, first of all, yeah, I mean the beauty of of maybe you know founder companies like yours is you have a value system that is the product like the product is an expression of the value system that you and the team who heard you talk about it and decided yes this is the effort I want to join are aligned upon. And in that world, it's hard to have a thing be a threat because the thing is either useful or it's not useful. And if it's useful, we're going to use it.

26:58 And so you're able to kind of not disrupt yourself. That's the wrong word, but to embrace. Yep. Oh, this could be scary new technology, but no, like we're going to embrace because you have a value system which is a belief in empowering people, building tools that let them achieve the visions that they have. And this is obviously a tool that helps that. You can't question that AI isn't a tool that helps people. Um, need less outside help other people to achieve a vision that they have. Doesn't mean it's free. Doesn't mean it's not work. That's a whole piece there. And you can't fight it. Like fighting it is is futile. Uh because like if people want to achieve their vision and you want to be the place that is the best way for them to do it, this is this is the alignment you have. At the same time um you know there there is a tremendous degree uh that you show care for the craft and that is one of the things that

27:48 people are worried will be lost with AI because craft is not a consensus. It's not the averages of 10 things seen but craft is very specific. Um and we think of like a well-crafted design object. We love the little details that are not obvious, maybe not even evident, but like upon a close inspection, you realize, ah, this curve is because like when you grab it here, that's just like going to gently guide your hand to the right grip. Like there's just little little pieces that are not immediately evident. I do expect the AI to keep getting better and more interesting.

28:27 Here's an interesting point, too. Uh my prediction would be that as you get to AI systems models that can show higher craft, if you think back to like the design reviews and product reviews you've been in where you've seen something that's truly opinionated, my guess is that not everyone in the room

28:46 uh got it right away. That's right. Yeah. And instead it actually created a lot of conversation.

28:50 Yeah. Totally. Just like just like Figma and like newsfeed and other things. Exactly. And so I think that as you put out outputs from a model that actually show a high degree of craft, we're not there at all yet. Like let's say we get there,

29:04 I think it actually just elicits more thought. Yeah. From everyone. The editorial role yeah is the key the key piece is like hey of these of these controversial highcraft directions we edit we we decide

29:19 and ultimately you get to a place where you then okay you're not just seeing one thing that's high craft you're seeing multiple points in this very complex option space and then it's your job as a designer or as someone that wants to think about how can I improve the design of my idea how do I navigate this option space, this laden space that's like hyperdimensional. Totally

29:42 in order to figure out the right places to go and explore and push. This is this is one of my constructs for the history of technology and human human species. We kind of keep thinking that we know what we are as a species and then inventing things that do that thing and then finding out actually what we are as this other thing. Um, and it's a dialogue too. We're not fixed. like as the tools get better, we evolve in some ways, right? Modern art was a was a repercussion of photography putting pressure on uh painters who were doing, you know, realistic looking landscapes.

30:17 It didn't eliminate those painters. The best ones are still unbelievable and continue to thrive,

30:23 but a lot of people went in different directions and actually we found an entire new way of expressing emotion and energy and thought and it was kind of tremendously fascinating. that that or as an intelligence operation, we don't know. But either way, uh you know, it was uh uh something that people got excited about because it was newer.

30:40 Yeah. And um you know, if you like think about art right now, Yeah. I think actually there's um a chance that the reactions to AI and the ability to output things and not be able to distinguish exactly when it was prompted Yeah.

30:55 versus when it was crafted. uh in the physical realm of art. I think it'll lead to new art movements that agreed we have not leaned into historically, natural materials, whether it be um you know, living materials like uh uh wood or you know, actually uh you know, for example, a friend that's doing a lot of work with like uh you know, basically wool.

31:18 Yeah. And uh stuff that's sculptural. It's like those are the things that I think people start leaning into more.

31:24 Yeah. Um, there's also always the reaction to what's going on and what people are going to seek and the novelty. And I think that that's going to be really fun in the realm of design because the creativity explosion we're going to see, like we've been in this world of Swiss minimalism for so long.

31:38 I'm fine with Swiss minimalism. I think that uh it has its place, but like should all of software be Swiss minimalism,

31:45 right? Right. Should all of software be Swiss minimalism? Like that seems intuitively wrong.

31:51 Yeah. And I think back to the flash era of the internet and how much there has rampant creativity. People trying all these things

31:57 geocities man just max it out. Absolutely. Uh but you know I think that there's also the sort of connotation from like geocities or the flash era of oh yeah my computer crashed or it was actually not high craft. What if you had high craft and the explosion of creativity? Like this could be an amazing era ahead.

32:14 Yeah. No it is interesting to I've seen more and more of that movement on online. I'm loving it. Like hey what about maximalist software design? Like what if we just went like this thing can do so much like what if we just went yard with it like I really like that idea and I do this is my kind of about dialogue exactly like it's not a static thing once you introduce a new media and I think AI art is going to kind of come to be in its own media type um like there's a reaction to it and like people rebalance it and they find new and different ways to create and the audiences want to continue to find new and different things. At some point a thing that becomes readily present like collapses on its own weight and like we seek the craft at the edge

32:51 and there's always an edge like there's always some kind of an edge and you're always pushing it.

32:55 Absolutely. That that's the nature of artists. It's the nature of what that thing

32:58 and design and uh creativity in general engineering I mean it's all of it. What are the things that you see as unchanged? So in the current moment it does feel like everything is a skew and gener is going to eat everything. And we talked a little bit about some of these pieces of the intention and the craft and the expression. Those things don't change maybe, but like as a what are the pieces of of the workflows that you're seeing where it's like there's just no shortcut right now? Like there's just no there's no way out of this piece like there's AI isn't coming to save you.

33:28 Yeah. I mean, I guess maybe I'll build up to it. Uh, you know, if you kind of think about just what is unchanging from a human perspective first.

33:36 Yeah. Like I mean we've had how many millennia of evolution to get here. Yeah. Uh a good thing for meta. What I think we're going to still be seeking social connection.

33:48 I think so. That's right. I sure hope so. At least. Yeah. Uh that not everyone's just talking all the time. That satiates them. I think that you know look uh Farmville was something that went rampant on Facebook at some point.

34:00 Yeah. Um but like people had you know a sort of antibbody reaction to that, right? It didn't take over their their life.

34:07 Yeah, totally. And uh maybe these feed tweaks help too. Little bit. Little bit. Little cal, a little com.

34:13 Yeah. But like I think that uh you know people will be seeking social connection that'll matter.

34:18 And then I think about just like well what does it mean to be human? You're looking to make some impact on the world. Uh whether it be a small scale, large scale, like every any kind is fine. It could be just helping people in your local community. But um that pursuit of craft and that pursuit of creating things I think is intrinsic to being human.

34:42 And I don't think that stops. And I think that people uh react to the systems around them by trying to explore the edges. We're like a species that likes to explore the frontier. Totally.

34:53 And in all domains, I believe that will still happen. Yeah. No, I I really agree with you. I kind of think in my head um we get a little bit because there's now a global news structure which we didn't used to have. It can feel hard for people to feel like they're making a difference in a way that it didn't used to. You know, if previously if your world, your effective world was your town. Yep. You know, there was a construct there that you felt big inside of. Um but really it is the case, you know, whether you're just raising a family and you're supporting a family. That's that's key business. you're going to uh church, you're going to your local community, and you're supporting whatever is like I it is interesting how much we let the unbelievable noise of the internet and even AI as enthusiastic as I am about what I think it will unlock for us as a species get away from like at the end of

35:43 the day, we're like eating food, we're sleeping, we're like creating family units, we're, you know,

35:48 we like to be entertained. Totally. We like to be Yeah. We're crafting society. We're finding finding out how to spend our time. And those pieces are like these evergreen fonts of all the value. Yep. Like you can't create value in any other way than those ways. Like there's the only known ways to do it. And so like we're just like approaching those things with different like how can we be more useful? How can we be more entertaining? Like that's all we can do. Um I am constantly set with this. And also the inertia of human society is a real thing. On stage at config.ig. You and I also talked about new interface designs. We talked about the neural interfaces that we're working on

36:19 are amazing by the way. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. Yeah. I was playing with that beforehand. Uh, you know, you're very, uh, kind to show it to me a few times in advance, too. And just the advancements that are coming there and the way that you have the haptic feedback and I mean, it's it it literally is something that you take it off and it feels like you're now missing something.

36:42 Yeah, totally. It's it's almost like a prosthetic limb in some way. It's really wild.

36:46 Well, I I applaud uh your your kind words. The check is in the mail, as we say. Yeah. Uh yeah, we got a chance to try the better displays just beforehand, but yeah, you've gotten to try quite a few prototypes before that. There's all these new and exciting things. AI is this new exciting thing. Then there's just like some rate at which this stuff can infiltrate society. Like there's just some like natural inertia that's very hard to move. So the rate of change of society large is like I'm not going to say it's fixed, but like there is a there are bandwidth limits to like how fast those things change. Um, and so the other thing I think we're afraid of sometimes as a society is rapid change.

37:21 Sure, we're afraid of change. Change is scary, especially for those of us over the age of 35.

37:27 But the is it the cut off? That's right. It is. Douglas Adams said it right. Douglas Adams, you know, uh, before 25, that's the way the world works. Between 35, it's a wonderful invention and I might make money off it. After 35, it's an abomination. That's, uh, it's Douglas Adams. And I found it to be I'm 43 now. I found it to be upsettingly accurate. I have to really fight when a new thing comes up to not be like I don't need new things. Get this new thing out of here. Um so my may perhaps my days of CTO are limited now but but so far I've been able to fight to keep my mind open but it is actual effort now for me. My point being like there's this inertia in the society that that has an effect on these things and we do have time to shape them. So they don't just hit in their final form.

38:03 Yeah. They react. And so um you you create it and then humans react in the way that humans do and that creates a second wave that's better than the first wave. So yeah, you do like you you come in he heavy with a Farmville.

38:16 Um and you like balance it out with like other mechanics that like give people a greater longevity and a greater balance they feel better out in the long term. And we do take I'm not going to pretend we don't take missteps as a society, as an industry, as a company, but like you you adapt to those. And it does feel like the kind of place we have the ability to adapt. And the people I want guiding our adaptation to AI are very much in your community in Figma, right? These are people who are absolutely trying to think about the meta machine, the system.

38:45 They're thinking at the societal level. They're thinking at the individual effect. Um it's really it is the community of people in our industry that takes on the responsibility for that. Yes.

38:57 Um and so it's very exciting that you guys are kind of on the cutting edge of this thing because I think that is the community that we need guiding the shape of it. I couldn't agree more and I think that if you look forward, my hypothesis is that we're just going to see so many more designer leaders.

39:13 Um, and at least it's what we need. Yeah, totally. Uh, and I hope designers at large will step up to the challenge.

39:22 Yeah, totally. Because whether it be on the societal level, uh, whether it be on the industry company level, like in every part of the equation, this is what we need. We need systems thinkers. Y

39:34 who are really trying to be uh coming from a place of values and understanding okay how do I shape this how do I shape this future

39:42 and you know for every dystopic uh scenario that you can come up with you can come up with an optimistic one

39:49 how do we bend that curve of progress towards optimism that's right and it's work it's like it's not free no one's pretending that it naturally happens but we just like the faith that we have in one another to some degree causes us to believe that on net far more of us will bend it in the in the right direction than not.

40:04 Yeah. And there's an element of faith I think that is at play there. Yeah. Uh you cannot assume that it just all happens automatically and it also takes faith to believe in the bad scenarios. Totally.

40:14 Uh and I think that people miss that. It's like pessimism and autism are both faith.

40:19 Uh but like you can choose. That's right. Yeah. And you can play a role like you can pick up a shovel and you can like you can like you know guide the thing the right way.

40:27 Yeah. And also I think that the interface of the future going back to your original point um and the ways that we'll interact with technology uh I'm very very excited about. I think it's um going to look tremendously different in 10 20 years than it does today.

40:42 Yeah. And um you know our original vision as a company is how do you go from imagination to reality and that's some point we took a you know kind of narrowed in on make design and we expanded back out. No that's the right one. age of AI. People get it now. And uh I think that now we're in a world where we're approaching, okay, I've got a thought in my head and I can get it into uh onto a screen into the real world.

41:06 Yeah. But then how do you get that feedback loop? And you know, eventually we'll get to I think BCI uh non-invasive and invasive interfaces. Um I know invasive freaks people out understandably. Uh but I think it's going to be a very important part of the tech tree. Yeah. And um I think what we'll see is uh just a even bigger explosion in what humans can do.

41:31 Yeah. And how they can impact and how they can create. And um overall I mean I'm just very very excited for like how we can unlock human potential.

41:40 Well, I'm not going to beat that. That's a tremendously positive and optimistic point to end on and I agree with you completely. Um you know, people are going to give me a hard time. I have such tremendous respect for you and the company that you've built and the community formed around that company and the way you approach it. Obviously, it comes through in the conversation with humility. You're online responding to people you care about when when things don't seem right. You're in there personally mixing it up. Uh really tremendous example for our industry and there is a greater movement towards designled companies. You know, first of all, we would there's designers like Steve Jobs who in retrospect weren't called designers at the time, but in the modern era, we would have called them designers. Um but you know, people like Ben Blumenfeld and others building up and trying to support design that

42:17 company. So there does seem to be a movement there and a lot of it coming out of meta too of design. That's right. Uh has has spread very far but yeah excited to see what the next generation designers do too. I think that uh Gen Z is

42:34 uh coming from a very different place. We started the conversation by talking about how for me and Evan we had just uh assumed the world state that was different. Yeah.

42:43 Jenz is the same way. That's right. and the things that they will bring and how they will uh you know bring forward new ideas will be pretty incredible too.

42:50 Yeah. I'm going to try to not get too old to appreciate it. I'm going to jump into a speed round here. We have to chose something fun.

42:55 Um so the this one is going to be I'm going to name some design trends and I want you just to say overrated or underrated.

43:03 Okay, I'll do my best. Skeorphism. Uh overrated. Glassorphism. Uh overrated. Dark mode definitely overrated. Comic stands underrated.

43:16 Agreed. Hamburger menus underrated. Pull to refresh very very underrated. AI generated UIs.

43:25 Uh overrated as an idea in the future. I can qualify. Sorry, I can't qualify. Speed rounds.

43:30 Uh I am loving this. I'm going to keep this going. The overunders Thanksgiving sides. Overrated or underrated stuffing.

43:36 Oh, so underrated. Underrated the max. By the way, my max thing about this is see we're mantos.

43:43 Sweet potato casserole. Uh, overrated with marshmallows. Definitely overrated. Yeah, I'm with you 100%. Mac and cheese,

43:51 slightly underrated. Yeah. Could it possibly be overrated when it's already amazing? It's hard to say. Mashed potatoes,

43:57 overrated. Cream spinach, very overrated. That's my first departure from you. I'm I'm underrated. Big cream spinach fan. Green bean casserole.

44:07 Overrated. Yeah. Cranberry sauce. Very underrated. From a can. Uh, sometimes overrated. All right, I'm with you. Uh, listen, this is wonderful. Thank you for coming. Uh, I'm not going to argue with that.

44:20 Thank you for having cream spinach where you and I are of a chord. Oh, maybe I get up recipe.

44:24 Although, I will say dark mode. Uh, okay. One small shout out for dark mode. Dark mode, I agree with you on all existing media. However, in uh in transparent glasses, dark mode is awesome and rules. So, we are going to take advantage of the overrating of dark mode and make it underrated uh in future displays. Excited for not just dark mode, but all the themes.

44:43 That's right. All the themes. Uh you know, it's not against dark mode. It's just like this. It can't be just binary. You know, going from one to two is hard. Two to N is exciting.

44:50 Yeah, that's right. Uh where should people follow you on the internet? I mean, whether it be Threads or X, I mean, at Zoink is my handle.

44:59 It's a great handle. It's a great one. Uh actually threads might be Dylan Jfield. I have to uh clarify that.

45:06 We'll figure that out. Uh so either way following you on the internet uh you you're actually you're very engaged with the community. It's a great place to learn what's going on.

45:13 Uh everyone, thank you for listening. You can listen to Bos to the Future wherever you enjoy fine podcasts and we will see you in the future.

Questions about this episode

Who speaks in "Boz To The Future # 25: The Future According to Dylan Field"?

Dylan Field (Host).

What is "Boz To The Future # 25: The Future According to Dylan Field" about?

Dylan Field, CEO and co-founder of Figma, shares insights on the future of design and technology, emphasizing the importance of humility, curiosity, and a commitment to craft. He discusses Figma's journey in disrupting established design tools, exploring how innovation can emerge even in seemingly saturated markets, and expresses optimism about the potential for future advancements through…

What is mentioned in this Meta episode?

14 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including Figma, Dylan Field, Artificial Intelligence, WebGL, Weevi, Adobe. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is "Boz To The Future # 25: The Future According to Dylan Field"?

The episode runs 45 min; the transcript is about 9,715 words in 188 timestamped sections.

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