Designing at warp speed
It’s hard to believe that only seven weeks ago, I was at Figma’s 2025 Config conference, soaking up inspiration and reconnecting with what I love most about design: systems, craft, storytelling.
I fully intended to write a recap the following week. I had the tabs open. The talks bookmarked. Notes half-written.
But then, life happened. Or more precisely, work accelerated.
Config – craft before the storm
What stood out to me most at Config was the focus on craft, and the value that we the people bring to the design process. In a year where the tech industry is a wall of AI demos, the Config talks were refreshingly human.
Like Keegan McNamara’s talk – The Maximalist Theory of Minimalism – this philosophical and fun take on how modern design hides its decadence, and why maximalism still has a place in design. How form follows function, but the things we make should have a soul.
Or like Helena Zhang’s talk - The Space-Filling Curve of Design. A deep dive into the creation of Departure Mono, a pixel-based, monotype font. And the deep investment she made into craft and creativity on the website for the font, using references from ’80s video games and sci-fi interfaces.
There were so many more great talks on the beauty of Typography, or the power of Storytelling - from designing TV sets and Film props to even Pitch decks. So many amazing talks that celebrated taste, attention to detail, and quality.
Of course, there were great talks about AI too. Beyond Agents: AI as a Creative Partner was an amazing talk from Anthropic’s Joel Lewenstein, exploring how our metaphors for AI are evolving.
Maybe it was just because of the talks I chose to see. But craft seemed to be more front and center this year. Config 2025 felt like a quiet recalibration: more craft, less hype. More independence, less scale obsession. More design-led thinking across the board.
Perhaps my favorite talk of all was from Linear's Karri Saarinen, Crafting quality that endures. He spoke about the relationship between Craft and Quality. How technology makes it "faster to build, but harder to care". How real quality can only be achieved by truly valuing craft, for its own sake. How a commitment to craft and quality can set products apart.
AI felt more grounded
This was the second year that I attended Config. In 2024, AI was new to the product designer’s workflow. It was introduced as magic. And it felt a little scary.
With one single prompt, we saw a demo of full mobile app designs being built in front of our eyes. You could smell the fear of role redundancy across the conference room. Was AI here for designers’ jobs too? Already?
Things felt different in 2025. Much calmer. Rather than AI feeling like a threat, it was now being considered a creative partner. There was greater focus on how AI can help us move faster, do away with all the tedious work, and focus on what we love - our craft.
Last year leaned too heavily into AI hype. This year felt more measured, human-centered, and practically useful.
Designers can do anything! (Or everything!)
Now that the fear of AI has dissipated, we’re starting to realize that we as designers now have the ability to turn an idea into a fully shipped product—and that’s very powerful.
Many speakers embraced staying small, independent, and scrappy. Like Christine Vallaure de la Paz, whose talk, Building Digital Products as a Company of One, felt like a huge encouragement to do just that.
Or Parteek Saran, who argued that now is a better time than ever to be a design founder, in his talk, Just… Go for It! Making the Leap from Design to Business. He poked at a subtle but strong theme: designers don’t have to just be contributors. We can build the businesses too.
Config highlighted to me this year that designers can be solo makers, design engineers, even company founders. We have the taste, the systems thinking, the storytelling. And with AI, we now have the tools to do whatever we want.
And so, like last year, I walked away from Config feeling inspired, refreshed, and motivated. It felt like a pivotal moment in my career. I decided to lean into the chaos.
After Config: A new gear
Since then, things have changed. My tools have shifted, my workflows have changed, and my relationship with design has entered a new phase. To be honest, I haven’t opened Figma that much. Instead, I’ve been moving at a faster pace than ever, using AI-native tools like Cursor, V0, and Goose—Block’s own open-source AI agent.
Work that would have taken weeks in Figma became hours in V0. What was once mocked up in frames could now be rendered in live code. Vibe-coded, AI-assisted. These new tools are making things possible that weren’t just months ago.
The design industry is in a whirlwind right now. Things are moving faster than ever, and it can feel overwhelming.
We’re moving faster than ever - so hurry up and slow down
For me, the experience has been life-changing. I feel like I’m working at the bleeding edge of product, design, and AI tooling. But that speed? That acceleration? It doesn’t come without a cost.
In hindsight: Config was, in many ways, a meditation on slowing down. A celebration of detail, intention, and the kind of craft that takes time. And yet, the moment I left that space, I was pulled into a completely different current - one of speed, scale, and automation.
That contrast feels almost symbolic of where we are in design right now: torn between the deliberate and the instant, between quality and quantity, between the pace of people and the pace of machines.
So while we’re moving at breaking speed, I think it’s more important than ever to slow down intentionally. That’s what I’m trying to do. Keeping up with my meditation practice. Taking photos with my new old film camera. Walking the dog.
When it comes to work, the same applies. We need to slow down. We need the space to think. The space to iterate. The attention to detail. The space to test with real users. To value not just speed, but story.
Design is changing quickly. That’s exciting. But speed isn’t the only signal. Sometimes it takes seven weeks to figure out what you need to say.
