ConFig 2023 Team Takeaways

ConFig is the annual conference for our favorite software, Figma, and this year our team attended in person and virtually. The conference featured talks from some brilliant minds from the likes of Google, Duolingo, and Adobe. The first day opened with a presentation by Figma’s CEO, Dylan Field, announcing some incredible new features for Figma. These features have already been launched and our team has been playing with incorporating them into our projects. Some of our team’s favorites include Variables, Auto Layout Updates, Advanced Prototyping, and Dev Mode. Here’s how we see them making our lives easier, all while making our clients’ projects better.

Variables

Variables will help streamline design systems and open up new opportunities for more flexible theming, and advanced prototyping bringing design systems more in line with how they are coded in real-life. This will save hours of design time and finally allow designers to experiment with programming capabilities in our designs. We can’t wait to start creating using this powerful new feature.

Auto Layout Updates

Auto Layout Updates including Min and Max widths and Element Wrapping is a small but core feature that finally allows us designers to create fully responsive layouts that work just like a real website, which means fewer screens to design, less interpretation by our development team, and cuts down on our production time significantly.

Advanced Prototyping

Advanced Prototyping is truly every designer’s dream! We are so excited about these new features as they dramatically simplify the prototyping process and allow us to build truly functional prototypes for our clients to interact with. We see this as one of the most cost-saving features being released by Figma as it truly allows for designing, testing, and iterating on a proposed solution without having to move into development until we have a tried and tested solution.

Dev Mode

Dev Mode officially brings code and design closer than ever and creates a wonderful new way for developers to view and interact with our designs in Figma. We are very excited to make our dev team’s lives easier with this new feature to help streamline our communication and development handoff.

All Things AI

Just like with every news feed and dinner conversation these days, AI was a big topic at ConFig this year. There is no doubt that AI and LLMS (Large Language Models) such as Chat GPT are going to impact every industry in huge ways. However, with every new technology, we designers are going to be there every step of the way to help find innovative ways businesses and people can use this technology to save time, reduce monotonous tasks, and help people focus on the things that matter to them. While AI can seem like a looming threat to many, ConFig helped solidify that while this technology is here to stay, so are we—because regardless of the technology people use “we design for people”.  (More on this later)

Be on the lookout for our next posts when we dive deeper into what we learned and how we plan to incorporate it to save time and save our clients money. And if you want to be first to know, follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.