Figma Config Talk: Turning ambiguity into clarity

Feedback and video from my talk at Figma Config 2024.

First post in a while, 👋

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Last week I got the opportunity to speak at Figma’s Config conference. It was a good chance to tell some of the stories from past posts on principles to a new audience. And I’ve loved watching and learning from the other Config talks.

I thought it’d be interesting to share a small snippet of the preparation process. In the lead-up to the talk, I sent an early draft to Matthew Dicks for feedback. Matt wrote one of my favorite books on storytelling called ‘Storyworthy,’ and has a great personal exercise for gathering moments for stories called Homework for Life.

To paraphrase some of the feedback he gave me that you can apply to your next presentation:

• When telling stories, you want to lead people with their curiosity. In the first story of my talk (slide with mountain photo), he gave me the advice to leave open the possibility that something terrible happened for longer in the story. Said differently, don’t resolve what happened until the end of the story. That helps retain people’s attention.

• Similarly, don’t give the punchline or lesson until the end. In the original version of the talk, I said the principle on the first slide of each section. But Matt’s advice was to tell the story first, and then say the principle afterward. Seems obvious in retrospect, but wasn’t my default.

• He talked about the rule of three in comedy. Basically, if you’re going to make a joke about how bad something was, use three examples to get the most bang for the buck in the joke. And ideally, have one of the three deviate from the other two to create an unexpected element. I’m not sure if I did a great job of this, but in the first story I tried to use three examples of the ‘glamorous work’ for clients as a junior guide.

• Don’t tell people how much longer is in the talk. In the first draft, I said something like ‘In the next 20 minutes, I’ll tell you...’ and he gave the advice not to do that, since 20 minutes sounds like a long time to people.

You can see the full talk here. If you enjoy it, please share it with a friend!