Building One with Tomer Cohen

Episode: Building Figma with Yuhki Yamashita: Collaborative Design, AI Teammates, and Building for Builders

Date: November 18, 2025
Guest: Yuhki Yamashita, Chief Product Officer at Figma
Host: Tomer Cohen, Chief Product Officer at LinkedIn

Episode Overview

This episode centers on the evolution and philosophy of building collaborative design tools, focusing on Yuhki Yamashita’s leadership at Figma. Tomer Cohen interviews Yuhki about his interdisciplinary journey across top tech companies, the cultural and technical bets that shaped Figma, the role of community, the tensions of multiple-user product design, and the future of AI as a creative teammate. The discussion weaves together practical product management wisdom, the unique challenges of designing for designers and builders, and how AI might reshape team collaboration and the very nature of building digital products.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

Yuhki’s Career Path: Design, Engineering & Product Management

• Early Interest & Academic Background (02:16)

  • Yuhki shares how he was always making things (holiday cards, creative projects), but didn’t initially see design as a profession:

    “I didn’t even know that being a designer was a real profession, like a UX designer going into college … I can do a little bit of engineering, but I’m not a great engineer … Product management feels like a good interdisciplinary thing, if you will. So that’s how I stumbled into it.” — Yuhki Yamashita (02:16)

• Center of Gravity (03:08)

  • The boundaries between product roles are blurring:

    “…all the roles are converging more … it’s more standard for a designer who codes or a PM who designs … my center of gravity has been kind of in that design side.” — Yuhki Yamashita (03:08)

Lessons & Principles from Microsoft, Google, Uber, and Figma

• Attention to Detail vs. Decentralized Decision Making (03:52)
  • At Microsoft: “Culture of caring about all the details … your specs are long and detailed and you had to think through every corner case.”
  • At Google: “Way I was working was not sustainable … really make sure more than anything else that people on my team were making high quality decisions. … I really learned the importance of defining the why the problem.”
  • At Uber: “Importance of breaking away from process … ops driven email moved metrics more than anything I ever did … should be thinking about all these things, not just what I can build with a software development team.”
  • At Figma: “Importance of community … the degree to which the community plays such a role in shaping our product.”
    (03:52–05:50)

Community as Culture and Craft at Figma

• Peer-to-Peer Accountability (05:57)
  • The builder culture is reinforced because Figma’s designers are building for other designers:

    “…designer wants to build the best possible experience because it’s their peers who are going to be using that. … people are craft oriented. And that’s never the debate.” — Yuhki Yamashita (05:57)

The Bold Multiplayer Bet & The Single Source of Truth

• The Shift in Design Collaboration (06:25, 06:55)
  • Early skepticism in design about real-time multiplayer (“hovering art director” as a negative):

    “Imagine your PM inside your file. … There’s certainly a lot of resistance to it. Multiplayer is kind of a side effect of their true value, which is having a single source of truth.” — Yuhki Yamashita (06:55)

  • The true principle wasn’t just collaboration:

    “Having a single source of truth that could be continually updated made it easier to bring more people into the equation.” — Yuhki Yamashita (06:55)

  • Cultural change mirrored by Google Docs (07:21):

    “…all of a sudden I could send these work in progress … and I could just send it early, knowing that after I send it I could keep editing it...” — Yuhki Yamashita

Navigating Complex User Needs & Segmentation

• Balancing Power and Approachability (12:06)

  • Danger in over-segmenting roles; product must be flexible for multiple hats:

    “…roles are blurring and in many companies people wear multiple hats … you end up inadvertently breaking up the user journeys of other types of users and it makes for a more complicated product.” — Yuhki Yamashita (12:06)

• Example: Figma Slides (13:22)

  • Creating “modalities” so that advanced users and casual users aren’t overwhelmed:

    “…maybe you’re working on one singular artifact, but everyone has different lenses depending on who they are or the use cases at hand, so that they’re not overwhelmed by all the UI ...” — Yuhki Yamashita (13:22)

The Opportunity and Limits of AI in Product & Design

• AI’s Expanding “Toolbox” (15:17)

  • AI as a way to bridge design and code:

    “…with AI, it helps with that … it can actually accelerate that conversion from design to code.” — Yuhki Yamashita (15:17)

• Competing & Collaborating with Code-First Tools (16:35)

  • Focused on empowering code assistants with design context:

    “Our job is how do we supply that AI assistant with as much context as possible so that they’re successful in generating high quality code.” — Yuhki Yamashita (16:35)

• The Limits of Current AI Builders (17:41)

  • Early AI tooling leaves users working mostly solo, suffering feedback and collaboration limitations:

    “…most people are working solo. It’s single player, it’s extremely hard to give feedback … you’re designing one screen at a time when really you want to look at flows and branches and collaborate on different parts … we’re still in the early beginnings of this category or this new way of working.” — Yuhki Yamashita (17:41)

• AI as a Team Player, Not an Isolated Assistant (19:10)

  • Envisioning AI as a multiplayer collaborator:

    “The feeling with a lot of tools today is that AI has re-siloed everyone. Right? It’s you and the assistant … And really the kind of ideal feeling is that AI is just in the teammate ... your other human teammates have a lot to say and have a lot to contribute to.”
    — Yuhki Yamashita (19:10)

  • Memorable: Launch of “Prompt to Edit” for real-time, multiplayer AI interaction (20:30)

Product Feedback, Alpha Culture, & Building with the Community

• Alphas as Fast Feedback Loops (21:14)
  • Figma embraces lightweight, rapid iterations via alphas, enabled by close customer relationships:

    “…the biggest thing is just … building relationship and trust. I often talk about the fact that many of us on the product team have people that we can text … cultivating that relationship is a huge part …” — Yuhki Yamashita (21:52)

The Rise of Full Stack Builders & What’s Next

• Full Stack Builder Trend (22:45; 23:10)

  • The merging of roles is accelerating:

    “…AI accelerates this because all of a sudden all the other functions get deobfuscated because everyone can code, everyone can design to some extent.”
    — Yuhki Yamashita (23:10)

• Future Team Structures (23:59)

  • Balance between full stack builders and specialists:

    “I think that there still will end up being specialists who are going deep in their craft … some of the best partnerships come from when maybe someone’s like the generator and someone’s a synthesizer.”
    — Yuhki Yamashita (23:59)

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Craft and Peer Pressure at Figma:

  “Designers know that their peers are their users, so there is built in peer pressure towards excellence. You get to a point where quality and empathy are actually non negotiable.” — Tomer Cohen (26:42)

• On the AI Teammate Vision:

  “AI will be your teammate inside of the multiplayer file, collaborating with AI [and] entire team, not just the individual.” — Tomer Cohen summarizing (27:18)

• On Storytelling as a Product Skill:

  “I always talk about the importance of storytelling … especially as a product person, stories are your vehicle for motivating people … it’s still kind of an underrated capability.” — Yuhki Yamashita (25:06)

Important Timestamps

• Career Path and Interdisciplinary Focus (02:16–03:08)
• Principles from Previous Companies (03:52–05:50)
• Figma’s Community and Craft Culture (05:57–06:25)
• Multiplayer as Single Source of Truth (06:55–08:38)
• Audience Segmentation and Modalities (12:06–13:22)
• Opportunities and Tensions with AI (15:08–19:10)
• AI as Team Member - "Prompt to Edit" Launch (19:10–20:30)
• Alpha Testing, Fast Iteration & Feedback Loops (21:14–22:45)
• Full Stack Builders and Future Team Models (22:45–24:42)
• Product Advice: The Power of Storytelling (25:06)

Tone & Language

The conversation is candid and reflective, blending technical insight with personal experience, and characterized by mutual respect and a light touch of humor. Both speakers are comfortable offering nuanced, sometimes contrarian takes on product management dogma. Yuhki is particularly open about uncertainty and experimentation, while Tomer interleaves his own perspective from LinkedIn for balance.

Summary Takeaway

This episode illustrates how Figma’s greatest innovations stem from clear founding principles—community, craft, and collaboration—reinforced by a willingness to challenge assumptions both culturally and technically. As digital tools, teams, and roles converge in a rapidly changing (and AI-inflected) landscape, building for builders means staying close to users, designing flexible but opinionated products, and investing in both technology and storytelling to motivate exceptional teams. Yuhki Yamashita’s career exemplifies the power of cross-disciplinary curiosity and the humility to keep learning from every chapter—and every user.