230. Tech Tools: Use Visuals to Your Advantage

Summary

Think Fast Talk Smart: Communication Techniques

Episode 230 — Tech Tools: Use Visuals to Your Advantage

Host: Matt Abrahams
Guest: Yuki Yamashita, Chief Product Officer at Figma
Date: September 18, 2025

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Episode Overview

This episode delves into the essential role of visuals and tools in effective communication—especially for facilitating collaboration, crafting memorable messages, and distilling complex ideas. Host Matt Abrahams speaks with Yuki Yamashita, Figma’s Chief Product Officer, about best practices for visual storytelling, the philosophy behind Figma’s design, and actionable ways to make ideas more memorable. The conversation provides both conceptual insights and practical advice for anyone seeking to communicate with greater clarity and impact.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Figma’s Purpose & Philosophy (01:16–03:17)

• What is Figma?
  Yuki delivers an “elevator pitch” using Matt’s recommended structure.

  “What if you could visualize any idea you have in your head and immediately collaborate on it in real time with others so that you and your team... can make digital experiences… together end to end.” (B, 01:32)

• Flexible Application:
  Beyond professional use, Figma users have leveraged it for personal tasks like planners or arranging apartment layouts.

• Motivation for Joining Figma:
  Yuki shares two main reasons:

  • Practical: Witnessed Figma’s real-time collaboration transform cross-team communication at Uber.
  • Philosophical: Figma “championed” the idea that design shouldn’t be siloed with designers—everyone should participate.

  “Over time, these boundaries between functions… should be blurred or [are] artificial. Design is something that everyone should be participating in.” (B, 02:44)

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2. Best Practices for Visualization & Communication (03:17–06:03)

• The Power of Takeaway Visuals:
  People remember only a few points—often just one powerful visual, framework, or “meme.”

  “I spend a disproportionate amount of time trying to distill that discussion or thesis into something visual that people can remember.” (B, 03:39)

  • Visuals serve as memorable anchors for complex information.
  • Yuki highlights the importance of crafting visuals that distill and frame the core message.

• Emotional Connection & Visual Vocabulary:
  Visuals create a “vocabulary” everyone can reference, enabling teams to sort issues and goals efficiently.

  “All of a sudden, you've given everyone a vocabulary, right? And then that is the very same visual framework… to slot in their problems and goals.” (B, 04:57)

  • Frameworks and metaphors help audiences process and recall information, turning ambiguity into shared understanding.

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3. Techniques to Make Complex Ideas Accessible (07:01–09:00)

• Role Model in Communication:
  Yuki admires David Mallon, his first computer science professor, for clarity and theatrical presentation:

  “He never says. It's always just so fluid, even while navigating some of the most complex topics.” (B, 07:15) “He… managed to make computer science theatrical almost.” (B, 07:31)

  • Professor Mallon uses analogies and physical demonstrations (e.g., tearing a phone book to explain binary search).

  “He took a directory, ripped it in half, looked at the name, discarded half, kept ripping in half… That's such a visual and evocative way to understand… binary search.” (B, 08:37)

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4. Communication Hacks: The Power of the “Meme” (09:00–10:01)

• Making Messages Spreadable:
  Yuki describes the value of “meme-ifying” key insights to facilitate viral adoption:

  “I really spend 80% of the time kind of gutting it down to like, what is that one thing that's going to spread virally?” (B, 09:46)

• Relevance & Reuse:
  Matt summarizes this strategy as focusing on what’s “most relevant and most likely to be reused.” (C, 10:01)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Figma’s Mission:

  “Design is something that everyone should be participating in.”
  — Yuki Yamashita (02:50)

• On Making Ideas Memorable:

  “Sometimes I describe it almost as a meme... that's a really well articulated insight, maybe it's a very provocative problem, maybe it's a visual you want to keep using over and over again.”
  — Yuki Yamashita (03:53)

• On Visual Frameworks:

  “It's really just language. And it just happens to be that… we've given it something visual or given it words that are memorable.”
  — Yuki Yamashita (05:15)

• On Teaching Complex Topics:

  “He took a directory, he ripped it in half, looked at the name, discarded half, kept ripping in half… such a visual and evocative way to understand what binary search is really about.”
  — Yuki Yamashita (08:36)

• On Spreading Communication:

  “I just kind of realized that even as leaders in a company, you find that people start repeating things… that makes them maybe sound smart or is a little bit counterintuitive or evocative, and therefore you want to spread it more.”
  — Yuki Yamashita (09:30)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 01:16 — What is Figma?
• 02:14 — Why Yuki joined Figma (practical and philosophical reasons)
• 03:37 — Importance of a single visual takeaway/meme in communication
• 04:46 — Emotional connection and utility of visual frameworks
• 07:11 — Most admired communicator and their methods
• 08:25 — Example of using analogies and visuals in teaching
• 09:18 — Communication “hack”: meme-ifying insights
• 10:01 — Discussion of relevance and reuse in crafting messages

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Tone & Takeaways

The conversation is practical and conversational, blending expert theory with down-to-earth examples. Yuki emphasizes the power of accessibility, emotional resonance, and repeatability in communication. Matt frames these ideas as actionable insights for communicators at every level. Whether you’re pitching an idea, teaching a tough topic, or leading a team, distilling complex information into resonant visuals and frameworks can dramatically enhance understanding and impact.

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For more actionable tips, check out additional Tech Tools miniseries episodes of Think Fast Talk Smart.

Transcript

[A]

This Tech Tools miniseries is brought to you by Prezi, the presentation tool that makes your ideas easy to follow, hard to forget, and faster than ever to create. With Prezi AI, the best investment is in the tools of one's own trade. At Think Fast, Talk Smart, we're taking this quote by Benjamin Franklin, the famous US inventor and founding father, very seriously. As you know, our show strives to share tips and techniques to help you hone and and improve your communication and careers. These practices and approaches can be augmented with tools and technology. I'm Matt Abrahams. I teach strategic communication at Stanford Graduate School of Business. Welcome to this Tech Tools miniseries of Think Fast Talk Smart, the podcast. In this multi part miniseries, we'll introduce you to tools we use at Think Fast Talk Smart to help us be better at our spoken and written communication. And you'll learn best practices from the founders who created them. Taken together, we hope these communication tools will help you find new ways to think fast and talk smart. I am super excited today to speak with Yuki Yamashita, who is Figma's Chief Product Officer. Yuki, welcome. Thanks for joining me.

[B]

Thank you for having me.

[C]

Some of our listeners might not know what Figma is. Can you share what your product is using the elevator pitch structure I teach my students. What if you could so that for example, and that's not all. Do you want to give that a try?

[B]

So what if you could visualize any idea you have in your head and immediately collaborate on it in real time with others so that you and your team, if you have one, can make digital experiences like apps and websites together end to end. For example, you can brainstorm an idea on a digital whiteboard, bring it into a design infinite canvas, present that vision in a deck and actually get it built end to end. And that's not all. People have found other creative ways to use Figma, like stirring a visual resume or planning a trip or wedding, or even arranging an apartment floor plan.

[C]

That was a great use of that structure. You get an A. I'm curious Yuki, what led you to join Figma?

[B]

There is the practical reason and kind of the philosophical reason. So the practical reason was I was working at Uber before my time at Figma, happened to be on a team that experimentally brought Figma into the company. And this is a time when we were trying to desilo all the product work that's going on and get the rest of the company knowing what's happening inside of the product world. So it was a perfect fit for that. I got to see firsthand how it spread virally, got everyone involved, but maybe even more importantly, it embodied a philosophy that I always had around design, which is that design shouldn't be just designer's consideration. I was a product manager for most of my career and oftentimes had to dig through Dropbox files to find that right png. And then if I wanted to edit it, I needed to gain access to some other application or just, you know, go to Photoshop and make some edits. Figma took the point of view that I had, which is that over time, these boundaries between functions that should be blurred or artificial design is something that everyone should be participating in. I saw figma champion that worldview early on, and I was really excited by it.

[C]

Great. So it was a practical experience that lined up with your philosophical approach that led you to join. You and Figma have thought a lot about visualizing and communicating ideas. What are some of the best practices you've identified for visualization and communicating effectively?

[B]

I think the first thing that comes to mind is the idea that people usually have only a couple takeaways that they can bring home or bring to other people. For example, if it's a pitch deck, there's that one slide that people remember or that one framework to describe what your product is about or maybe what problem you're solving. And so I spend a disproportionate amount of time trying to distill that discussion or the thesis into something visual that people can remember. And sometimes I describe it almost as a meme. You know, like people have such short attention spans, they're often multitasking when they're consuming information. So there's just this one meme that they can take away. And maybe that's a really well articulated insight, maybe it's a very provocative problem, maybe it's a visual that you want to keep using over and over again. But those are the things that I think about most when I think about storytelling and visual storytelling.

[C]

It almost sounds like there's an emotional connection to the image. Is that something you think a lot about as you think about leveraging images to help people focus and remember?

[B]

I think so, because oftentimes, for example, I remember maybe when I was back at Uber, I was responsible for the rider app, and the rider app had a lot of issues. When you're getting into a car, there's all things that can go wrong, and it's very easy for people to just bring up the thousands different issues that they want my team to fix, for example. But if you can distill it down to actually there are four stages to a pickup. You need to do this and then that. Then all of a sudden you've given everyone a vocabulary, right? And then that is the very same visual framework that people might use in their own teams to slot in. Oh, here are my problems and goals. And all of a sudden you've kind of discretized this ambiguous space into something. It's really just language. And it just happens to be that, like we've given it something visual or given it words that are memorable. Often people call it a framework, but, you know, that's really essentially what it is.

[C]

I'm a huge fan of frameworks. When it comes to communication, I think it really helps, in fact, you leverage the pitch framework that I like to teach. But I like this idea of distilling processes down into their core components and then thinking about what's the best way to visually represent this information. In essence, what you said is it gives you a different vocabulary beyond just words. It gives you a visual vocabulary. And I like that a lot.

[A]

Now we're going to take a quick break. Thanks for supporting the partners who help us share smart communication with the world. Here's a quick message. The hardest part of presenting isn't knowing what to say. It's keeping people with you so they leave convinced. That's why I've been a long time Prezi user and love it. It's my favorite tool for giving memorable talks and it can help you do the same. Prezi is a presentation tool that makes your ideas easy to follow and and hard to forget, not just slide after slide. With Prezi AI, you can turn any idea into a presentation that's clear, engaging and ready to share, with no design skills needed. So you can focus on delivering it with confidence. Try it now with 25% off, [e-mail] thinkfast that's prezi.com thinkfast or check the link in the show notes. While the offer lasts.

[C]

Before we end, I'd like to ask you the same two questions that I'm asking everyone who's part of this miniseries. Who is a communicator that you admire and why?

[B]

One communicator who comes to mind is actually my first professor of computer science. His name is David Mallon. He runs this introductory to computer science course that's also available online for anyone to take. And I admire him for two reasons. One is he never says. It's always just so fluid, even while navigating some of the most complex topics. And it comes from a lot of practice. But it's just really impressive. And the second is really able to make the most complicated things relatable. And he's actually managed to make computer science theatrical almost. It's really fun to watch and inspiring, especially from the perspective of a student who, based on that, may or may not pick up the skill One.

[C]

I love that you picked a professor. I think our profession can use all the help we can get. I appreciate that. Anybody can now go check out that course. When you said that, one thing that stood out to you is that he made things relatable and engaging. Were there particular techniques he used? You said theatrical. What does that mean? I'm just curious. I'm always interested in how does somebody take something which is rather complex, like coding. You make it engaging and accessible.

[B]

For example, he was teaching the idea of binary search. He would pick up a dictionary and say, hey, let's talk about linear versus binary search. Linear search means that you're going, and maybe it was a phone directory. And I could tell you, hey, go find John Smith. But start from the beginning and just flip through every page. That's linear search. Conversely, I could tell you to binary search. And he took a directory, he ripped it in half, looked at the name, discarded half, kept ripping in half, and he could get to John Smith much faster. And that's such a visual and evocative way to understand what binary search is really about.

[C]

Yeah, so he showed. You used an analogy. I love that. That's great. He must have been very strong to be ripping phone books in half. All right, question number two. Beyond your tool, what is one communication hack tool or shortcut that you use to help yourself be more effective?

[B]

I think it's going to come back to the idea of forming a meme. It sounds like a very trivializing thing to do, but I just kind of realized that even as leaders in a company, you find that people start repeating things, phrases that they've heard that they've picked up that make them maybe sound smart or is a little bit counterintuitive or evocative, and therefore you want to spread it more. I mentioned spending a disproportionate amount of time honing in on what is a way to express this insight that makes people want to repeat it, or what is a way to visualize it so that they would want to reuse it over and over again. I really spend 80% of the time kind of gut coming it down to like, what is that one thing that's going to spread virally?

[C]

I think that's actually really cool. To me, memeifying something based on what you've said is really about finding what is most relevant and what is most likely to be reused. And if you use those two ideas, relevance and reuse, as a guide, it can really help you focus. Yuki, this has been really insightful. I really appreciate not just you sharing what your tool does, which is very helpful for collaboration and visualization, but also your approach and the way you think about these challenges and how people can be more creative and make better decision making.

[A]

Thanks for joining us.

[B]

Thank you for having me.

[A]

Thank you for joining us for one of our communication tools episodes of Think Fast talksmart the Podcast. Please be sure to listen to all of the episodes in this miniseries. We appreciate Prezi's sponsorship of these episodes. This episode was produced by Kathryn Reed, Ryan Campos and me, Matt Abrahams. Our music is from Floyd Wonder with special thanks to Podium podcast company. Please find us on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts. Be sure to subscribe and rate us. Follow us on LinkedIn, TikTok and Instagram and check out fastersmarterio for deep dive videos, English language learning content and our newsletter. Please consider our Premium offering for extended Deep Thinks episodes, Ask Matt Anythings and much more at fastersmarter IO Premium.