Config 2026: Reconsidering Craft, Quality, and Audience in the AI Era
As AI compresses the cycle from idea to execution, the design community is being forced to revisit some of its most basic assumptions. With that in mind, Figma has released a first look at the speaker lineup for Config 2026, which returns to San Francisco June 23–25. We asked several of the speakers how they are navigating a landscape where AI accelerates production, and where the most significant opportunities for creative work now lie.
From Creator to Orchestrator
For artist and composer Holly Herndon, whose work includes the Holly+ project and the recent Starmirror installation, AI is shifting the artist's role. Starmirror, staged at the KW Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin, recorded vocals from visitors and local choirs to build a dataset for training a new AI choir—framing the model itself as a collective, public artifact rather than a private tool. "I see software as one of the defining artistic mediums of our time," says Herndon. "With the help of AI, our studio is building more complex software projects than were previously possible. It’s exciting to see our capacities expand, and to shift our roles to become orchestrators."
Danit Peleg, founder of 3D Printed Fashion Lab, sees AI extending well beyond the screen. "We’re entering an era where AI doesn’t just design on a screen, but also drives real-world manufacturing, architecture, and fashion," she says. Her studio integrates AI agents across the entire production pipeline, from concept to fabrication, using tools like Figma Weave to move towards on-demand, zero-waste textile production. "We are going to see AI literally making things in the world."
Designer and author Vicki Tan, whose background includes Pinterest, Spotify, and Headspace, connects this shift to the nature of the creative process itself. "People talk about creativity as originality or talent, but I think it may be closer to care or attention," she says. "There’s a related word in French, attendre, which means 'to wait for' or 'to tend to,' and I like thinking about creativity as the act of tending towards an idea."
Quality as a Function of Real-World Survival
As the barriers to shipping software drop, the traditional markers of design credibility are losing their meaning, according to designer and strategist Matthew Ström-Awn of mu.design. "We’ve always celebrated individual designers as paragons of quality, but those who spoke loudest or most often got the most mindshare," he says. "Now that anyone can go from idea to working software in hours without the backing of a world-class engineering team, the old signals of credibility—a job in FAANG, a big subscriber list, a nice logo wall, and slick sizzle reel—aren’t sufficient."
The new test, he argues, is whether work holds up under real conditions. "Quality should be defined by people who deliver real software, real brands, real campaigns, and real impact. Shipping isn’t inherently virtuous. Shipped work has to survive contact with actual users, markets, and constraints."
Grant Sanderson, creator of the math education channel 3Blue1Brown, sees this commoditization of software as a reason for design to take on greater strategic weight. "The fact that software implementation is on a path to be commoditized and largely automated means design plays a more important role in product development than ever," he says. For Sanderson, quality is defined by how well a tool extends its user's capabilities. "Truly great products offer a foundation for making their users swifter in a wide range of tasks," he adds, meaning users should be able to adapt the tool to their own workflows.
Designing for a Non-Human User Base
The biggest strategic question may no longer be how to build, but who to build for—and what happens when the user isn't a person. Ström-Awn frames it directly: "What happens when most of your users are AI agents? What happens when your human users expect everything to be easily automated? What happens when your users can easily vibe-code replacements for the parts of your app that aren’t a perfect fit for their use case? Product strategy—not just how to build fast and at quality, but what to build and for whom—is the existential question."
Tan suggests that the answer lies in a broader definition of the builder's role, one closer to orchestration than creation. She points to systems like public transportation and medical care, where technology must shape and hold collective expertise rather than simply optimize individual productivity. "There is already enormous wisdom in how people live within these systems," she says. "Our job is to create structures that can hold and shape it."
