Config 2023: Live From the Scene

If you missed Config 2023, the Figma Editorial Team was on the ground covering keynotes, product announcements, and talks. Below is a rundown of what happened, along with links to watch the full sessions on demand.

Key Announcements and Product News

Config 2023 opened with a major product update focused on design-to-code workflows. The headline feature is Code Connect, which bridges the gap between design files and codebases by allowing developers to attach production code snippets directly to design components. This eliminates the need for searching through separate documentation or dependency files.

Another significant release is Variables, which introduces design tokens directly into Figma. Designers can now configure primitive values like colors and spacing, and then map them to component-level variables. This creates a more robust system for theming and makes handoff faster—when a variable changes, all components using it update.

For developer handoff, the new Dev Mode was announced. This is a specialized workspace within Figma designed for engineers, featuring a focused interface that hides design-editing tools. Users can inspect code-ready properties, navigate between files, and access plugin tools designed for the development context.

New Collaboration and Sharing Tools

Figma also introduced tools aimed at improving communication around design work. Comment navigation allows users to click between comments and the corresponding frames containing those annotations. There's also support for adding comments directly on prototypes.

For updating developers about changes, you can now distribute multiple patches in a single share request. Additionally, the new Change Logs feature in Dev Mode provides an automatically generated bulleted list summarizing modifications to a design file.

More Updates: Resources and Prototyping

In design resources, Figma expanded its libraries with a full UI kit for iOS 17, iPadOS 17, and macOS Sonoma SDKs, alongside new wireframe kits. A new Resource Finder workspace widget also enables searching for assets directly on the editor canvas.

In prototyping, users can now build interactions with variants, toggling between component states without creating complex conditional paths. This update streamlines testing alternative screen states and micro-interactions.

A Focus on Community and Open Practice

Throughout Config, a recurring message was the importance of the community. The product announcements emphasized open files, shared resources, and an approach centered on enabling others to create their own systems. The tone was less about proprietary lock-in and more about providing infrastructure for collaborative design processes.

Watch all sessions—keynotes and track talks—from the Config 2023 playlist.

Day 0: Gearing Up

Config 2023 kicked off with the usual pre-conference scramble: teaser puzzles, agenda-building, and packing for San Francisco’s unpredictable weather. This year’s event was bigger than ever, with a free livestream for remote attendees and 55 watch parties around the globe. For those in the Bay Area, an array of unofficial events and meetups rounded out the official schedule.

Day 1: Keynotes and Community

The first day opened with a major announcement: Figma CTO Kris Rasmussen introduced Dev Mode on the main stage, a new workspace designed to bridge the gap between design and engineering. The keynote set the tone for a day packed with sessions on everything from accessibility to large-scale government projects.

Between talks, the editorial team—Herbert Lui and Jenny Xie—filed live dispatches. The Figma Store drew comparisons to Supreme drops, with attendees queueing up for swag that included the new zine, The Playbook. The hallways were a runway, with standout fits from Figma’s own staff and visitors from companies like Microsoft, Slack, and Instagram.

A recurring theme was the human side of design. Haraldur Thorleifsson (Halli) inspired attendees with his unconventional path into the field, a reminder that it’s never too late to pivot. Dialog engineer Yuka Miyagi offered practical advice for building conversational AI for older users—keep sentences to 15-20 words—while sharing her work helping her uncle (no relation to the Karate Kid's Mr. Miyagi, she clarified) navigate modern technology.

Singaporean product designers Rachel Tan and Carina Lim presented a case study on digitizing the nation’s COVID-19 voucher system, RedeemSG, which has processed over $400M USD in transactions. Their core principles: speed makes policies actionable, context matters, and no one gets left behind.

Day 2: AI and the Future of Craft

The second day opened with a firm stance on generative AI from Google’s Director of UX Machine Learning, Ovetta Patrice Sampson. Her message was clear: don’t fear the technology. She drew historical parallels, from Hedy Lamarr’s tech innovations to Johannes Gutenberg—who, as it turns out, was kicked out of town for a failed get-rich-quick tin hat scheme before inventing the movable type press.

On the main stage, Figma’s Noah Levin offered a forward-looking perspective: “We’ll spend less time wrestling with rectangles, and more time applying taste and curation.” Diagram CEO Jordan Singer echoed the sentiment, reassuring the crowd that “designers aren’t going anywhere.”

Adobe made waves with a live demo of “Project Gingerbread,” an experimental tool that can 3D render an object from a text input, complete with realistic depth and perspective. Meanwhile, a panel from Duolingo explored how embracing art can enhance product design.

Content design also took center stage. Candi Williams, Director of Content Design at Bumble, made a case for syntax, contrasting “Your fitness ring wasn’t closed” with “You didn’t close your fitness ring yesterday” to show how wording affects tone. Her mandate: content designers should be champions for their discipline until it’s discussed even when they’re not in the room.

As the conference wound down, the consensus was clear. Beyond the new tools and features, the recurring refrain from attendees like NBCUniversal’s Joe and Giant Machines’ Ken was that Figma is shifting toward an engineering-centric mindset—and that the community, from the live sessions to the lunch hall conversations, remains the heart of the event.

All sessions from Config 2023 are available to stream on demand, and the conversation continues well beyond Moscone Center.

Teams and workflows take center stage

Config 2023 wasn’t just about new design tools—it was about how Figma fits into the broader team dynamic. The company leans into features that blur the line between design and development work, with a focus on making collaboration more seamless inside the product.

One of the more tangible shifts is in how Figma is positioning itself for scale. The platform’s emphasis is now on shared workflows: files no longer live in isolation, and team-level structure takes priority over individual projects. This suggests a push toward heavier usage inside organizations, where large numbers of contributors and stakeholders need to interact with the same design system and assets.

For team leads, the updates in Config’s messaging put communication rules front and center. Shared libraries, project organization, and live collaboration features were highlighted as the connective tissue for modern product teams.

What this signals for your team’s process

The takeaways from Config point to a few practical implications for internal design operations:

  • Library governance becomes core: The messaging around shared components and styles underscores that successful scaling of design work depends on a well-maintained source of truth.
  • Dynamic collaboration gets more formalized: Figma’s dev-mode focus reduces handoff friction, pushing a steady workflow where design tokens and comments stay attached to elements.
  • The design-engineering boundary is thinner: New capabilities favoring inspection, prototyping, and precise conversion of code into implementation mean cross-functional workflows carry weight.

Concrete examples of workflows remain the biggest utility here. Teams still balancing tool sprawl will find Figma’s direction compelling in that it converges a range of design and handoff activities into the same canvas, rather than shuttling between specialized tools.

Where next steps start

Getting and staying aligned as a team starts with properly using a single shared canvas. With the announcement season in the rearview, many of the highlighted features are live or rolling out incrementally — and they’re not just cosmetic. The opportunity presented at Config is a chance to reorganize project space and QA loops on stronger footing.

For those evaluating tooling, a free starting point is available at figma.com/signup.