230. Tech Tools: Use Visuals to Your Advantage

Transform how you communicate with tools that make your message stick. Clear communication isn’t just about sharing information — it’s about making ideas stick. That’s why Yuhki Yamashita https://www.fastersmarter.io/guests/yuhki-yamashita/, Chief Product Officer at Figma, believes the key to effective collaboration lies in turning complex concepts into simple, memorable visuals. For years, Figma has been reshaping the way teams brainstorm, design, and build together — making it easier than ever to bring ideas to life in real time. In this episode of the Think Fast, Talk Smart https://www.fastersmarter.io/ Tech Tools miniseries, host Matt Abrahams talks with Yamashita about how visuals facilitate shared understanding, why frameworks enhance team communication, and how to craft insights that people naturally remember and reuse. In addition to insight-packed discussions, this miniseries explores innovative tools that enhance the way we communicate and connect. Whether you want to make your presentations more memorable, craft stories that stick, or connect with your audience on a deeper level, these episodes will help you communicate with greater clarity, confidence, and impact. Episode Reference Links: Yuhki Yamashita https://www.fastersmarter.io/guests/yuhki-yamashita/Ep.227 Tech Tools: Move Your Audience By Moving Through Your Presentation https://www.fastersmarter.io/227-tech-tools-move-your-audience-by-moving-through-your-presentation/ Connect: Premium Signup >>>> Think Fast Talk Smart Premium https://www.fastersmarter.io/premium/Email Questions & Feedback >>> [email protected] Transcripts >>>Think Fast Talk Smart Website https://www.fastersmarter.io/230-tech-tools-use-visuals-to-your-advantage/Newsletter Signup + English Language Learning >>>FasterSmarter.io http://fastersmarter.io/Think Fast Talk Smart >>>LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/think-fast-talk-smart/,Instagram https://www.instagram.com/thinkfasttalksmart/, YouTube https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6caGRBUYZCmgDGM2RK6mxKB9jG_ccmm3Matt Abrahams >>>LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/maabrahams/ Chapters: (00:00) - Introduction (01:16) - Figma Elevator Structure (02:07) - Joining Figma (03:17) - The Power of Visual Storytelling (04:36) - Creating Shared Meaning with Visuals (05:37) - Favorite Communicator (08:02) - Communication Hack or Tool (09:39) - Conclusion ******* Thank you to our sponsors. These partnerships support the ongoing production of the podcast, allowing us to bring it to you at no cost. Try Prezi today and get 25% off exclusively at prezi.com/thinkfast http://prezi.com/thinkfast.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:03Matt Abrahams?

  This Tech Tools mini-series 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 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 mini-series of Think Fast, Talk Smart, the podcast. In this multi-part mini-series,

• 0:48Matt Abrahams?

  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 Yuhki Yamashita, who is Figma's Chief Product Officer. Yuki, welcome. Thanks for joining me.

• 1:15Speaker 01

  Thank you for having me.

• 1:16Matt Abrahams?

  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?

• 1:32Speaker 01

  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.

• 2:07Matt Abrahams?

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

• 2:14Speaker 01

  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. I happened to be on a team that experimentally brought Figma into the company. And this is a time when we were trying to de-silo 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. They 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

• 2:59Speaker 01

  or just 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 are 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.

• 3:17Matt Abrahams?

  Great. So it was a practical experience that lined up with your philosophical approach that led you to join.

• 3:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:26Matt Abrahams?

  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?

• 3:37Speaker 01

  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.

• 4:20Speaker 01

  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.

• 4:36Matt Abrahams?

  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?

• 4:46Speaker 01

  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 of 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.

• 5:28Speaker 01

  And it just happens to be that 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.

• 5:37Matt Abrahams?

  I'm a huge fan of frameworks when it comes to communication. I think it really helps. In fact, we 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. 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.

• 6:13Matt Abrahams?

  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 longtime 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 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 exclusively at prezi.com/thinkfast.

• 6:53Matt Abrahams?

  That's prezi.com/thinkfast or check the link in the show notes while the offer lasts.

• 7:01Matt Abrahams?

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

• 7:11Speaker 01

  One communicator who comes to mind is actually my first professor of computer science. His name is David Millen. 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 um. 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 has actually managed to make computer science theatrical, almost.

• 7:52Speaker 01

  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.

• 8:01Matt Abrahams?

  One, 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's 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 and make it engaging and accessible?

• 8:25Speaker 01

  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 the binary search, and he took a directory, he ripped it in half, looked at the name, discarded half, kept ripping it 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.

• 9:00Matt Abrahams?

  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?

• 9:18Speaker 01

  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 coming it down to like, what is that one thing that's going to spread virally?

• 10:01Matt Abrahams?

  I think that's actually really cool. To me, memifying 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. Thanks for joining us.

• 10:34Speaker 01

  Thank you for having me.

• 10:37Matt Abrahams?

  Thank you for joining us for one of our Communication Tools episodes of Think Fast, Talk Smart, the podcast. Please be sure to listen to all of the episodes in this mini-series. We appreciate Prezi's sponsorship of these episodes. This episode was produced by Catherine 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 FasterSmarter.io for deep-dive videos, English language learning content, and our newsletter. Please consider our premium offering for extended Deep Thinks

• 11:20Matt Abrahams?

  episodes, Ask Matt Anythings, and much more at FasterSmarter.io/premium. Before we wrap up, I just want to say thank you for listening. It really means a lot to hear how people all over the world are using these ideas in their own lives. It inspires me and the whole team that brings you this show. If you want more episodes and resources, feel free to follow, subscribe, and explore past conversations. We're grateful for your support of Think Fast, Talk Smart.