230. Tech Tools: Use Visuals to Your Advantage

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Matt Abrahams: This Tech Tools miniseries
is brought to you by Prezi, the

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presentation tool that makes your ideas
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The best investment is in
the tools of one's own trade.

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At Think Fast Talk Smart, we are
taking this quote by Benjamin

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Franklin, the famous US inventor
and founding father, very seriously.

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As you know, our show strives to share
tips and techniques to help you hone and

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improve your communication and careers.

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These practices and approaches can be
augmented with tools and technology.

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I'm Matt Abrahams.

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I teach strategic communication at
Stanford Graduate School of Business.

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Welcome to this Tech Tools miniseries
of Think Fast Talk Smart, the podcast.

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In this multi-part miniseries, we'll
introduce you to tools we use at Think

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Fast Talk Smart to help us be better at
our spoken and written communication.

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And you'll learn best practices
from the founders who created them.

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Taken together, we hope these
communication tools will help you find

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new ways to think fast and talk smart.

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I am super excited today to speak
with Yuhki Yamashita, who is

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Figma's Chief Product Officer.

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Yuhki, welcome.

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Thanks for joining me.

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Yuhki Yamashita: Thank you for having me.

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Matt Abrahams: Some of our listeners
might not know what Figma is.

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Can you share what your product
is using the elevator pitch

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structure I teach my students?

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What if you could, so that, for
example, and that's not all.

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Do you wanna give that a try?

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Yuhki Yamashita: So what if you could
visualize any idea you have in your

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head and immediately collaborate on
it in real time with others so that

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you and your team, if you have one,
can make digital experiences like

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apps and websites together end to end?

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For example, you can brainstorm an
idea on digital whiteboard, bring

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it into a design infinite canvas,
present that vision in a deck, and

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actually get it built end to end.

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And that's not all.

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People have found other creative ways
to use Figma, like sharing a visual

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resume or planning a trip or wedding, or
even arranging an apartment floor plan.

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Matt Abrahams: That was a
great use of that structure.

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You get an A plus.

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I'm curious, Yuhki, what
led you to join Figma?

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Yuhki Yamashita: There is
the practical reason and kind

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of the philosophical reason.

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So the practical reason was I
was working at Uber before my

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time at Figma, uh, happened to
be on a team that experimentally

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brought Figma into the company.

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And this is a time when we were
trying to de-silo all the product

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work that's going on and get the
rest of the company knowing what's

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happening inside of the product world.

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So it was a perfect fit for that.

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So I got to see firsthand how it spread
virally, got everyone involved, but

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maybe even more importantly, it embodied
a philosophy that I always had around

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design, which is that design shouldn't
be just designer's consideration.

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I was a product manager for most of
my career, and oftentimes had to dig

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through Dropbox files to find that
right PNG, and then if I wanted to edit

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it, I needed to gain access to some
other application or just, you know,

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go to Photoshop and make some edits.

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Figma took the point of view that I
had, which is that over time, these

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boundaries between functions that
should be blurred or are artificial.

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Design is something that everyone
should be participating in.

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I saw Figma champion that world view
early on, and I was really excited by it.

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Matt Abrahams: Great.

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So it was a practical experience
that lined up with your philosophical

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approach that, that led you to to join.

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You and Figma have thought a lot about
visualizing and communicating ideas.

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What are some of the best practices
you've identified for visualization

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and communicating effectively?

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Yuhki Yamashita: I think the first
thing that comes to mind is the

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idea that people usually have only
a couple takeaways that they can

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bring home or bring to other people.

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For example, if it's a pitch deck,
there's that one slide that people

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remember, or that one framework to
describe what your product is about

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or maybe what problem you're solving.

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And so I spend a disproportionate
amount of time trying to distill that

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discussion or the thesis into something
visual that people can remember.

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And sometimes I describe it almost
as a meme, you know, like people

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have such short attention spans,
they're often multitasking when

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they're consuming information.

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So there's just this one
meme that they can take away.

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And maybe that's a really
well articulated insight.

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Maybe it's a very provocative problem.

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Maybe it's a visual that you want
to keep using over and over again,

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but those are the things that I
think about most when I think about

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storytelling and visual storytelling.

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Matt Abrahams: It almost sounds
like there's an emotional

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connection to the image.

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Is that something you think a lot about
as you think about leveraging images

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to help people focus and remember?

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Yuhki Yamashita: I think so, because
oftentimes, for example, I remember

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maybe when I was back at Uber, I was
responsible for the rider app, and

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the rider app had a lot of issues.

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When you're getting into a car, there's
all things that can go wrong, and it's

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very easy for people to just bring
up the thousand different issues that

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they want my team to fix, for example.

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But if you can distill it down to
actually there are four stages to a

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pickup, you need to do this and then
that, then all of a sudden you've

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given everyone a vocabulary, right?

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And then that is the very same visual
framework that people might use in

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their own teams to slot in, oh, here
are my problems and goals, and all of

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a sudden you've kind of discretized
this ambiguous space into something.

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It's really just language and it
just happens to be that like we,

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we've given it something visual or
given it words that are memorable.

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Often people call it a
framework, but you know, that's

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really essentially what it is.

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Matt Abrahams: I'm a huge fan of
frameworks when it comes to communication.

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I think it really helps, in fact,
you leverage the pitch framework

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that I like to teach, but I like this
idea of distilling processes down

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into their core components, and then
thinking about what's the best way to

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visually represent this information.

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In essence, what you said is it gives you
a different vocabulary beyond just words.

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It, it gives you a visual
vocabulary and I like that a lot.

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Before we end, I'd like to ask you
the same two questions that I'm asking

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everyone who's part of this miniseries.

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Who is a communicator
that you admire and why?

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Yuhki Yamashita: One communicator
who comes to mind is actually my

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first professor of computer science.

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His name is David Millen.

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He runs his introductory to
computer science course that's also

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available online for anyone to take.

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And I admire him for two reasons.

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One is he never says, um, it's always
just so fluid, even while navigating

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some of the most complex topics,
and it comes from a lot of practice,

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but it's just really impressive.

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And the second is really able to make
the most complicated things relatable.

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And he's actually managed to make
computer science theatrical, almost.

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It's, it's really fun to watch
and inspiring, especially from the

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perspective of a student who based on
that may or may not pick up the skill.

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Matt Abrahams: One, I love
that you picked a professor.

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I think our profession can
use all the help we can get.

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I appreciate that anybody can
now go check out that course.

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When you said that one thing that
stood out to you is that he made

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things relatable and engaging, were
there particular techniques he used?

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You said theatrical but
what does that mean?

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I'm just curious.

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I'm always interested in how does
somebody take something which is

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rather complex like coding and
make it engaging and accessible.

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Yuhki Yamashita: For example, he was
teaching the idea of binary search.

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He would pick up a dictionary
and say, hey, let's talk about

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linear versus binary search.

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Linear search means that you're going,
and maybe it was his phone directory and

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I could tell you, hey, go find John Smith.

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But start from the beginning and
just flip through every page.

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That's linear search.

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Conversely, I could tell you to do a
binary search and he took a directory,

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he ripped it in half, looked at the name,
discarded half, kept ripping in half, and

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he could get to John Smith much faster.

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And that's such a visual and
evocative way to understand what

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binary search is really about.

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Matt Abrahams: Yeah.

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So he showed you, used an analogy.

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I love that.

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That's great.

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He must've been very strong to
be ripping phone books in half.

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Alright, question number two.

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Beyond your tool, what is one
communication hack tool or

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shortcut that you use to help
yourself be more effective?

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Yuhki Yamashita: I think it's gonna
come back to the idea of forming a meme.

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It sounds like a very trivializing
thing to do, but I've just kind of

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realized that even as leaders in a
company, you find that people start

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repeating things, phrases that they've
heard that they picked up, that make

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them maybe sound smart or is a little
bit counterintuitive or evocative, and

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therefore you want to spread it more.

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I mentioned spending a disproportionate
amount of time honing in on what is a

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way to express this insight that makes
people want to repeat it, or what is a

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way to visualize it so that they would
want to reuse it over and over again.

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I really spend eighty percent of the time
kinda coming it down to like, what is that

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one thing that's gonna spread virally?

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Matt Abrahams: I think
that's actually really cool.

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To me, memeifying something, based
on what you've said, is really about

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finding what is most relevant and
what is most likely to be reused.

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And if you use those two ideas,
relevance and reuse as a guide,

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it can really help you focus.

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Yuhki, this has been really insightful.

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I really appreciate not just you
sharing what your tool does, which

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is very helpful for collaboration and
visualization, but also your approach

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and the way you think about these
challenges and how people can be more

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creative and make better decision making.

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Thanks for joining us.

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Yuhki Yamashita: Thank you for having me.

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Matt Abrahams: Thank you for
joining us for one of our

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Communication tools episodes of
Think Fast Talk Smart, the podcast.

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Please be sure to listen to all of
the episodes in this miniseries.

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We appreciate Prezi's
sponsorship of these episodes.

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This episode was produced by Katherine
Reed, Ryan Campos, and me, Matt Abrahams.

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Our music is from Floyd Wonder.

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With special thanks to
Podium Podcast Company.

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