What I learned working at Figma Pt 1: Product Sense

Over the next few weeks I’ll be reflecting on some of my biggest learnings during my time at Figma. First up is Product Sense.

When I joined Figma, I thought had a pretty decent sense for what makes a good product. I’d worked on enough things to know when something felt clunky or when an idea was missing something. But then I landed in a team of just eight PMs and suddenly I was surrounded by some of the smartest, most intuitive people I’ve ever met – people with near-impeccable product taste. It was super humbling, to say the least.

It felt like being dropped into an environment where everything just operated at a higher resolution. Over time, I started to see things differently – not because anyone was teaching me directly, but because I was constantly witnessing how they worked. How they asked questions, how they spent their time, how they thought about even the smallest detail. You riff on ideas together, you show your work, they give you feedback, and slowly I started to absorb it all. You level up just by being in the room – and even more so by asking questions and staying inquisitive.

---

---

The design team was still small then, too. PMs were encouraged to sit in on design crits. Not just to stay informed, but to actively participate. And that was huge for me. Hearing how people reacted to designs, what they noticed, what they praised, what they pushed back on – it taught me to see not just what looked good, but what felt right, and why that was. Over time, I developed a much sharper sense of what made something not just good, but great.

This was especially true in those early years, when the company was still under 500 people. We had visibility into almost everything that was happening. You were constantly exposed to high-quality work, across the board, on all types of project. The bar was so high, and it made you want to raise your own.

The Figma PM team

I’ve come to believe that product sense isn’t really something you can learn in the traditional sense. You can’t just read a book or take a course and expect to be good at it. It’s something you develop over time – by being curious, by trying things out, and most importantly, by surrounding yourself with people who have great taste who are willing to constructively critique each other’s work.

It’s also something you hone by paying attention to how people talk about other products. Either ones you use at work, or new ones that folk are starting to use. What do they admire? What do they find frustrating? I spent (and still spend) a lot of time playing around with new tools, trying to understand why something works or doesn’t, and why it feels that way. It’s a mix of instinct and analysis – and the more you do it, the sharper your instincts get.

Reading data + Listening to users + Taste + Intuition + Craft = Product Sense

The first two, data and users, are skills you can learn and actively improve. There are frameworks, playbooks, all of that. But the other three; taste, intuition, and craft, those are different. You can’t shortcut your way to them. You can develop them, yes, but it takes time. And it takes the right environment.

In a lot of ways, product sense is an art form. It’s messy, it’s subjective, it’s hard to quantify. But spend enough time nurturing it, treat it like a muscle, and it will grow. Maybe it’s 10,000 hours. Maybe it’s more. But the more you’re around people who push your thinking, who elevate your standards, who make you see things differently – the faster it develops.

Iron sharpens iron. So if you want to hone your product sense, start by making sure you’re around people who inspire you. People who raise your bar. People who help you not just build, but build well. As Dylan our CEO says, who you surround yourself with really does matter.