Miguel: So what happens when you know, children are able to kind of design their own spaces? What happens when, you know, like women are more empowered to have more agency in the way that spaces are designed? What happens when, you know... just people with different abilities, right? Like, the low vision individuals. When you empower them with the ability to design their spaces, to design their software. The way that they access and communicate with each other. I think that, you know, you're building something that is much more equitable.
[intro music]
Bruno: Hello, everyone. And welcome back to the Design is for Everyone podcast. A podcast that intends to explore how design can become a tool for change, and how sharing knowledge could leverage that change.
Today we’re talking with Miguel Cardona, also know as Miggi. Miguel is a design educator at heart, with a long history of trying to bring the future of design into classrooms.
Nowadays he’s a designer advocate at Figma where he pushes for everyone to have access to the design tools educators want, and students need.
Miguel: Cool. I'm ready.
Bruno: Okay. Then, if you're ready and I'm ready, it's just go time. Um... and that's how I start every episode. Sorry.
Hello, everyone. And welcome to another episode of the Design is for Everyone podcast.
Today I got with me Miguel Cardona. Also known as Miggi from Figgi. He is the designer advocate at Figma responsible for the education part. If I'm not wrong right?
Miguel: Yeah. Yeah, that's correct. Figma for education.
Bruno: Figma for education. Doing amazing work around that field. Welcome Miguel.
Miguel: Thanks for having me.
Bruno: No, thank you for, for accepting my invitation. And I'm going to start with you as I've been starting with everyone else. So what was your journey to enter the world of design? How did you got here?
Miguel: So my journey into the world of design... when I was much younger, I would just draw doodle. You know, make sketches have like whole little collections of characters that I would create.
At some point. Like the early, you know, like mid 90s I had the first opportunity to hop on a computer. And like on the internet for the first time. And I was like: "Whoa! This is... This is kind of amazing". Just everything that I can, like, see and do, and taught myself how to make a website and started using it as a place to kind of showcase my art. I used to do a lot of fan art for bands and stuff like that.
And this was like back in America Online days. So when I was in high school, you know, like that kind of blew up a little bit quickly for me. I had the opportunity to teach a class in web design. Like co-teach, my senior year of high school. And that also gave me the opportunity to work for the mayor's office of my city. Buffalo, New York. And I got to be a webmaster.
So when looking at colleges, I looked at a RIT. I knew they had like a good graphic design program, and I was like: "Okay, this is what I'm going to do. You know? I'm going to go to school. I'm going to go to graphic design." I really had no idea. You know? What I was going to do, but I figured, like, when I was younger, I was really, really good at school. But by the time I was in high school, I started getting jaded. I was like a little bit distracted and I would put a lot of time and effort into like, my art and like coding up some HTML and engaging in like online communities.
And I was like: "there has to be some kind of way to make money in that. And hopefully I can go to college for it." I went to RIT. When I got there, I quickly changed majors.
There was this new majors called New Media Design. And that seemed to be more what I was looking into. You know, it was like motion graphics, 3D. Right? And this is, you know, motion graphics, and 3D in the year 2000. So it probably wasn't quite the impact that it has now. But like, even then it was seen as a bit of a risk because the .com bust had just happened here.
And you know. There was not very many job prospects. But, um... yeah, I got into that. And, you know, got actually my first job doing a flash game design. So once I graduated, I got in and I got my start doing flash games.
Bruno: Yeah, which is a very interesting space to have worked on. But... I don't know, I spent way too many time on flash games. Especially when there was this platform, at least in Portugal. They were quite known, which was Miniclip. And they had like a gazillion games on flash and I would spend hours playing those.
I actually started... I had a very similar background to yours in terms of always doodling, creating characters and what's not. But my first software, that actually peaked my interest into design as a whole was Flash. It was still Macromedia Flash back then. I was like, 10 year old getting an intro to computer class. And I figured out that there was a software from the other class that was like the web master class or something. And they had Flash... Macromedia Flash, installed in the computers.
And I was completely addicted to Pixar by then. And 3D animation. And the moment I noticed that that thing allowed me to do animation, that was like the click moment for design. And it's one of those softwares that, of course it had its pains, but there was a lot of fun to it.
Miguel: Oh, indeed. Yeah, it was very unique in that you could just do so much with it. You know? It was like an easy barrier of entry for coding. Just the concept of like a movie clip, and then being able to put the movie clip anywhere, and then you can animate something in the movie clip on the timeline. But then control the movie clip with code.
And it was just there. It was done. You didn't have to worry about like deploying and didn't have to do anything crazy, but you got these like instant results. And it allowed you to just kind of creatively play in ways that you really couldn't up until that point.
Bruno: Yeah, ActionScript. The O.G. May it rest in piece. And so, you had this journey. You went to college. You took a course that was more on this more multimedia space, that eventually became part of design. But at what point did it make sense to you to actually start moving into the design education part of the spectrum?
Because I know that you were a teacher for a long time. And I would love to know a little bit more about that.
Miguel: So I actually started teaching. I graduated from RIT, from the New Media Design program in 2004. And in 2005, I was asked to teach a class. I was still living in Rochester at the time, and there was an opportunity for, they were looking for someone to teach an elements of graphic design class for new media, right? So it was going to be a basic kind of like graphic design forming space. Making graphic translations, working with typography, things like that. And I just jumped at it. I was like: "Oh, okay. Cool." You know? Like that just seems like a really cool opportunity.
So at this point, I had worked at this like game studio for about six months. I left to work at an agency. I worked at the agency doing like a lot of projects for Kodak, and Xerox, and stuff like that. And then left there, and actually started a company with a friend of mine, and actually a former professor. And that was what really got me the opportunity to teach that class.
I just started teaching night classes, to these students, starting in 2005. And what's really cool is, some of those students, now... like the head of design at Pinterest. Lin Mindler, you know? It was one of those students. So it's really cool to see... who was it. Linzi Berry right? Product designer, or like senior designer at Lyft. Was from that class of students. So it was really unique.
This program was really cool, and I had the opportunity to teach in this program. So it was actually myself and my good friend, Ali Ali. We had both started that company, and we were both teaching in this program. He's now a designer at Instagram.
Bruno: Cool. So there's, there's a lot of really interesting. And probably back then... what's the word? Hopeful people coming from that project. And that's great.
And you eventually started there. Did you kept working as a professor for a few years? How did that went? I know that you recently joined Figma, for the role of Figma for education. But what was that... sorry. You were a teacher for a long time.
Miguel: So like what brought me? Yeah. So like, so I was working at the company that we had started. It was called a Dumbwaiter Design. Dumbwaiter being like a little like service elevator, you know? It was kind of like a quirky name. So we had a... by the way, don't ever put the word dumb in your name. You know, like... especially if you're like a person of color, because like, you know... people with money that are like investors, whatever, they will make fun of it. And you just have to kind of take it.
So... yeah, it's off about five years. On and off as an adjunct. And then in 2010, I had this opportunity to get my master's degree while also teaching full time. So I became a visiting professor. Right? And so as a visiting professor, I was like a full-time professor and I would also take classes. So I was taking classes in industrial design.
I thought of it has a way to kind of like really round out my design education. Getting a sense of, what it meant to actually design real products and some of that process that's involved with it. When you get a master's degree, it's a little bit higher level thinking. And they had some really amazing professors that were teaching this program. So I got to learn from some really, really brilliant people.
So it was about three years. I was in my visiting position. At the end of that, and getting my degree, there was the opportunity. I could join on and be an assistant professor. Assistant professor is a full-time professor, that's basically tenure track, right? So it's like that's on the road to getting tenure. It's about six years. A lot of people think tenure it's 10 year, but you know, it's about six years. So I had applied for that role, but then it turned out like, I just declined it and decided to go back in industry.
I had a really good friend out in Silicon Valley who had just graduated from like the Y Combinator program with the product, so imgix it was like responsive image, web service. I had worked with them like one summer. And, you know, they asked me to come on full time. They had just raised some money. And they're like: "Come on let's make this a reality." So I joined imgix. I worked at imgix for about like, four or five years.
And after, you know, I was in San Francisco for a bit, I was like a little bit tired. I wasn't quite sure if that was it for me. I kind of missed teaching. I missed being in an academic space and I kind of missed being close to family, so I decided to go back to Rochester. I took another visiting position, which then turned into an assistant professor position. COVID hit. And during COVID, you know, like I embraced Figma early on, but like when COVID hit, I really just went full throttle with Figma, because of all of the opportunities that it kinda came about.
When we came back from spring break, the only thing that it really changed for me was that I was meeting my students on zoom. We had everything already set up. We were already working in Figma. You know, like everything was on remote docs, so there was no hiccups. Right? I was like "Oh, okay. Cool. I got this. I know what I'm doing." The only thing that it required me to do is like... can you get a better camera set up and a better mic set up. You know? Because I saw this, I was like: "Oh, okay. Cool. This is what we're doing now." So I just switched over.
During that time, I shared a lot with the work that I was doing. You know, fall 2020 came, I was thoroughly prepared. I worked with my students. We kind of developed a really cool community. It was really great to just fully embrace a lot of the remote aspects, that I knew that would serve them well. When they graduated, I'm like: "Okay, you're going to be graduating into these remote workplaces. You need to feel comfortable doing this." So I really kind of emphasized a lot of those processes that would help them into the world that they were going to be answering.
And then, you know, Figma had a role for a designer advocate for education. I applied for that role and then eventually I got it and I was like: "Oh, okay. Cool. This is going to happen." And I had to be faced with the decision of leaving the tenure track. So I only had like three more years. I was just up for midway tenure. I submitted all those materials. I did really well, you know. Like, and so it was kind of hard.
I really liked working with the students. I really liked doing some of the research that I was doing. But, you know, I had this opportunity to become a part of Figma and I was like: "You know, I really can't pass that up. " I always tell everybody that I wasn't even gonna apply for the position, but my therapist, you know, strongly recommended it.
Bruno: Yeah.
Miguel: I was just sitting there one day in therapy, and we're like talking about this position. I'm like: "You know, I think I could do it." And he just like: "Yeah. Just go for it. Just, just do it. I know that you can do it. You'll get it." You know?
And I wasn't quite so sure. So that worked out and, you know it was a bit intimidating at first. It's kind of like joining remote. You know, like hopping in. But I'm really happy with the decision that I made. Love the team that I'm working on. I really believe in the product and the things that we're doing. And it was a bit of a shift. It's like I'm going from teaching students, to now like advocating for it.
My role currently has me working with educators. Working with schools , doing a lot of like student development, doing a lot of faculty development, working with people at bootcamps, and then also just, you know, working in the community, and getting feedback, and working with individuals. And then I have the opportunity to kind of like work with folks that work on the editor and on the FigJam team, and give them insights and feedback and...
Yeah. It's. It's kind of fun. You're you're almost like a customer on the inside. Because I'm taking in feedback and I'm using the product. I'm giving more feedback and I'm like: "this is really what I want. Let's make it this way." And Figma is kind of fun in that way.
Bruno: That's that's a great role to be. We also have, on our company, developer advocates for our tool, which is a development, and they also say something very similar to that. Which is like, they always feel like they are the customer inside, that they can test it out and play around and figure out what's wrong. And hear from the community and then bring those concerns in. It's an interesting role to be when you're building a tool. And one that you use, which is like. If you can build a tool that you use and you can iterate on it. I love that that feel.
And. What all this experience... having went from being on one side of the barrier, jumping to the other, and now trying to help and empower the students and the teachers that on this field. What do you feel that the role of design educators, and design education is, in general? Because this is where it starts intersecting a little bit with the topics that I talk here.
I have a very formal classic design training. I know a lot of other stories of people like that. And it always feels like design education comes with a cost, and how you feel what design is, or how you should interface with design. So what do you feel the role of design educators, and design education is in general? What's your take on that?
Miguel: So, I mean, like... everybody's experience is going to be different. Every program, every school is a little bit different. You're going to hear a lot of stories of tropes. Of like really bad experiences, that are like art school or like design school. And like very old school ways of thinking, and old school approaches of handling those things. Right?
One of the things that really helped me out was that I didn't go into that graphic design program. Right? It was very, very traditionalist. And there was maybe one or two times I took a class, and I remember being in that class and seeing the row of everybody's work up on the wall. Right? It was like red, white, black. Red, white, black. Red, white, black. Red, white, black.
And then me, I had these like blues, and I had these like purples. And like, you know, I just had an entirely like vibrant, different design than red, white, black. Right? And then as they go through they're like: "This is fantastic. I love the way that you use the red, the white and the black." Right? And then they come to me and they're like: "I don't know what you're thinking." You know what I mean? I challenged the status quo and I was immediately cast off in this different light.
And that really didn't vibe with me. But my overall program, when I was taking classes within my program, there was just such an energy, an approach in like trying new things. And it was like new media, you know? And it's like breaking things. Trying things a different way. And that was really important for me. Right? It allowed me to do, and be on this kind of new cusp, this new frontier, this new way of, building and approaching, and designing things and not being bound by certain traits.
So that was... that really helped me out. And that's something that, and at the time, right, there, there wasn't the communities that are available now. Right?
Bruno: Definitely! Yeah.
Miguel: At the time there weren't the resources that were available now. Right? There was no Abduzeedo, there was no Dribbble. Right? None of that stuff existed. You know, and the thing is, I think that there is a point where, it's not even... so much content is out there. Right? I think there was like a point where there was like a perfect marriage of enough content that you can really get into design, and not have a formal education. But I'm almost starting to think now there's too much. Right? It's not curated.
So I think that there was, in the beginning. You had to go to a school, because so much of this information was locked away and gatekept. So it was hard to get access to really good design education. When I went to do my master's degree, right? That even opened up my ideas, because you have the networking. You have the community. You have the access. You have the experts. You know, one thing that we do with our program, we actually pair industry people with students.
And it's like, all of that experience is like unparalleled. And it's actually very difficult for individuals to kind of get on their own. But not every program is like that. There's many programs that are still very gatekeepy, that are still very old school that are derived from syllabus that were written in the seventies. You know? And I think that a lot of that needs to be refactored.
I remember somebody still telling me that, like, something about like Photoshop text: "Oh, you can build Photoshop texts in vector." And I'm like: "It has been for such a long time." Right? Somebody told you wrong, they're like: "Oh, this can't be a CMIK. You can't convert CMYK." And I'm like: "No. That's like... this is actually a Lambda printer. This actually requires RGB files. This is for photos. Like what do you think photos are? Right? Like your digital photo is inherently RGB. It's captured light."
And it's like, there's so many old school tropes that are tied in. So the, so like you go through this education, you pay all of this money and you learn things that are no longer relevant.
Bruno: Yeah.
Miguel: But I think that... I mean, like right now, even just being on the outside, looking in right. Being at Figma. Being in design education. There's a lot of certificate programs. There's a lot of UX bootcamps. There's a lot of opportunities to learn. Right.? And I think that structured learning is really important, but it's really hard to find out what is truly valuable. You know, like what is going to be something that's going to help me with my career? I mean, everybody learns differently.
And... I mean. I think if you're entirely self-directed, if you go on something like: "I'm just going to learn off of YouTube." You need a degree of self discipline, and curiosity to be able to find the right books. I think there's a lot of information out there, but it's almost too much, right? It can be overwhelming. And I feel like there needs to be better curation. There needs to be a better, you know, better established mentoring.
And like, I think that there's so much that could be done, that somebody can absolutely learn to be a designer, and be really successful, without ever going and paying, you know, a ton of money to go through college. There's the... you're gonna miss the networking aspect of it. You're gonna miss, you know, just the joys of like going to college, but, is that even really relevant in the pandemic era? You know. Where you're taking classes remotely, and you're not able to have the community, which is something that I'm trying to promote when I talk about Figma for education.
You can develop community in these virtual spaces. You can have people work together. You can try to create some sense of connection.
Bruno: Those are extremely important. Like I would not be the professional that I am today. If I haven't created those relationships during college times, for sure. Even though. I would say like, many of them had nothing to do with what I was learning there. I was like, just kind of expanded on what I evolved as a person, and that then reflected on my work, but I get that.
And digital communities are now a thing that can fill that gap. But not everyone is into them.
Miguel: Yeah. Yeah. Not everyone is into them, you know? And I'll even tell, like... I'll talk at a school, and I'll be like: "Hey, yo! Like, there's good conversations on Twitter." You know,? Like there's, there's actually a good community we have. You can actually learn a lot. And they're like: "why would I ever go on Twitter?"
You know, and I'm like: "Oh, okay. Cool. All right. So I am, you know, of a particular age and maybe that's why I'm on Twitter." But there's really good community. I would say that if it wasn't for Twitter, I wouldn't be a Figma. You know? And I mean there's really something to be said for that. And there's just so many different avenues for the ways that you can kind of make a name for yourself.
I remember, there was a student. So, this is actually back from when Twitter first started. This was around 2008, 2009. And me and Ali, we were teaching our classes at RIT. And there was this person that we knew online. Right? And we would see them online. They're like: "Oh man. We love your work. Oh, this is great. This is cool." And then Ali's in class one day and that kid just pops up into his class. And he was a freshmen. And he's like: "Wait, you're that guy that we saw online." He's like: "Oh yeah. I always wanted to meet you." And he's like: "You're taking my class?" He's like: "Oh yeah." And he's like: "How old are you?" He's like 17 , 18, and we thought he was this established professional. Right?
Doing like WordPress sites, right? Like literally making a living off of like WordPress sites. And doing the development. And we just thought he was a professional in the industry and he's like: "Oh no. I followed y'all because I knew I would be taking your classes." And we're like: "What? And we've seen all of your work." You know. He lasted about a year and a half, maybe two years. Then went off. I think he eventually worked at Mozilla, then eventually like formed his own company. And it's like, he did not need four years of school.
He also, probably, didn't even need the network, because he had already established himself through just his work. You know? He was just someone who had access to a computer, the internet, a little bit of coding. You know, the WordPress era of like: I can make a WordPress so I can actually make a pretty good killing on the internet. And then that developed into too much more. So, you know, everybody's story is going to be different. Some people they're going to require school. Like I think that I wouldn't be successful where it not for the people that I got to meet at RIT. You know?
And even RIT put us into FITC, right? It's a conference that was in Canada. Where we could meet our... Like the people that we just looked up to. Right? So we would go to FITC, we would meet Joshua Davis, Grant Skinner, all of these people that were just doing mind blowing work. We would see the mindblowing work. We would have these high aspirations, and be like: "We can do that". And I think that if you are self-directed. If you aren't being tuned into those channels, you know, there's a lot of missed opportunities.
Bruno: Completely. And, I don't know. Everyone has a different experience, as you said. Mine was completely different from a lot of other people in that sense, but I always feel like... what I felt in my specific experience, which was my country, for example, in Portugal. Although it's not very linear, when you need to go to work, college degrees are standard regulation type of thing.
When it comes to programming and design nowadays, not as much, I would say. Which is in general rule something that is happening all around the world. Right? But, they still make it so that when we decide to go to college and, believe me when I say that 11 years ago, when I started this journey. When I decided: "Okay. I'm going to go and study design to college," no one in my school. No one in my home town, could tell me what design was. Or what I was getting into. Because there was no definition for them. Except from maybe: "Oh, that's the guy who scribbles things, or does like posters, or whatever." But they didn't knew how to that to me. And I have to find by myself, and we already had all the resources back then, like 2010 is not.... the internet was already booming. But it was still this conversation where, if you have like school guidance, or a school counseling, they weren't really helping you get there.
I didn't study arts. I studied sciences. I was like, in Portugal, you could enter on architecture with math, better than some drawing or geometry classes. And we had our exams, which I was like the SATs and stuff. And when I went through that pat, that was always like, I want to be an architect because my old life.... when I was talking about designing things and drawing things. Everyone always pushed like: "Oh, you should be an architect." Because design wasn't a valid option. Wasn't the thing that people knew about. And that made my whole experience very different than, than when I went to college. I really didn't knew what I was getting into.
It took me the entire time of college, in which I kind of didn't went to class, because I felt like I wasn't learning shit there. I kind of just learn outside, and did a lot of freelance work, I got a lot of customers and that's what eventually got me active. Really loving design, and not what I was doing there. And one of the things that it fell, and this is actually a segway into my next question, but you already talked about that a little bit, is the way that formal education is always a step back from what you need, when you start entering the market. At listed felt for me.
Nowadays, we have more of that with bootcamps, with professional courses and everything. But when it comes to actual like, recognized college education, it always feels like it's, it's delayed a little bit. You have that feeling too? Or do you feel like it's up to date on your end? I don't know. It might be because Portugal is also very green on this, but I also get feedback from other.
European countries. And everything. From the United States actually don't have a clue. So...
Miguel: I think... so I do recognize it. Like our program is an oftentimes an exception to the rule. But also like, when I was teaching there. It was like, I was obsessed with making sure that everything that I was doing was somewhat relevant, right? Or somewhat new.
Or even kind of like changing the script. Right? I would see what maybe people are including in portfolios. And I'm like: okay, like really think about... you know, what it is that you're doing, make sure you're communicating well. So like, there's this mix of like established, founded principles. Right? There's a little bit of mix of like history. But then also this all right: "Well, what is truly like relevant here?" And sometimes I would fight back.
Like, before Figma, I was still using like Illustrator versus like Sketch, which kind of seemed backward. But there was certain things that I wanted them to do. Right? So like, if any students listening, they're probably: "Oh yeah like you made me use Illustrator when Sketch was out." But then like once I saw what Figma did, I'm like: "Okay, we're going to go from Illustrator to Figma." Many people went Illustrator, Sketch, Figma, but I even threw in some InDesign in there. And it was just because like, I had a very... had a very unique workflow that focused on the things that were really relevant. Right? You can get these kinds of outputs if you put this kind of input in, right?
And what I loved about Figmais like, what took me like 20 steps in Illustrator, took like one step in Figma. Which I'm just like: "Yes, thank you. You're visualizing this. You're helping me teach this concept." Right. You know? Cause yeah, I would be teaching illustrator. But, you know, like I had them thinking about REM units. I had them thinking about accessibility. I had them thinking about, responsiveness. You know, like media queries, where even somewhat available. You know?
I was like: "Okay! Think about how this design is going to be responsive. Like even like responsive imagery." And thinking about how images kind of like go across those sizes. How can you deliver them? How can you use like a source set? So there was a lot of like concepts that I brought to them early, but designing and articulating them and kind of meshing that together.
But like you were saying... formal education. There's so many people that are really just stuck on how it should be taught in this... this old way. Where Swiss design is the ideal, and that's your method and that's your way for understanding design. And I'm... I'm still like: "Okay. Look at what has been done. Understand that. But then think about how you're communicating the, the... medium with which you're communicating, and then also think about how that's going to translate and how that's going to work well.
Bruno: Yeah.
Miguel: But not everybody, you know... not, everybody's going to do that. You know,? There's still a ton of people out there that are just like: You got to do this, then print. You gotta do this this way. You gotta do this that way. And it's not benefiting them! You know, they're going to graduate and they have no prospect. Our program was very much career focused in that we would be talking with the people that they would be given them their jobs. So a lot of our alumni would be like at Google, at YouTube. You know, like at Facebook and then they would come back, like: "You know, this is what we're doing now." And I'm like: "All right, cool. That's what I'm gonna do in my class."
Making sure that there is a good throughput, but also making sure that those skills, aren't just the skills of now, but they'll be the skills like, you know, five or 6, 7, 8 years down the road. And will serve them well. So, even when you start to look at like the portfolios of our students, you know the work that they were doing. Like we were doing mobile layouts, before the iPhone came out. Right? We were doing so much, that was just like a little bit of ahead of its time. Right? We were doing VR prototyping before the Oculus was even really a thing, right.? We're like: "Okay. Well, how do you visualize information in a 3d space?" So like, what is the core concept being taught? And we would kind of try to apply that.
And sometimes we actually work with like real partners, and sometimes those things actually get developed, which is like really really cool. But not every place is going to be like that, you know? And actually, one thing with our program too. Like we called it New Media Design, and I feel like now that's a little bit of an old term.
I remember a Hillman Curtis... you know, rest in peace. He had the... this book. You know, it was like the handbook of the new media designer. You know, came out like early two thousands. And, and that was the term for them. There was actually roles that you can get as new media designer.
But we refuse to change that, right. Because if we change it, then every two or three years are gonna be changing it. Right? Then we're going to change to digital product design, or interaction design, or UX design. And it's really all the same thing.
Bruno: Yeah.
Miguel: So like we refuse to change that term. We're going to leave it at that term, and the curriculum that's taught is basically what do we think we'll be in demand five years from now. Because that's what we want to teach. You know, we'll teach, the foundations. Will teach the basics, but it's going to be centered around, what is going to help them in a few years, that's really gonna make a difference. And I think, you know, like that kind of helped me in my career.
I approached Figma back in 2017, as if everybody was already using Figma. You know? As if everybody was an expert, like that's the way it was in my head. So I'm teaching these students as if everybody's doing it this way. Then they go to their company and they're like: "Oh, you're the Figma expert." And then they actually get to level up a little bit. Which is kind of interesting. And the problem is, you know, like not, everyone's going to be that way, you know?
Bruno: Not everyone. And you talked about several different things that make that... When we talk about tools. Figma, Illustrator, Sketch... I don't know, even how's it called... oh, come on...
Miguel: Framer?
Bruno: Framer too. But I was thinking about the guys that are like the biggest smaller challenger to Adobe. The guys that have a... Oh Affinity!
Miguel: Affinity. Yup.
Bruno: Yeah. Independent of what tools you have. The principles and the things that you should learn are more or less the same. But I've seen for example, and this is a very Europe versus US thing. In Europe. Macs are not as much of as a thing, as they are in US. There are much more Windows. Now it's more balanced, but 10 years ago, If you had to learn, you most likely would have a Windows laptop. Like I only got a Mac at the end of my second year from a three-year bachelor.
And that immediately changes the way that you can actually use software. Because Sketch for me, even in my.. When I got to my... my current job, I had never worked with Sketch. I've heard about it, but I couldn't. Because it was a Mac only software, and most of the hardware that I was using up to that point was Windows. But I had to collaborate with people that work with Windows. So I had to use Adobe. I did the same jump as you kind of went from Illustrator directly into Figma. I learned a little bit of Sketch because I had to collaborate with people, but I opened Figma for the first time to import a Sketch file.
And that changed the way that I actually learned the tool, and I actually looked at how things were. And then, now that I'm... I started more or less at the same time as you, they were on beta on late 2016, early 2017. If I'm not mistaken. And I started using there. And I can just remember the conversations that I had like two or three months ago with colleagues of mine that went through the same courses I did. They are working at different places, and me and a couple of others are more into UX, UI, or new tools. And we were talking about Figma and one of my colleagues just goes like: "Whatever you guys are saying, that's completely jibberish to me. Because I don't understand squat of you're saying." Because they don't... they haven't other into this mindset that there are other tools than the ones that they were taught at college.
And that's changes a lot how you do your work, right? Like. Tooling is an important part at the end of the day. It's not the most important, concepts are, and the way that you learn the basics. For sure. But it's interesting to see. Even how your geography molds, the way that what you're taught eventually gets there.
And I'm going to try to sideline this a little bit. And in aligning a little bit with what I do here, and what I talk about here. When I talk about design education in the context of Design is for Everyone, and I put it a little bit side by side with what we call the traditional methods of education, or the traditional things that we talk about, in education, that I feel are very connected to the industrial past of Europe.
I always defend the design should actually become something that exists in a standard curriculum, even before you go to college. Do you agree? Do you not? Do you feel like that could be a thing that could work or not? I don't know. I always felt like, since design is kind of this in between area between art and science, it works really well as a translator for understanding both fields. So, I don't know. Thought?
Miguel: I mean... I absolutely believe that everybody should have access to design. And I think that like, as you grow up, you should be thinking about how you create the world around you. Right? And the reason I say that too, is because so much of the world that we inhabit has been designed by like CIS white men.
Bruno: Yeah.
Miguel: Right? And, you know, design was kind of like held by a little bit more of like an elite class in terms of what is good design, right? But a lot of that is based off of their needs. So when you start to be more inclusive with design. When you have people that are differently abled. When you have people that experience the world in a different way. Then you start to see, and if they have access to design, if they are given the ability to at least learn how to design the world around them. And I mean, not just digital design, but industrial design, interior design. Right? You really are going to see a shift, right?
So what happens when you know, children are able to kind of design their own spaces? What happens when, you know, like women are more empowered to have more agency in the way that spaces are designed? What happens when, you know... just people with different abilities, right? Like, the low vision individuals. When you empower them with the ability to design their spaces, to design their software. The way that they access and communicate with each other. I think that, you know, you're building something that is much more equitable.
And like I totally subscribed to the mantra of Figma, which is design should be accessible to everybody. You know, I've teached a class here, like at a community center... At the community center, there's like 12 year old, you know, max. Right? And then everyone is like a hodgepodge of, of the way that it's assembled, you know? And like I'm teaching, you know, between 14 and 18 year old students. You know that... you know, they don't have the same access that a lot of people do. So being in this space and like kind of learning design, and learning how to just kind of communicate. Yeah. Um, Is this very, very empowering for them.
And the thing is, it's like I said, I'm able to do that because it's for education. You know, Figma is free. It's a free design tool. You're able to use it on these really old computers and it works just fine. Right? Like it works well. They all...
Bruno: Do you remember, I don't know if you've seen that, but do you remember when during the first Config, there was the testimonial from the guy that had the educational programs in Africa because Figma ran on old computers. That like... that is the thing. I really love that way that you can actually pick up a tool, and just give a second life to an old piece of hardware.
Miguel: I think they were going house to house. Uh... B. It was B yeah.
Bruno: Yeah, yeah!
Miguel: He was going like, house to house and saying like: "Hey, we're teaching... we're teaching them to, you know... We need whatever computer you might have in like your closet, whatever." So you had like PCs, you had Macs and they're able to actually teach them the software, and give them opportunities.
For me, that was just like a lot of the ways that just HTML and CSS was. You know? Like all you needed was notepad, and, you know, access to like a free Tripod account, or GeoCities. Right? And you can kind of build something, and it's like that access, that was very empowering. You know, I can sit at the library at the school and work on these things.
And yeah. I mean, that's just like the one thing I absolutely loved about Figma, is that there was no restrictions. I could easily use it in my classroom and have everybody have a license and we can collaborate together. Right? And, you know I'm not a... I'm not a Sketch basher. Right? Like I actually, I never really got too deep into Sketch. The thing that just kinda lost me was that the V key wasn't the normal, like regular selector. Right? So I would just constantly press V, cause I'm always pressing V right? So that's where they lost me. You know?
I'm like: "Okay, here's like 2 shortcut keys don't work the way that my brain has been hardwired for the last 20 years. So I can't... I physically cannot use this tool." But the one thing with Sketch too, it was impossible to get it at RIT because the way that they offered up the licensing, right, it was actually free for the school, but it was impossible to go through the process to get in touch with someone, to get the licenses, to get it installed onto the Macs in this school. And then once again, not every student had Mac, some would come into class, even though they had a Mac in front of them, they would prefer to work on their PC.
So there was just this friction that was enabled, and part of the reason I joined Figma for education was I was like, totally on board with... I was... this is so easy to integrate into a class. You know? You just have them sign up and you create a team, and then you're in the same space. You can work with your files together. You can share them back and forth. Right? I no longer had to ask my students: "All right. Submit your, you know, two hundred megabyte illustrator file. You know? Like I'm just: "Give me the link. And I'm there with you too." You know? And it was just such a paradigm shift, right? In terms of how he communicated, it removed so much friction that it was just... I forgot what the original question was, but...
Bruno: No but... It was a little bit about... we started talking about if the design education could be a little bit more open to everyone. But we've been down a rabbit hole, it makes perfect sense. Because that's the thing. Like, we talked about a little details during the entire time that you've been telling your story here. And it always leads to the same, which is: whenever you give people the tools, and the space for them to build things, and to learn things, they do. And they do it better if they have access.
We were talking about Figma and Sketch, but if you talk about Adobe, It's no secret for anyone that for years, you know that Adobe was a software that, for students, if your school didn't have the protocol, people just kind of pirated everything. And I'm pretty sure that Adobe was okay with it because if they weren't, there weren't so easily available hacks over everywhere, so that people could use the tools. But it still felt like it was very weird, in the way that you were always devaluing the tool because of that. Because if you need to... if you feel like you can get it without paying. But like without thinking actual value and then balancing things, there was this really weird balance there.
Nowadays, I feel like that is a different thing when it comes to paradigm in tools, and how tools are thinking about if people can use them and take value of them. But that's a whole conversation that has to do with product, and not education.
Miguel: I think, I think that might also be like a little bit of a different thing. Cause at RIT, when I was an undergrad, they would have like piracy raids, right? Where like legitimately, like officers came through and would like take down the hubs and like throw your computer into like... they'll just take all this stuff out of your dorm room and then rushed out.
There were like two raids at RIT when I was there. So you know, we were all good and happy pirating stuff. And then that would start to happen because, I mean, there were some people that were like, basically servicing large piracy hubs on direct connect and... we all got really shook, you know? So we started getting served cease and desists and, then we, you know, it got a little bit scary there. I just, I just remember being a student and this kind of happening on a floor. And then you start to think twice about how you pirate and like, you know, that every ... You constantly feel like you're under surveillance. So like, that was just my experience with that.
Bruno: And it changes a lot, the experience and, I'm burning my school for this, but I'm pretty sure that my school didn't, but for the licenses of the software. The school...
Miguel: Oh wow.
Bruno: ...not the students. And in Portugal... Yeah. And in Portugal, that's not even like that... and I say this because let's say it was what, 2011... 2012. We're working on these iMacs ,... Like a couple of generations old, and the licenses that we had for, think it was iMovie, we couldn't actually connect them to the internet because it prompted the updates. So I was like: "Why aren't you willing to do that? Like, why can't we use internet while we're doing edits on our stuff?" I was like: "Oh, that's why! Like, you guys don't have the licenses." And it is the school itself.
Because it was already so ingrained and people weren't... if you were from here (Portugal), and even design schools here, some of them were already very aligned with what you were doing with software from other countries and everything. But people were taught, like: "If you need to use this. Most likely you're going to have to pirate it until you have a job to pay for it."
Miguel: Yeah. Yeah.
Bruno: So teachers in schools kind of were like: "I have job. But I'm not paying it for me. I need to get it for the school." And the schools didn't really know how to handle those programs. And I have more people telling me stories like this. And it always feels very funny because it's a very specific experience to our country. But it's... it is one that comes with that understanding of like... was it language»? Was it... what was it that they wouldn't understand so that they wouldn't really do that? But I always felt it was fun because I felt like the school was doing the same as I did, so I was like: "Okay. This is wrong? Is it not wrong? I don't know." But eventually, yeah, but I knew it, it was a wrong, good and started buying for myself to design software. But it is like that ingrained collective knowledge that then molds the way that you... that you do those things.
Miguel: Yeah. And it's really interesting the way that like, Adobe, is kind of like changed some of their pricing over the years. Because before we would have like student licensing. And like I said, the second that that happened, I went out and I bought like my own student's copy. And then for Macromedia, because the thing is, back then you needed Adobe and Macromedia suites. Right? So you needed like MX 2004. So to get MX 2004... what we did was there was like a Rochester flash users group, and then they would get like... they would get licenses right there, that were in the box, because you would actually have to have the physical box.
So, you know, I think like I won the MX 2004 package, so I had like my licenses. And I would just share that with my friends and that's how we had it ourselves. You know? Like a pro license. And I held on to that for so many years. And then I used that as like my... my upgrade, because it would be cheaper for you if you were like upgrading. But I remember like that's how I had my MX 2004 license.
Bruno: Yeah. And you had the physical things, and it was every time that a new creative suite would come out you would... If you... if it was upgraded, was way cheaper, right?
Miguel: Yeah, it was way cheaper. Yup. You know, now you just pay whatever and forever, you know? This is what the price is, and you're going to have to pay this in perpetuity. Regardless of, if you use one application or all of them.
Bruno: Which still feels like, back then, I don't know... it would probably be a little bit cheaper than it is now, but since the price wasn't distributed, that was a big, the biggest like blocker from whatever you wanted to use. Right?
I remember a lot of people were like: "I can't really break this down or do like small payments. So it's going to be hard for me to even get the software once."
Miguel: But I got to say that I still, you know, like I basically still use After Effects. Like it's like kind of like the main software. For awhile, I was still using a lot of Photoshop. You know? But even then it's been slowly chipping away. I've been able to delegate those tasks to other spaces. But... it just... it's just at the point where it's too much to open up. Right? It just feels so heavy.
It's like: "All right, I want to do a really quick light task." I can't delegate that task to that software in the same way that like I want to.
Bruno: And that also comes from the way that we exchange our experiences with mobile phones and everything. Like, nowadays, I most likely have an app on my phone, either free or paid, that it's better doing that specific small task that I need to do, than one of these giant massive softwares that have been dragging their feet because they want to react to all use cases. And I've seen... I think that Adobe did some good work when they started getting into the mobile space, adapting some of their tools. But that feeling that these giant software platforms haven't learned how to kind of keep it simple.
I remember Adobe had for years, for the people that wanted to learn the basics or use the basics, they had the essentials one. Softwares like Photoshop Essential and everything. But it always felt like it wasn't easier because it was essentials, because what they did was they were taking out features, but they weren't making the key features easier to use for someone who didn't know the software. Right?
And for example, on one of the last podcasts I was talking with one of my other guests, Antimo. He was saying like: "Even the way that you look at those softwares nowadays. The kid is not going to recognize the icons, because those icons were made based on tools that people used before there were digital softwares for design." Right?
Miguel: Yeah. Yup. Yup.
Bruno: There's so many little things that change the way that you learn, how to use this things. The way that you actually pick them up, and then go into the market or go into building whatever you want. And the spirit of HTML and CSS, the spirit of ActionScript in Flash, were a little bit like that. Like, these were languages that were a little bit easier to understand because they had their own framework. So you were learning something there, that was new.
But then some of these tools that I've seen, even newer ones, because everyone kind of feels like they're following the same patterns here and there, even Figma has a lot of that if you look at the way that the UI is built, comes from that experience of like: this is how these things evolve. And then you go through the mobile world, and I feel like that changes a lot. It's not like how everyone has done it, it's like, how is it that it is easy to use on a phone?
And that's going to change a lot of the experience of new designers, and newcomers nowadays. Because of that! Because they're used to that different type of experience. They're used to that different space to consume content, different space to build things. And I think that makes a lot of difference on what you get as an end product.
Miguel: So I'm going to tell you something that's really funny. So in 2007, iPhone gets released. Like a few months later, we were going to be going to the Addy Awards. And... one thing that we did was we took out an ad for... for the little, like the little book. And we had a photo of the iPhone and we had like our website called Addie picks. We bought addypicks.com right? And we said, if you go to... because remember the original iPhone had no apps, right? You just had what came with it, but you can browse on the web. So we made a mobile version of the site, right? So totally tied, tied in. Even when you bookmarked it, it would actually produce the little app icon. So we actually had that all set up. And what we did was we took photos at the event with an SLR camera, right we then go to the back. We like unload the photos we put them on to the computer. We would run a batch process. We would make the thumbnails, right? We'd make the large images. And we were like, you can go to this website, on your iPhone, and view photos from the event as they're happening. Right?
And like... we worked so hard to create the experience that is just so often taken for granted now. Right? Like. Um, I just remember it and like, just thinking about that. And then I remember like the first apps that were already coming out we're like: "Okay. Like we just want to be able to take a photo and put it online and share it with other people." You know? And if you think about the process that was like then. Like how many steps it's like to get from point A to point B. And then the steps now. And it's like that we're removing the friction, that we're just constantly doing when we build these apps out.
And you're right. We have this whole new generation of people that have just grown up with tools that allow them to get from point A to point B, you know, relatively easy. So it's like, what will the next series of professional design tools really look like, you know, for those that are wanting an easier experience to do that. They're like: "Okay. I know it doesn't take me 20 steps to get there. Like I know I can push one button to do that."
And I think that like, maybe like a bit of our generation, or like other generations, we have value in the fact that it took that many steps to get that outcome. Right? And I mean to tie that back to like design education, right? I feel like a lot of the professors and a lot of the pedagogical practice of: "Okay, we're gonna make you a designer. You have to go through all these steps. So respect that process." You know?
Whereas somebody can open up Canva and be like: "Boom. Look. I just made..."
Bruno: Exactly.
Miguel: "Just made this thing." Right? And I think that tomorrow's professionals are going to have a very blurred line of what constitutes a professional design. Cause oftentimes I think of that too. I'm just like: "All right, I see something that you produced. But I can go in, and I can like go through my 40 steps and make that same thing." And they're like: "Well, we got like the same result." You know? And how do you value one over the other? If you are still producing the same result. So...
Bruno: Yeah, I know. It's always going to be harder than that. It's about perception, public perception.
We were talking about... there's a friend of mine, that is an influencer here in Portugal called Wandson Lisboa, and he is an Instagrammer, he creates really incredible images. But he does, he just as a very good creative guy that creates idea around the concepts that he needs to talk about. He started doing this with toys. Eventually he started working with brands and stuff.
Everyone loves his photography, and the things that he does. Nowadays he does it more on a studio, but for years, most of his posts was him and his phone. He started on Instagram very, very early. It was like user one thousand something. And he learned how to use the tools, in the phone, and light and space to do things that we only do, for example, on Photoshop with like 40 layers or something. And he was like, I don't even know how to use a DSLR because the phone is my tool. And to make these images that everyone likes, this is my process. Like I use this, and I use like the apps that exist on the phone, because those are the ones that I learned.
And he would make things that everyone would assume that he was just using like Adobe suite to do, on his phone with whatever app he had at hand. Whatever he learned. And it was really fun for example, to... I had a moment with him, on a music festival, where he was going to take photographs for the first time. I was like: "You've never learned how to use a DSLR? Like an actual thing?" And this was, this was like 2016, 2017 or something.
And that made me like, even appreciate more of the work that he was doing. Because he found a completely new process, outside of all those steps that you talked about. That we learned in college, because he was also designed student. But it made sense for him. So he actually used it and abused it, and then he created his own brand from it. And I always feel like that's really powerful.
Miguel: Yeah, it was really powerful. I mean, think about like... I think about the the amount of steps it would take me to make a rounded corner. You know what I mean? Like you've been on the web. Like I remember like Facebook had like the rounded corner pings. They had like a Sprite sheet of like rounded corner pings.
Bruno: Yeah.
Miguel: To like create those like invisible around the corners. And it was like so much freaking work. And now you just use like border radius.
Bruno: Exactly.
Miguel: It's good. You know? Yeah. So much work.
Bruno: Yeah. It's interestinghow those change really show... how much we evolved, and how much we still have to go. Okay. Almost getting to the end, I'm going to moving gears a little bit here into our usually final two questions. More personal to you.
And the first one is more focused on your view of the world as a designer, and also as a design educator. Do you feel like, entering the world of design, this long time ago as ever changed the way, or molded the way that you see the world around you?
Miguel: So change, like, so entering the "design" back, you know, when I did, has that changed the way that I see the world around me? Is that what you're saying?
Bruno: Yeah, a little bit like that. The general idea is, do you think, that being a designer and having this knowledge of what design is, with you. Does that mold the way that you see the world? Or did that change the way that you see the world, when you were learning about design. I think that's it.
Miguel: So, yeah. So I'll say one thing about... About that. So the more I become like, so... being in UX, right? Being in product design. You almost get overly sensitized to like bad experiences. Right? So a lot of times people, they'll kind of like encounter an annoyance in their everyday life. And they'll just find a quick way around it and they'll just deal with it. Right?
You know like: "I hit my knee on this every single day. Okay. This is just the thing that I'm living with." Right? When you become a designer, you're obsessed with these things, right? When something goes wrong, you're almost like overly sensitive to it. And you just demand, like, you know, that somebody is responsible for making that bad, and you want that fixed. Right?
Bruno: Yeah.
Miguel: So like, if anything, like, you know, being a designer, it just makes you that much more annoyed at things that have poor consideration associated with them. And I have to watch myself because oftentimes I think I went on a rant about my Google nest, you know? There was this like... there's like a wizard and it didn't let me just manually connect my device to the internet. Right? So it must find another nest device to connect to the internet. And it just says no. And it's like, you can't do anything about it. Right?
And I'm like: "Okay, I know that there's absolutely something I could do about this." And if I was probably even more of an engineer, I would guarantee I can get into it. But like, I understand this wizard design and like, I understand this experience, and I understand that it's meant to be a little bit more medical, but like, this can't be it. It didn't give me much recourse. I'm like: "I just bought this, you know, 200 somewhat dollar things, and I just threw away my old thermostat. And now this is plugged into my wall and I'm cold. And this wizard with like two options that really takes me to a dead end." you know?
That just like it's like infuriating, because I also know what goes into designing this and I'm like, come on. There has to be a better way. Yeah, granted, I will say their support is very lovely. Right? Like their support is excellent. They got back to me on Twitter, they check in with me every day, I'm waiting on like another part to come in to help me fix it. Right? So I will give them a lot of props and respect for that. But like I said, it's like these, like every day annoyances, you just want to make them better. Right?
Bruno: Yeah.
Miguel: And like when I was in industrial design too, it just made me very sensitive to the objects that I kind of keep in my life, and the way that I arrange my space and, you know, like the way that like I pack and it's like,
You know, I think about, you know, adding friction and removing friction. So sometimes you need to add friction to make something worthwhile. And sometimes you need to remove that, but then... you know, so I have all of these thoughts kind of clouding my mind sometimes when in... but I think the average person is usually not that clouded by it.
Bruno: Yeah. Um, at least. And I had very interesting conversations with people like: "Why do you think of it? At all? Like it just is." And I was like, "It is because someone decided it was going to be like this. And it isn't good. Please change it." I feel you there. And I think there are slight variations on our, every guest answers this, but all of them leave through this. Kind of urge to improve things too. Like the world can be better. I've been designing things to make them better. Why can't someone else also do this right?
Miguel: Yeah. There's like a lot of optimism, you know? And then you know, you just even think to like, all right, like planned obsolescence.
You know, the way that like some products are really designed to just, you know, go out of date. And then how much that you, but like, even that, like, it kind of angers you, but then also you understand, right? Like, It's really hard to say. It's a think about it being like everlasting, but like understand the like urge for it and you know, like how do you make things more sustainable? So if anything, what it does is just adds a lot more voices here, head right. And.
And it's just a lot of conversations that you're having, but you're you're right in that you have a fundamental optimism. Right. That things can be made better. Yeah. You know, like the environment around us was, you know, it was planned in a way, right. And there's this different stakeholders and, you know, like understanding that, you know, with, with different stakeholders or like a different mindset or a different approach, you know, that there, there, there can be a better way.
And like, I think that that's one thing that is really important is: that optimism that things can change and they can be designed better. I think as the overarching lesson there.
Bruno: Yeah, that's the best way to see it in my opinion. But it's my opinion, it's worth what is worth, and there is a lot of other opinions out there.
And now the last question that I ask everyone, although you kind of just answered it in between one of our... one of our topics, which is if you do believe that design is for everyone? And if so, in what way?
Miguel: I feel that design is for everyone. And It's about everybody being empowered. You know? You mentioned it too. It's like we should absolutely be teaching this to younger generations, right? They need to know that the things that they bring into the world can kind of like impact others.
And I think one of... like the phones, and the devices... All right. Like, I didn't have access to a computer till I was like 16, 17 years old, you know. I mean, they have access to so much computing power in their pocket. But the way that a lot of these devices have been derived is like more consuming than creating.
Like the very first computers, I would even argue the computer that I had was, you know, it's more for like, it was built for creating things, and making stuff. And, and I feel like now so much... I mean, yeah like you know, there's games, and all this, but I feel like that overshadows a lot of the like: "Oh, I can.... I can... this cool thing, I can build something for it." Right? And there's still a ton of people that, see it that way. Right? Okay: "I have this device. I can manipulate it and I can create for it." But I feel like that's not the dominant voice.
The dominant voice is for that device in your hand to produce something for you to buy, for you to consume, for you to like. You know? And I wish that more of that maker spirit was brought on to younger generations so that they know, like they see that thing. Like: "Ah, I want to build it."
The first time I saw a website. I was like: "Ooh. I want to build that." Right? And I'm like: "I'm going to figure out." And only took a notepad and like, you know, a hacked version of Paintshop Pro 6. And my computer was constantly rolling back to like November, you know, 21st because you know, I had like a month subscription. So I just kind of rolling back the clock on my computer.
Bruno: Classic.
Miguel: I feel like things are even locked up in such a way that that's not even a viable way to crack software. You know what I mean? It's like, you know, reward a 12 year old kid to crack that software, or even better yet like Figma. Give it away for free. Right? Give them this tool that they then can use to like, you know, make art. Write poetry. Write down their experiences. Build a site. You know, and feel empowered to do so and that... and keep that barrier of entry low. You know, don't make... making a website, don't make it feel like you have to have all of these packages installed and has to be this like overly complicated thing. You know, bring it back to that simple plain text, drop in a few images, and communicate and share your ideas with somebody else. And then build upon that.
So I'm absolutely one of those people that feel like, you know, we should learn this process. We should teach responsible approaches to using these things. Right? How to be respectful. How to... how to be socialized in online communities. How to be, you know, respectful, productive members of these communities. And I think that everything would be a lot better. And so then this way, it's not just the dominant voices that are like overshadowing. But once again, I'm an optimist. Um...
Bruno: We're both. And I really liked that perspective and that spread of the voice, because that's the thing. Like... if there's one thing I've learned immensely in the last, I don't know, two or three years. When I actually got into more of these digital communities, of these open communities, is that it's like,
There's always something different. That you weren't aware of. There's always something new that you can learn from someone. There's always a different perspective that's going to change the way that you see a lot of things. And if you give those tools early to everyone, if you actually make those conversations happen earlier in life, you're just, jump-starting development. Human development is all. And it makes perfect sense.
Miguel: Yeah, absolutely. Like, yeah.
Bruno: Okay. Look Miggi. Like amazing conversation. I had a really great time here, listening to your story and listening to how you look at these things, and really happy that you're in charge of education at Figma, because of that. Because it's a tool that I love but it's also a field that it's...
Well, I had some difficulties because there's a lot of people that say that I wouldn't be a good teacher, because I like, I get frustrated and try to do things for the people instead of teaching them. But it's a field that really interests me and can only thank you a lot for your time here with the podcast. And I hope that everyone can listen to it, and learn a little bit about all of this great perspectives that you brought into the conversation.
Miguel: Cool . Thank you. I've actually had a blast. I've always wanted to like sit down and have a conversation with you. I'd always see you pop up on Twitter and the Slacks. And I'm like, man, like Bruno was such a cool guy. Like.
Bruno: Thank you very much.
Miguel: I just want to have like a conversation and go have like a beer or something. So...
Bruno: We need to make that happen as soon as I get into a plane to the States sometime. I don't know.
Miguel: I'll make my way out there. Like we got to go visit. I'm due for some international travel. It's been, it's been too long. I mean, like COVID is basically keeping that from happening. But you know, as soon as that, that goes down, hopefully we'll make a trip.
Bruno: Yep. Okay. And again, thank you everyone listening to the podcast. I'll see you all next week for another episode of the Design is for Everyone. Bye.
Miguel: Thank you. Bye bye.
