Bay Area Catch-Ups & Figma Config — June 2024

While I don’t usually write much about UX—even though it’s my actual day job—I figured I’d break tradition just a bit to share some highlights from a recent June trip to the Bay Area. Truth be told, I like keeping my creative hobbies and work life in separate buckets, so this won’t be a deep dive into the world of user journeys or microinteractions. But the reason for the trip was technically UX-adjacent: I was in town for Figma’s Config Conference.

I won’t recap the talks or product updates (you can stream the whole thing online anyway), but I was especially intrigued by Figma’s growing set of AI tools. As someone who’s always on the lookout for ways to streamline design workflows, the idea of AI taking on some of the more tedious tasks is super appealing. Still, the real highlight of the trip? Reconnecting with friends.

A lot of the magic came from spending time with fellow designers who, like me, were raised in Hawai‘i but have since moved to the mainland. It felt like a mini-reunion—folks doing cool things at places like Sephora, Lyft, and other corners of the design world.

One afternoon, I had a sweet day-date with my friend Jeff. We wandered through the quieter, more suburban parts of the city, popping into design-y shops, walking through a sun-dappled park, and making a stop at the De Young Museum observatory for a view of the city I hadn’t seen in years. It was one of those low-key perfect days.

Another highlight: catching up with my old coworker and longtime friend Taylor Ho, now a Principal Designer at Twitch. He gave me a tour of their HQ and treated me to lunch in their cafeteria—super generous and surreal in that way where you’re like, “Whoa, we used to work out of a shared dev pod and now look at us.”

The trip wrapped up with happy hour at the Starlite bar in the Beacon Hotel. A bunch of Hawai‘i-raised designers, a few rounds of drinks, and that special kind of laughter you only get when you’re a few cocktails in with people who just get where you’re from.

It’s always heartwarming to realize that even in the middle of busy careers and bigger cities, there are still pockets of home to be found—and familiar faces to share them with.

Chee-Hoo! Here’s to good design, good company, and homegrown connections in not-so-faraway places.