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Show Notes

Figma’s Head of Insights Andrew Hogan joins Peter and Jesse to explore emerging trends in design practice as AI transforms creative workflows. The conversation examines how role boundaries are blurring across product teams, where AI delivers real value versus hype, and design’s growing opportunity to lead strategic orchestration in increasingly complex digital experiences.

Find Andrew on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/ahhogan/.
Learn more about Jesse James Garrett and his coaching and consulting at https://jessejamesgarrett.com/
Learn more about Peter Merholz and his digital book “Design Org Dimensions” at https://petermerholz.com/

Transcript

Jesse: I’m Jesse James Garrett,

Peter: and I’m Peter Merholz.

Jesse: And we’re finding our way,

Peter: navigating the opportunities

Jesse: and challenges

Peter: of design and design leadership.

Jesse: On today’s show, design industry analyst and head of insights for Figma Andrew Hogan joins us to talk about just why Figma needs an industry analyst anyway, how he drives business impact as a researcher and key findings from his research on what’s changing about design and what isn’t with the advent of AI.

Peter: Andrew, thank you so much for joining us.

Andrew: Thanks for having me. Super excited to be on.

Peter: Awesome. So gonna start start with a softball, which is just like, well, you’ve got an interesting role at Figma. Head of Insights, I think is the title. What do you do?

What Does a Head of Insights Do?

Andrew: Thanks for this one. I don’t know if that’s a softball to be honest, but, my job is essentially to analyze the industry, the design industry, what’s happening, where is it going, what sorts of trends are going on. We do that through a lot of different means, whether it’s looking at our product research, whether it’s looking at, big state of design, state of the designer surveys, state of AI and design, a lot of states of, and then to figure out how to get that out in the world so that people have a view of what’s going on.

And so that Figma has a view of what’s going on because you always wanna design for like, the next biggest space, right? You’re designing for the world that you’re in and maybe where the world is going. So my job is to make that work better internally, working with our research team and share that out externally so that people can sort of see and plan and think a little bit with some different kinds of data that are maybe outside of their day-to-day experience.

Jesse: How do the questions that you pursue differ from what a typical UX research team might be taking on?

Andrew: I think ideally they’re extensions of each other. So, let’s take like AI. Obviously Figma wants to know, how are people thinking about AI? What are they finding value in? What do they want to be able to do? And then also, how prevalent is the usage? How might that compare to how across developers, designers, product managers are using AI?

But I don’t think there’s a huge amount of daylight there. Often it’s taking a slightly broader view than like, did people find value in this specific feature? But again, really good experienced researchers, they’re doing that, they’re thinking about it that way.

Peter: Some of what you do could be also considered market research, and I don’t know if it falls under that, Jesse mentioned UX research or if it’s a different kind of research, but I’m also intrigued… you mentioned how the value of the work you’re doing is for Figma as well as for the community.

But if you could share, I’m curious what insights you’ve had or that you’ve helped uncover that have informed what Figma has launched? Are there any through lines between anything you’ve worked on and, something that people have had a chance to use because your insight pointed out an opportunity?

Andrew: Sure. I mean, so there’s a lot of parallels here with what I did at Forrester before, which is where I was for seven years as an industry analyst. You’re always looking at the direction of, people are excited about, where they’re going, what they’re spending more energy on, what they’re spending less.

So I can’t give like a specific feature or anything, but certainly like one of the things we look at is, people feel like they’re a lot more efficient when they’re using AI in their design process, but they don’t always feel like it’s getting better, they’re doing better work. And so we think a lot about the tension between those kinds of things.

And so you can imagine the sorts of features that might lead to efficiency versus the sorts of features that might make people feel like their work is getting better. And so that’s a trend we’re looking at,we’re tracking over time.

And then, ultimately looking to do both, right? You want to help more people to be able to participate in the design process, and then you also wanna be able to make experts faster, better, all of those kinds of things.

Peter: You’re operating in an enterprise software context, which I think people in the design community often forget, right? Like, they just think of it as a design tool, but really you’re enterprise software. Is a role like yours typical in enterprise software? ‘Cause it’s curious to me that Figma would want to have a Forrester style analyst in-house, like, as opposed to just, partnering with Forrester or something like that.

What’s the logic or the intent of bringing that in-house?

Andrew: I mean, you get certainly lots of benefits in terms of day-to-day conversations, right? For like a Forester or an IDC or a Gartner, you have these very like specific engagements and you’re always thinking about exactly what to share and how to share it.

And I think we all would like to believe that those things are free and open, but the reality is you’re kind of always thinking it through, and in-house you can kind of just say like, Hey, are you just seeing this?

It’s a quick Slack and I think that’s the kind of benefit. And then you also have this benefit of, there’s sort of this context that I know about when it’s comes to like, future roadmaps or company strategy, that we can think about when we are designing studies.

Because you often need to have a really long view. And so the ability to partner with our research team and take a long view while also getting answers in the near term and then helping people who are thinking about where should their career grow? What sorts of skills should they try to pick up? If they’re leading a team, what sorts of skills should they encourage people to go do?

Or sometimes I think about it as like, filling out the strategy slides. That’s a sort of a glib way of saying it. You know, here’s the direction that we’re going.

You can often partner with customers to help them sort of fill out the strategy slides because they need to justify why they’re going in a particular direction. And, previously they might have only been able to engage with like a Gartner or only gotten like a Figma product perspective.

And there’s just a little bit more space and data to share. There’s like a broader view that I think you can offer. And obviously it’s a Figma view. I work at Figma. Like, it’s a very specific perspective, but I think people tend to find the triangulation of those perspectives to be helpful.

And I’m sure they take some of it, I’m sure they throw some of it away. But it can be kind of lonely trying to make these decisions and this role offers both inside Figma and outside Figma, like another view. And I think that’s what’s useful.

Then you still go to Gartner. You still go to Forrester, or you still go to IDC. None of those things go away. It’s just one more lens.

Jesse: It’s interesting to think about the investment in your role as really being an investment in supporting the decision making of leaders across Figma, really, because of that vantage point that you bring and that perspective, which is like standing just slightly outside the organization, right?

And I wonder what is the tension between your role as you talk about, like, having a value proposition that is both inside Figma and outside Figma, and what is your role as kind of being the person on the edge who’s gonna bring new things into the organization that maybe aren’t even things that people were asking for?

Agent of Osmosis

Andrew: Yeah, I am always trying to be like an agent of osmosis for information out, information in. You both have given me feedback and shared perspectives that I’ve brought in. That’s always the goal. You facilitate information sharing. And that’s a pretty helpful spot to be in. And it isn’t just helping people at Figma. It’s helping leaders outside of Figma. And I think that’s the unique part. So, often, “Hey, did you see this comment? These people are having this issue. I heard this discussion from somebody at a dinner. Like what do we think abo