Figma Config 2026 talk: From handoffs to upstream

Figma Config was something else.

Being surrounded by thousands of designers, engineers, and product leaders, all thinking seriously about where the craft is headed. For a small studio from Copenhagen, being in that space, and on that stage, meant a lot.

Config has a way of concentrating the entire industry into a few days. The talks, the product announcements, the side conversations that turn into discussions. Everyone in that building is wrestling with the same questions from different angles: what design is becoming, what tools are changing, and what our role will look like as the ground keeps shifting. Being part of that conversation, rather than just watching it from a distance, is a different feeling entirely.

There's something about being around people who care that much about the work. The conversations in the hallways, the curiosity, the sense that the industry is genuinely moving in an interesting direction. 

We left San Francisco with a lot to think about, and that's exactly what we wanted.

Figma Config 2026

Handoffs to Upstream on stage.

From Handoffs to Upstream came from something this studio has been living for the past year. Not AI, not the next big tool, but something more structural: what it actually takes to move designers upstream, and why the gap between what gets designed and what ships was never a communication problem, but a structural one.

The studio made that bet a year ago. The commercial upside is real, but that was never the reason. The reason was that the work wasn't worth making any other way. For most of the codebase, the line between designer and engineer isn't blurred. It's gone.

There's more to the story. The full talk covers how it happened, what it demanded, and what it unlocked. Worth a watch if the topic is on your mind.

For those who want to go deeper, it's all written down in a playbook. The day-to-day, the decision-making, the leadership approach, and the commercial impact. Six chapters built from a year of real work. Download it for free at edl.dk/design-engineering-book.

And if the talk raises something you want to think through, we are always up for that conversation.