After years dominated by minimalist aesthetics, Figma's CEO predicts a shift. To stand out in an exponentially growing software world, companies will embrace more dynamic, visual, and experimental user interfaces. This creative flourishing will move beyond visuals to include new interaction patterns and information architecture to capture attention.

While design systems ensure consistency, Stripe's leadership warns against letting them stifle innovation. When launching a "magical" new product like Financial Accounts, the team realized standard components felt underwhelming. They chose to break the pattern to create a bespoke UI that matched the product's promise.

Stripe's website features a data visualization that isn't functionally interactive but serves a critical purpose. It communicates care, technical prowess, and global scale. For a company handling money, this "utility in beauty" builds subconscious user trust and makes the product more compelling.

In the dot-com era, design was a superficial afterthought. Today, with increased software competition and user expectations set by companies like Apple, design is a critical factor for a product's success, influencing function and user experience, not just aesthetics.

Product 'taste' is often narrowly defined as aesthetics. A better analogy is a restaurant: great food (visuals) is necessary but not sufficient. Taste encompasses the entire end-to-end user journey, from being greeted at the door to paying the check. Every interaction must feel crafted and delightful.

True product excellence lies in details users might not consciously notice but that create a magical experience. Like Jobs' obsession with internal aesthetics, these small, polished edge cases signal a culture of craft and deep user empathy that is hard to replicate.

True design isn't about aesthetics; it is the fundamental soul of a creation, revealed by how it works. It requires distilling a product or company to its simplest form through profound understanding. As AI automates coding, this ability to design systems becomes a critical skill for everyone, not just designers.

Katie Dill, Stripe's Head of Design, actively uses their internal prototyping tools and codes on weekends. She believes that for leaders to be effective in a rapidly changing technical landscape, they must stay in touch with the tools and workflows their teams use daily, rather than just managing from a distance.

AI tools are raising the baseline quality of design, making a "7 out of 10" experience nearly free to produce. Stripe sees this not as a call to do more, but to reallocate saved time toward creating exceptionally crafted, "15 out of 10" moments that truly differentiate the product.