What Config India 2026 revealed about the expanding possibilities of design.

Something is changing in the world of design, and Bengaluru offered a fascinating glimpse of where it’s heading. Thousands of designers, exciting new capabilities, and conversations that went far beyond the latest Figma features. One message stood out: “Design is the differentiator.” Designers are gaining unprecedented capabilities to turn ideas into working products, while India’s technology leaders are making design central to how they build and compete.

Design is entering a new era of influence and designers have an opportunity to shape far more than interfaces. The question is no longer what designers can create, but how much of the future they’re prepared to shape.

The canvas is no longer the limit

For years, design software has been bringing designers closer to the products they imagine, the distance between an idea and a working experience has been getting shorter. But this evolution is accelerating, with much bigger implications for the role of designers.

At Config India, Dylan Field made a compelling argument: as code becomes easier to produce, design is increasingly the differentiator. The latest capabilities make that shift tangible. Designers can explore ideas directly in code, engineers can work on the canvas, and AI agents can participate in the same creative process. The traditional boundaries between design and engineering are becoming increasingly fluid.

Designers should take greater ownership of what they create. For too long, we’ve accepted that our responsibility ends at handoff. As the barriers between design and engineering disappear, that boundary makes less and less sense. We don’t all need to become software engineers, but we should be accountable for the experience people actually use, not just the one we designed.

Your next design colleague isn’t human

AI is quickly becoming part of the designer’s everyday toolkit. But the more interesting evolution is happening in how we work with it. Until recently, much of our interaction with AI was transactional: write a prompt, get a result, refine it and repeat. What happens when an AI agent becomes a genuine collaborator, able to understand the context of a project, follow its rules and contribute alongside the rest of the team?

The latest Figma announcements bring this vision closer to reality. Code Layers brings running code into Figma’s collaborative canvas, Specs provides shared context for people and agents, and Payload connects content and backend capabilities to the creation process. Together, they open the possibility of AI agents working with the same context, designs and decisions as their human colleagues.

“I find the idea of AI as a new colleague more compelling than AI as another productivity tool. But a capable colleague is only as effective as the context, direction and judgement surrounding their work.”

Design teams will need to become better at expressing intent, making decisions explicit and creating environments where humans and agents can contribute without losing coherence. The next generation of designers won’t simply be defined by how well they use AI, but by how well they lead the work they do with it.

The rise of the design engineer

Designers who code are nothing new. Design engineers have been bridging creativity and technology for years, translating ideas into functioning experiences. What is changing is how essential that expertise is becoming. As AI accelerates development and the boundaries between design and engineering blur, the ability to connect design intent with technical implementation is moving from a specialist advantage to a capability every design organisation needs.

Parinishtha Yadav, Principal Design Manager at Microsoft, challenged designers to take ownership of the entire front end, including the build. This thinking is also shared by TJ Pitre, Product Architect for AI & Design Systems at Figma, who sees design systems as “a collection of decisions”, rather than simply libraries of components.

If AI agents are going to build with our design systems, they need to understand the thinking and principles behind them, not just the components. Design engineering is becoming indispensable to the modern design organisation. The challenge is no longer simply maintaining consistency across screens, but ensuring that design intent survives the journey from human decisions to machine-generated experiences. This requires people who can think in systems, understand code and translate design principles into rules that technology can follow. The future of design systems won’t be measured by how many components they contain, but by how intelligently those components can be used.

Designing at the speed of thought. But should we?

We are entering an era where the distance between an idea and a working product can shrink dramatically. AI can help us explore concepts, generate interfaces and build functioning prototypes in minutes rather than days. The promise of designing at the speed of thought is exciting. But it raises a question I believe every designer should be asking: just because we can move faster, does that mean we should?

While Dylan Field demonstrated how AI workflows are accelerating the creative process, some of the most interesting conversations were about knowing when to slow down. Tarun Mehta, co-founder of Ather Energy, described testing unfinished prototypes, sometimes something as simple as a seat, and organising demo days to learn from customers. Nav Pawera, speaking about designing public services, questioned whether we really need to move so fast. They were reminders that building something quickly and understanding whether it should be built are two different things.

I believe speed is becoming one of the most overrated measures of design progress. Faster execution is valuable when it gives us more opportunities to experiment, learn and improve. But when speed becomes the objective, we risk accelerating towards solutions we haven’t properly questioned. It’s like being handed a faster car: without knowing where we’re going or how to handle it, we’re simply increasing the chances of a crash.

“The best designers won’t be those who move the fastest, but those who know when to accelerate, when to slow down and when to change direction.”

The CEO is part of the design team

For years, designers have been fighting for a seat at the table, trying to convince executives that design deserves a voice in strategic decisions. But what happens when the executives themselves think like designers? At the Figma Leadership Collective, I was struck by how deeply three of India’s most successful technology founders were involved in the design of their products. They weren’t simply sponsoring design or reviewing the final results. They were getting their hands dirty, questioning interactions, testing ideas and staying remarkably close to their customers.

During the panel Beyond the Noise: Building Products People Can’t Ignore, Harshil Mathur of Razorpay, Sri Harsha Majety of Swiggy and Tarun Mehta of Ather Energy shared a remarkably consistent philosophy: build for customers, not for headlines. Harshil questioned whether familiar interfaces such as dashboards would remain relevant as AI agents change how people consume information. Tarun described taking even the simplest prototypes directly to people, organising demo days and learning through constant iteration. What impressed me was how naturally all three founders discussed design, with the curiosity and attention to detail I would expect from experienced designers.

“I left that conversation convinced that design literacy is becoming an executive competency.”

The most influential product leaders understand how experiences are conceived, tested and refined, because those decisions are inseparable from business strategy. And perhaps that’s the bigger lesson for our profession. We spend so much energy trying to bring design into the boardroom, when we should also be asking how to bring design thinking into the minds of those already sitting there. The real victory for design isn’t earning a seat at the table. It’s becoming part of how everyone at that table thinks.

Who are we building the future for?

We often measure technological progress by how intelligent, powerful or sophisticated our products become. But perhaps a more meaningful measure is how many people can actually benefit from them. AI offers an extraordinary opportunity to make technology more accessible, to remove barriers of language, knowledge and technical expertise, and to give people capabilities that were previously reserved for specialists. For designers, this opens an exciting possibility: creating experiences that reach and empower people we have never been able to serve effectively before.

At the Leadership Collective, Pratyush Kumar, co-founder of Sarvam AI, brought this ambition to life. Sarvam is building AI for India, with local languages and cultural context at its foundation. What stayed with me was his conviction that AI should not become something mythical or inaccessible. People should be able to understand it, experiment with it and create with it themselves. He also spoke about the importance of Indian talent building technology in India, for Indian needs. There was something genuinely optimistic about this vision: technology shaped by the people and communities it is intended to serve.

“As designers gain the power to build almost anything, we have a responsibility to ask who benefits from what we create.”

I believe the democratisation of intelligence could become one of the most important opportunities in the history of design. But accessibility means more than making a product available or translating an interface. It requires understanding people’s languages, circumstances, abilities and aspirations, and giving them the confidence to participate. As designers gain the power to build almost anything, we have a responsibility to ask who benefits from what we create. The greatest achievement of AI may not be making technology more intelligent, but making its possibilities available to everyone.

What a time to be a designer

I came to Bengaluru for design, but India gave me much more to think about. The city is fascinating, full of contrasts and extraordinary energy. What struck me most was the ambition of its creative community. Thousands of designers coming together, founders who speak the language of design, and a generation of talent eager to build what comes next. Throughout the week, I encountered a remarkable combination of creativity, technical confidence, cultural pride and openness. I arrived expecting to discover the latest innovations in design. I left with the feeling that India is already helping define its future.

And perhaps Bengaluru was the perfect place to witness this moment in our profession. On one side, AI is giving designers unprecedented capabilities to imagine, prototype and build. On the other, design is becoming increasingly central to how companies innovate, how leaders make decisions and how technology reaches people. What impressed me about India was how naturally these two movements seemed to come together. From founders personally testing prototypes to teams building AI for their own languages and communities, design was being treated as both a creative capability and a strategic responsibility.

This is what I take away from Config India. The opportunity ahead of us is extraordinary, but greater capability alone doesn’t guarantee better outcomes. We can build faster, collaborate with intelligent agents and turn ideas into functioning products with less friction than ever before. The real question is what we choose to do with that power. Will we simply produce more, or will we use it to understand people better, challenge assumptions and create things that genuinely matter?

The future of design will be defined not only by what designers can create, but by what they are empowered to shape.

Further reading and references

If you’re curious to explore some of the ideas, conversations and projects mentioned in this article, here are a few useful links:

Config India 2026 — Official Agenda and Sessions — Figma: https://config.figma.com/india/agenda/

Build by Design: New Workflows for New Ways of Building — Dylan Field, Figma’s Config India keynote and product announcements: https://www.figma.com/blog/build-by-design/

Design Systems Are a Collection of Decisions — TJ Pitre: https://southleft.substack.com/p/design-systems-are-a-collection-of

Figma Deepens Investment in India — Figma’s announcement, including its partnership with Sarvam AI: https://www.figma.com/blog/figma-deepens-investment-in-india/

Ather Energy — Electric mobility, product innovation and design: https://www.atherenergy.com/

Beyond the Canvas was originally published in UX Collective on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.