Think Fast Talk Smart: Communication Techniques

Transform how you communicate with tools that make your message stick.

Clear communication isn’t just about sharing information — it’s about making ideas stick. That’s why Yuhki Yamashita, Chief Product Officer at Figma, believes the key to effective collaboration lies in turning complex concepts into simple, memorable visuals.
For years, Figma has been reshaping the way teams brainstorm, design, and build together — making it easier than ever to bring ideas to life in real time. In this episode of the Think Fast, Talk Smart Tech Tools miniseries, host Matt Abrahams talks with Yamashita about how visuals facilitate shared understanding, why frameworks enhance team communication, and how to craft insights that people naturally remember and reuse.
In addition to insight-packed discussions, this miniseries explores innovative tools that enhance the way we communicate and connect. Whether you want to make your presentations more memorable, craft stories that stick, or connect with your audience on a deeper level, these episodes will help you communicate with greater clarity, confidence, and impact.

Episode Reference Links:

Connect:

Chapters:

  • (00:00) - Introduction
  • (01:16) - Figma Elevator Structure
  • (02:07) - Joining Figma
  • (03:17) - The Power of Visual Storytelling
  • (04:36) - Creating Shared Meaning with Visuals
  • (05:37) - Favorite Communicator
  • (08:59) - Communication Hack or Tool
  • (10:36) - Conclusion

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Creators and Guests

Host
Matt Abrahams
Lecturer Stanford University Graduate School of Business | Think Fast Talk Smart podcast host
Guest
Yuhki Yamashita
Chief Product Officer at Figma

What is Think Fast Talk Smart: Communication Techniques?

One of the most essential ingredients to success in business and life is effective communication.
Join Matt Abrahams, best-selling author and Strategic Communication lecturer at Stanford Graduate School of Business, as he interviews experts to provide actionable insights that help you communicate with clarity, confidence, and impact. From handling impromptu questions to crafting compelling messages, Matt explores practical strategies for real-world communication challenges.

Whether you’re navigating a high-stakes presentation, perfecting your email tone, or speaking off the cuff, Think Fast, Talk Smart equips you with the tools, techniques, and best practices to express yourself effectively in any situation. Enhance your communication skills to elevate your career and build stronger professional relationships.

Tune in every Tuesday for new episodes. Subscribe now to unlock your potential as a thoughtful, impactful communicator. Learn more and sign up for our eNewsletter at fastersmarter.io.

Matt Abrahams: This Tech Tools miniseries
is brought to you by Prezi, the

presentation tool that makes your ideas
easy to follow, hard to forget, and

faster than ever to create with Prezi AI.

The best investment is in
the tools of one's own trade.

At Think Fast Talk Smart, we are
taking this quote by Benjamin

Franklin, the famous US inventor
and founding father, very seriously.

As you know, our show strives to share
tips and techniques to help you hone and

improve your communication and careers.

These practices and approaches can be
augmented with tools and technology.

I'm Matt Abrahams.

I teach strategic communication at
Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Welcome to this Tech Tools miniseries
of Think Fast Talk Smart, the podcast.

In this multi-part miniseries, we'll
introduce you to tools we use at Think

Fast Talk Smart to help us be better at
our spoken and written communication.

And you'll learn best practices
from the founders who created them.

Taken together, we hope these
communication tools will help you find

new ways to think fast and talk smart.

I am super excited today to speak
with Yuhki Yamashita, who is

Figma's Chief Product Officer.

Yuhki, welcome.

Thanks for joining me.

Yuhki Yamashita: Thank you for having me.

Matt Abrahams: Some of our listeners
might not know what Figma is.

Can you share what your product
is using the elevator pitch

structure I teach my students?

What if you could, so that, for
example, and that's not all.

Do you wanna give that a try?

Yuhki Yamashita: So what if you could
visualize any idea you have in your

head and immediately collaborate on
it in real time with others so that

you and your team, if you have one,
can make digital experiences like

apps and websites together end to end?

For example, you can brainstorm an
idea on digital whiteboard, bring

it into a design infinite canvas,
present that vision in a deck, and

actually get it built end to end.

And that's not all.

People have found other creative ways
to use Figma, like sharing a visual

resume or planning a trip or wedding, or
even arranging an apartment floor plan.

Matt Abrahams: That was a
great use of that structure.

You get an A plus.

I'm curious, Yuhki, what
led you to join Figma?

Yuhki Yamashita: There is
the practical reason and kind

of the philosophical reason.

So the practical reason was I
was working at Uber before my

time at Figma, uh, happened to
be on a team that experimentally

brought Figma into the company.

And this is a time when we were
trying to de-silo all the product

work that's going on and get the
rest of the company knowing what's

happening inside of the product world.

So it was a perfect fit for that.

So I got to see firsthand how it spread
virally, got everyone involved, but

maybe even more importantly, it embodied
a philosophy that I always had around

design, which is that design shouldn't
be just designer's consideration.

I was a product manager for most of
my career, and oftentimes had to dig

through Dropbox files to find that
right PNG, and then if I wanted to edit

it, I needed to gain access to some
other application or just, you know,

go to Photoshop and make some edits.

Figma took the point of view that I
had, which is that over time, these

boundaries between functions that
should be blurred or are artificial.

Design is something that everyone
should be participating in.

I saw Figma champion that world view
early on, and I was really excited by it.

Matt Abrahams: Great.

So it was a practical experience
that lined up with your philosophical

approach that, that led you to to join.

You and Figma have thought a lot about
visualizing and communicating ideas.

What are some of the best practices
you've identified for visualization

and communicating effectively?

Yuhki Yamashita: I think the first
thing that comes to mind is the

idea that people usually have only
a couple takeaways that they can

bring home or bring to other people.

For example, if it's a pitch deck,
there's that one slide that people

remember, or that one framework to
describe what your product is about

or maybe what problem you're solving.

And so I spend a disproportionate
amount of time trying to distill that

discussion or the thesis into something
visual that people can remember.

And sometimes I describe it almost
as a meme, you know, like people

have such short attention spans,
they're often multitasking when

they're consuming information.

So there's just this one
meme that they can take away.

And maybe that's a really
well articulated insight.

Maybe it's a very provocative problem.

Maybe it's a visual that you want
to keep using over and over again,

but those are the things that I
think about most when I think about

storytelling and visual storytelling.

Matt Abrahams: It almost sounds
like there's an emotional

connection to the image.

Is that something you think a lot about
as you think about leveraging images

to help people focus and remember?

Yuhki Yamashita: I think so, because
oftentimes, for example, I remember

maybe when I was back at Uber, I was
responsible for the rider app, and

the rider app had a lot of issues.

When you're getting into a car, there's
all things that can go wrong, and it's

very easy for people to just bring
up the thousand different issues that

they want my team to fix, for example.

But if you can distill it down to
actually there are four stages to a

pickup, you need to do this and then
that, then all of a sudden you've

given everyone a vocabulary, right?

And then that is the very same visual
framework that people might use in

their own teams to slot in, oh, here
are my problems and goals, and all of

a sudden you've kind of discretized
this ambiguous space into something.

It's really just language and it
just happens to be that like we,

we've given it something visual or
given it words that are memorable.

Often people call it a
framework, but you know, that's

really essentially what it is.

Matt Abrahams: I'm a huge fan of
frameworks when it comes to communication.

I think it really helps, in fact,
you leverage the pitch framework

that I like to teach, but I like this
idea of distilling processes down

into their core components, and then
thinking about what's the best way to

visually represent this information.

In essence, what you said is it gives you
a different vocabulary beyond just words.

It, it gives you a visual
vocabulary and I like that a lot.

Before we end, I'd like to ask you
the same two questions that I'm asking

everyone who's part of this miniseries.

Who is a communicator
that you admire and why?

Yuhki Yamashita: One communicator
who comes to mind is actually my

first professor of computer science.

His name is David Millen.

He runs his introductory to
computer science course that's also

available online for anyone to take.

And I admire him for two reasons.

One is he never says, um, it's always
just so fluid, even while navigating

some of the most complex topics,
and it comes from a lot of practice,

but it's just really impressive.

And the second is really able to make
the most complicated things relatable.

And he's actually managed to make
computer science theatrical, almost.

It's, it's really fun to watch
and inspiring, especially from the

perspective of a student who based on
that may or may not pick up the skill.

Matt Abrahams: One, I love
that you picked a professor.

I think our profession can
use all the help we can get.

I appreciate that anybody can
now go check out that course.

When you said that one thing that
stood out to you is that he made

things relatable and engaging, were
there particular techniques he used?

You said theatrical but
what does that mean?

I'm just curious.

I'm always interested in how does
somebody take something which is

rather complex like coding and
make it engaging and accessible.

Yuhki Yamashita: For example, he was
teaching the idea of binary search.

He would pick up a dictionary
and say, hey, let's talk about

linear versus binary search.

Linear search means that you're going,
and maybe it was his phone directory and

I could tell you, hey, go find John Smith.

But start from the beginning and
just flip through every page.

That's linear search.

Conversely, I could tell you to do a
binary search and he took a directory,

he ripped it in half, looked at the name,
discarded half, kept ripping in half, and

he could get to John Smith much faster.

And that's such a visual and
evocative way to understand what

binary search is really about.

Matt Abrahams: Yeah.

So he showed you, used an analogy.

I love that.

That's great.

He must've been very strong to
be ripping phone books in half.

Alright, question number two.

Beyond your tool, what is one
communication hack tool or

shortcut that you use to help
yourself be more effective?

Yuhki Yamashita: I think it's gonna
come back to the idea of forming a meme.

It sounds like a very trivializing
thing to do, but I've just kind of

realized that even as leaders in a
company, you find that people start

repeating things, phrases that they've
heard that they picked up, that make

them maybe sound smart or is a little
bit counterintuitive or evocative, and

therefore you want to spread it more.

I mentioned spending a disproportionate
amount of time honing in on what is a

way to express this insight that makes
people want to repeat it, or what is a

way to visualize it so that they would
want to reuse it over and over again.

I really spend eighty percent of the time
kinda coming it down to like, what is that

one thing that's gonna spread virally?

Matt Abrahams: I think
that's actually really cool.

To me, memeifying something, based
on what you've said, is really about

finding what is most relevant and
what is most likely to be reused.

And if you use those two ideas,
relevance and reuse as a guide,

it can really help you focus.

Yuhki, this has been really insightful.

I really appreciate not just you
sharing what your tool does, which

is very helpful for collaboration and
visualization, but also your approach

and the way you think about these
challenges and how people can be more

creative and make better decision making.

Thanks for joining us.

Yuhki Yamashita: Thank you for having me.

Matt Abrahams: Thank you for
joining us for one of our

Communication tools episodes of
Think Fast Talk Smart, the podcast.

Please be sure to listen to all of
the episodes in this miniseries.

We appreciate Prezi's
sponsorship of these episodes.

This episode was produced by Katherine
Reed, Ryan Campos, and me, Matt Abrahams.

Our music is from Floyd Wonder.

With special thanks to
Podium Podcast Company.

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