A designer made behavioral science into a book you can ask a question, designed start to finish in Figma
Ready for the world ft. Vicki Tan | Config 2026 · Rachel Miller
24 min total·Actually worth watching closely: ~8 min·3 must-watch clips
- 0:11 – 4:30Skim
Hosts' opening and speaker intro
The hosts open Config 2026 and introduce the morning session's first speaker, Vicki Tan — a designer and author there to talk about her experience designing a book about decisions. Standard warm-up.
The subject of this talk isn't a product; it's a personal piece of work that took years.
The screen is just the hosts on stage and a speaker slide — low information density, fine to move through quickly.▶ Jump to 0:11Speaker · Rachel Miller - 4:30 – 7:14Watch
Years of being stuck behind five forms
She shows the book's evolution from a movable cognitive bias wheel to pull-tab spreads, a pocket guide, and finally a published hardcover — then admits that smooth line is the social media version. What actually happened is that she got stuck between the concept and the proposal for a few years, plus a pandemic break.
The creative path shown publicly is almost always edited; in the real timeline, long stretches are stalled.
The physical prototypes appear one after another, and the wheel and pull-tab mechanism can't be conveyed in words — worth watching, and it's exactly these images that set up the confession that follows.▶ Jump to 4:30Speaker · Vicki Tan - 7:14 – 9:02Listen
Why knowing doesn't change behavior
It starts with a plate of mapo tofu and leads into the core puzzle from her behavioral science work: someone can understand loss aversion completely, cognitively, and still not quit the job. Behavioral science is really good at naming the mechanism, but naming isn't the same as usable.
Laying it all out isn't the same as usable; designers change behavior by showing how it's done, not by explaining how things work.
The whole stretch is her reasoning and examples, with nothing you need to watch — you lose nothing listening while doing something else.▶ Jump to 7:14Speaker · Vicki Tan - 9:02 – 11:04Watch
A book you can ask a question
The answer wasn't to teach the bias head-on but to let people recognize it in their own story. The book was designed completely in Figma: you arrive with the question you've been stuck on and navigate through lenses — topic, subtopic, timing — to a story that resonates, and only at the end does she name the bias that showed up in it.
Recognizing beats naming — the denomination effect, for instance, makes us overweight the big decision and undervalue the small recurring choices that actually add up.
The book's branching navigation is laid out as a diagram on screen; one look at how the lenses narrow to a single story beats three minutes of explanation.▶ Jump to 9:02Speaker · Vicki Tan - 11:04 – 14:15Watch
The proposal is a flow chart, and realness beats polish
She didn't start from words — she made the publisher's proposal as a flow chart, designing the book the way you'd design an app. Then the publisher turned down finished work from professional illustrators and a professional cover designer, one after another, because it was too polished and didn't sound like her voice. What shipped was her own unpolished illustrations, cover, and non-literary writing.
Helping people understand, making connections, making hard things easier — that is what design is, and it carries straight over to writing; the book had to feel like her inside and out.
The flow-chart proposal, and the rejected professional work set beside the versions she made herself, are the most convincing evidence in this stretch — and all of it is on screen.▶ Jump to 11:04Speaker · Vicki Tan - 14:15 – 18:00Listen
What to pair that floating creative energy with
She describes a state that is neither anxiety nor boredom: a charge of creative energy that hasn't found its right object yet. The move is to pair it with the skills you already have, your way of thinking, even the things you've been shying away from — and when you genuinely can't find the direction, ask your closest friends.
Friends often see you more clearly than you see yourself — and only your particular life can make that particular thing.
Purely spoken self-examination, slow and fully formed — fine to listen to with your eyes closed.▶ Jump to 14:15Speaker · Vicki Tan - 18:00 – 21:16Listen
Avoidance, re-membering, and the creative cycle
With nobody watching, the subconscious pushes the hardest topics all the way to the bottom of the pile. Going back with a reason to look — the book — at the memory of getting quiet after her dad died, the memory came alive again. For structure she used kisho tenketsu rather than the hero's journey.
Remembering is re-membering — reattaching the parts of yourself that were cut off; the change comes from a turn on the inside, not from anything outside resolving.
The most personal stretch of the talk; the force is entirely in her wording and pauses, and watching the screen only distracts.▶ Jump to 18:00Speaker · Vicki Tan - 21:16 – 24:17Listen
Closing with a poem
She closes by reading "Everything Is Waiting For You" and hands the creative cycle back to the audience: follow your curiosity, use what you already have, change as the work asks of you, and then begin again.
After writing the most vulnerable story, the rest of the writing wasn't easier, exactly — there was just more space to explore.
A poem read aloud and closing remarks; the pacing and feeling are the point, and the screen is just her on stage.▶ Jump to 21:16Speaker · Vicki Tan