Celebrating Megan Metzger’s Powerful Talk at Config 2025

We are immensely proud to celebrate our own, Megan Metzger, Senior Product Designer at Forerunner, for her impactful presentation at Config 2025 - Figma’s premier global design conference. Her session, “Designing in Disaster,” explored how to build tools that perform reliably under extreme conditions. She drew from her rare combination of experience as both a volunteer recovery diver and a product designer focused on climate resilience.

From the Depths: A Diver’s Perspective on Design

Megan began her talk with a vivid account from her time as a volunteer recovery diver, operating in cold, dark, and high-pressure underwater environments. These experiences underscored a critical insight: in life-or-death situations, the reliability of tools is paramount. This principle seamlessly translates into her design philosophy—emphasizing that in crisis scenarios, functionality and dependability take precedence.

Bridging Field Experience with Design at Forerunner

At Forerunner, Megan applies these principles to develop digital tools that assist local governments in managing disasters. She highlighted real-world challenges faced by officials: emergency operations centers functioning with limited power, inspectors relying on outdated data, and communities awaiting crucial information. In such contexts, the need for fast, reliable, and user-friendly software becomes evident.

Core Principles of Designing for Disaster

Megan articulated three foundational principles guiding her approach:

• Reliability Under Pressure Builds Trust: Tools must perform consistently, even in the most adverse conditions.
• Empowering Users Through Effective Tools: Design should facilitate complex tasks, enabling users to operate efficiently despite resource constraints.
• Clarity Enables Swift Action: Interfaces should minimize cognitive load, allowing users to make quick, informed decisions during emergencies.
  

Real-World Impact: Transforming Damage Assessment

Megan showcased how Forerunner applied these principles to transform damage assessment workflows—a critical step in determining the allocation of disaster relief funds. By introducing features like offline functionality, mobile optimization, real-time calculations, and streamlined data exports, the assessment process was significantly expedited. In evaluating our work in Florida, we found that this transformation reduced the time required per assessment from 6–8 hours to just 45 minutes, enabling the completion of over 15,000 assessments and unlocking $2.4 billion in recovery funds.

Redefining Success in Design

Challenging conventional design metrics, Megan urged the audience to prioritize reliability and user empowerment over visual appeal. She posed thought-provoking questions: What if our primary goal was reliability? What if we tested for failure scenarios before focusing on aesthetics? What if we assumed users operate under less-than-ideal conditions?

“Our tools don’t need to be perfect,” Megan emphasized. “They need to be reliable. They don’t need to win awards. They need to work when everything else fails.”

Thank You, Megan

Megan’s presentation was more than a talk, it was a  call to the design community to reevaluate our priorities and focus on creating tools that truly serve users in their most critical moments. Her insights remind us that the true measure of good design lies in its ability to help people, save time, and build trust.

We are honored to have Megan as part of the Forerunner team and look forward to the continued impact of her message on designers worldwide.

Watch Megan’s presentation: