Claude Design Quick Review

Tried Claude Design last week. I really like it.

Would I give it my highest leverage, most complex work? No. But not all work is like that.

There is a ton of work that’s not very challenging for me at this stage of my career, but still needs to get done. Claude Design is AMAZING for that.

For example: Last week something came in from the team. I needed to help with a feature called “Letter Requests”. Imagine you’re working at a company, and you need a certificate from HR that confirms your salary. It’s essentially a very simple form submission flow. Nothing revolutionary or even difficult.

I imported the design system I had previously built, then let Claude Design loose on the task.

It did Dark Mode too:

It hallucinated a few fields that don’t exist, like “Reference Number”. But more importantly, it built all of the flows, while I was able to do higher-leverage work.

Then I exported it out of Claude Design, into Claude Code, and from Claude Code back into Figma. Making sure it uses the correct design system components.

Then I made some manual improvements to the designs in Figma:

Once I got some reference designs to where I wanted them, I told Codex to apply those reference designs to all artboards.

If I had to do this myself, by hand, I would have been bored and a little annoyed. Now, thanks to Claude Design, I have a design intern I can hand off tasks to. For senior designers, who are good at communicating and mentoring, a tool like Claude Design or Codex is a productivity miracle.

With that said, I feel very concerned for folks who are starting out in their design careers. Claude Design does a better job than many folks with 1-2 years of experience.

I’ve heard people give the counterpoint that “Junior designers will adapt and get better at using the AI tools.” That sounds positive and makes people feel good. But I used to work as a design instructor, training new designers who started from zero, often coming from other careers. Folks who are completely new to design, don’t know what “good” looks like, or how to articulate it. I wonder how this will change the way people get a foothold into the industry in the future.