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Claude Design

anthropic.com

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Re: Claude Design

#221

Post by Qasaur »

ilikecakeandpie wrote: post #111
mjr00 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no shame in being homogenous and obvious, though. If I'm building out an internal tool for, say, a hospital lawyer to search through malpractice lawsuits, I want my tool to be the most familiar, obvious, least-surprising UI/UX possible. Just stay out of the way and do what it's supposed to do. The trick is, of course, that the human is still responsible for knowing when homogenous is fine, or when there's rea…

There's a real problem with everything looking the same though. For a consumer product, you lose brand recognition. For a B2B product, you can confuse your users because Tool A and Tool B look exactly the same. You have to look hard at the name, kind of like prescription pill bottles.

There is little reason to invent a completely new design system if your goal is to encourage brand recognition and prevent an operator from confusing tools.

Apple/SwiftUI has accentColor for example where you can inject a brand colour. This is subtle but effective for UI differentiation - colour is a design primitive that evokes subconscious pattern recognition and can be more effective than a complicated design framework that forces a larger context switch in the user's mind.

Re: Claude Design

#222

Post by dayvid »

ljm wrote: post #18

I reckon something like this has only been possible to develop because of how homogenous the internet has become in terms of design ever since the glass effect and drop-shadows took over in Web 2.0 and Twitter Bootstrap entered the scene. You'll get a competent UI with little effort but nothing truly unique or mind-blowing. Impressive technology, but that old skool artisanal weirdness of yore only becomes more valuab…

Twitter Bootstrap did more to elevate design on the web than reduce artisinal quality. Most of it was bad and definitely not ADA/other compliant

Re: Claude Design

#224

Post by qkeast »

gpt5 wrote: post #48
ossa-ma wrote: post #30

The more I think about it the more this isn't good for design [EDIT], for a few reasons: - The best design is original, groundbreaking and often counterintuitive. An AI model is incapable of that, it's uninspired, it will absolutely converge to the norm and homogeneity (you see it everywhere now, just scroll on ShowHN and take a look at the UIs) and produce the safest design that appeals to its understanding of the i…

> The best design is original, groundbreaking and often counterintuitive Designing a user inteface involves thousands of small decisions. When trading off pros/cons for each of these decisions, in 99% of the cases, the right answer is ‘optimize familiarity. That’s why Android and iOS look the same, and why the small differences between them are where contention happen. If you adopt existing patterns, your users would…

>Designing a user inteface involves thousands of small decisions. When trading off pros/cons for each of these decisions…

Which needs to be done intentionally in context, not homogeneously as a rapid output of a generative tool.

Re: Claude Design

#225

Post by pembrook »

I disagree with most of the takes here. The reason this will fail has nothing to do with design, designers, or taste.

This will fail because it's already a forgotten side project within anthropic, and anthropic also has pretty bad product DNA as a company. Their headcount is already too large and the culture is already set. They grew revenue so fast they speedran the stage at which you could build software product chops into the company culture (think Google circa 2008 vs. Google circa 2018).

They should focus on what they're good at: the actual AI models and B2B sales. Let OpenAI play early Google and churn through 100 different consumer product experiences to see what sticks, they're better positioned for it anyways.

Re: Claude Design

#226

Post by hugeBirb »

nothinkjustai wrote: post #178
atonse wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tools like Figma are for an era (and persona) who still wants to have all the various knobs and dials to dial in exactly what they want. And that is one way of working if, like you said people are trying to be more thoughtful and know exactly what they want. But for the other 95% of people, being able to just say "ok can you make it look more modern" and have 4 variants in 5 mins, (like me) Figma will lose users like…

[flagged]

Ah, slopper is hilarious. Too long has the title of builder just been an excuse to make dog shit UI and excusing yourself. If you're going to build user-facing tools, good UI/UX is a requirement not an option. Couldn't imagine this excuse flying in any other industry. Yeah I just made a chair where all 4 legs are different lengths and the back rest is in the middle of the seat, "I'm just more of a builder"

Re: Claude Design

#227

Post by AstroBen »

mjr00 wrote: post #55
ljm wrote: post #18

I reckon something like this has only been possible to develop because of how homogenous the internet has become in terms of design ever since the glass effect and drop-shadows took over in Web 2.0 and Twitter Bootstrap entered the scene. You'll get a competent UI with little effort but nothing truly unique or mind-blowing. Impressive technology, but that old skool artisanal weirdness of yore only becomes more valuab…

There's no shame in being homogenous and obvious, though. If I'm building out an internal tool for, say, a hospital lawyer to search through malpractice lawsuits, I want my tool to be the most familiar, obvious, least-surprising UI/UX possible. Just stay out of the way and do what it's supposed to do. The trick is, of course, that the human is still responsible for knowing when homogenous is fine, or when there's rea…

"attractive things work better"

There have been studies showing aesthetics matter quite a bit for UX - users perceive things that are attractive as being easier to use and less frustrating.

Re: Claude Design

#228

Post by dayvid »

ossa-ma wrote: post #30

The more I think about it the more this isn't good for design [EDIT], for a few reasons: - The best design is original, groundbreaking and often counterintuitive. An AI model is incapable of that, it's uninspired, it will absolutely converge to the norm and homogeneity (you see it everywhere now, just scroll on ShowHN and take a look at the UIs) and produce the safest design that appeals to its understanding of the i…

This is a great bridge between non-designers with taste and designers who can't fully technically implement their solutions (or want to more rapidly prototype their solutions). Well done AI implementation is like cosmetic surgery. The trashiest implementations you can tell immediately and the more tasteful ones are subtle

Re: Claude Design

#229

Post by Lihh27 »

ossa-ma wrote: post #30

The more I think about it the more this isn't good for design [EDIT], for a few reasons: - The best design is original, groundbreaking and often counterintuitive. An AI model is incapable of that, it's uninspired, it will absolutely converge to the norm and homogeneity (you see it everywhere now, just scroll on ShowHN and take a look at the UIs) and produce the safest design that appeals to its understanding of the i…

> The best design is original, groundbreaking and often counterintuitive

most of those "breakthroughs" were just constraint hacks. no room for a reload button. no room for another menu.

enterprise buyers don't pay for counterintuitive. they pay so the new hire finds save without training.

Re: Claude Design

#230

Post by simplyluke »

atonse wrote: post #133
Bilal_io wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The folks at Wall Street do not understand this does not replace Figma. Figma is targeted towards designers who create thoughtful design systems and cohesive UIs and who don't code, while this is targeted towards vibe coders who can't design. Two different circles that intersect to some level. But like you said, if anthropic adds the tools in Figma, only then they can can take customers from Figma IMO.

Tools like Figma are for an era (and persona) who still wants to have all the various knobs and dials to dial in exactly what they want. And that is one way of working if, like you said people are trying to be more thoughtful and know exactly what they want. But for the other 95% of people, being able to just say "ok can you make it look more modern" and have 4 variants in 5 mins, (like me) Figma will lose users like…

I'm much closer to your persona than a professional designer. 5 years ago if I was going to spin up a landing page for a side project I was probably getting something mediocre together with bootstrap or material UI. Today I'd probably get something marginally better together with a tool like this. In both scenarios I'd end up with an undifferentiated but acceptable end state.

I've never paid for a figma seat. A couple of employers have so that I can collaborate with designers in the product, but I don't think this changes that.

In an era where it's cheaper and more common to end up at that undifferentiated state, the ability for companies to make their products go above and beyond it is more valuable, not less.

I see this across the board with AI. It lowers the bar to get to passable, but as slop fills the internet we're already seeing people place more value in good products, good writing, good art, thoughtful code architecture, etc. Everyone and their cousin's uber driver is vibe coding a SaaS startup no one's going to pay for right now.

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