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Thoughts and feelings around Claude Design

samhenri.gold

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Re: Thoughts and feelings around Claude Design

#111

Post by rapnie »

wuhhh wrote: post #16

Great article, the last couple of paragraphs made me laugh! I love the part about things not masquerading as something else and being honest about what they are. I was wondering if PenPot ( https://penpot.app ) might be sitting pretty in this new agentic era, considering that they took the direction of designs being actual markup, unlike the canvas approach in fig - if that’s even something that interests them.

Wasn't the whole Penpot UI itself made in SVG? Or did they change that along the way?

Re: Thoughts and feelings around Claude Design

#112

Post by fuzzy_biscuit »

chrisan wrote: post #95
markdown wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> only it was "Photoshop files hold the (design) truth" before You mean Fireworks. Photoshop was for graphic design. Web designers used Adobe Fireworks. Figma is a successor to Fireworks, not Photoshop.

I was in web agencies since like 2002-2015, always got PSDs from either clients or internal designers

100%. I was always told to slice the PSD, fireworks never entered the conversation in the agency world I was a part of.

Re: Thoughts and feelings around Claude Design

#113

Post by skydhash »

apsurd wrote: post #98
slopinthebag wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, it's fine and serves it's purpose, but I'm a bit confused what you are getting that you wouldn't get with the millions of pre-made designs and design systems? Like Tailwind UI for example. https://tailwindcss.com/plus/ui-blocks

I find that with the ubiquity of Tailwind, developers treat design as a "solved problem". What's missing is the specific evolution of one's product and the resultant information architecture. The sibling response is my experience as well, design is an incredibly interactive exercise. Granted, not every component on every surface will need this amount of scrutiny. But I'm usually the outlier developer warning teammate…

Even with bootstrap, design was a solved problem. What you bring with a UI designer is appeal (aka make thing pretty and enjoyable). If you want utilitarian, even the old x11 toolkit like Athena, Win 98 era widgets would do the part.

Re: Thoughts and feelings around Claude Design

#114

Post by mrits »

juliusceasar wrote: post #64
markbao wrote: post #28

I don’t really buy that Claude Design will remove all the complexity around design. Vibe-coded apps using Claude look simpler because they are simpler. They’re not a gigantic product suite with extremely specific UI components tailored to each use case. The ‘simplicity’ is an illusion coming from conflating the complexity of a bicycle (a vibe coded app) with an airplane (an app like Figma). Building the same design s…

Most of the times people just want a bike or a car. Not everybody needs an airplane. This is going to hit Figma very hard.

Not to mention all the people hiring UX just because they don't want to deal with it themselves, not because they need something that requires a lot of skill.

Re: Thoughts and feelings around Claude Design

#115

Post by thunderfork »

nslsm wrote: post #30
esafak wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All right, here's a statement: your designers won't even know when the code is wrong. Just because it compiles it doesn't mean it's fine. They lack code judgment in the same way your coders lack design judgment.

It's very easy to know when code is wrong: it doesn't work the way it's expected to. So you explain to the AI what's wrong and the AI fixes it.

As we know from THERAC-25, etc., comprehensively verifying that code works the way it's expected to is not actually very easy - it's perhaps one of the hardest parts of building any system more complex than a toaster.

Re: Thoughts and feelings around Claude Design

#116

Post by rapnie »

bombcar wrote: post #76
zaptheimpaler wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But things really are different this time. Computers and software were nascent industries with lots of room to grow, lots of software to build in previous transitions. Today software and technology companies are the biggest in the world. Every industry uses software. Getting your web app, mobile app or game discovered is actually a huge problem today because we have so much software. There is not infinite demand for…

The Olde Days were custom code for a business doing business things (only they could afford a computer, and some universities), then there was a Cambrian explosion of software sold by individuals or small developers to many (80s and 90s), then we've moved to large companies and SaaS. I think we're about to cycle back to "custom code" except now it's for everyone, by AI - you don't need to find the to-do app of your d…

Or - there was a HN discussion on this half year or so ago - there's consolidation again, and there will be AI, but no code. Domain expert talks to the AI, perhaps with an expertised intermediary. AI spins up a whole new 'software platform' for the customer.. internally. Offers all the UI that is needed to work with it.. still 'in the cloud' i.e. in AI data centers. Customer happy, devs less happy.

Re: Thoughts and feelings around Claude Design

#117

Post by jcims »

mickdarling wrote: post #51

I used it today to take a look at my previously built design system with Logos, branding, fonts, and everything else. After a lot of annoying tweaking back and forth, finally, I got something that was satisfactory. Then I looked at the usage and it said I had used 95% of my Claude design usage for the week! This isn't a real tool. This is a plaything, if that's what they're providing as examples.

> I used it today to take a look at my previously built design system with Logos, branding, fonts, and everything else.

The fact that you are using this language tells me you are probably more advanced than the average individual, and likely have higher expectations.

My sister-in-law has a small apparel company. She’s developed quite a bit of skill over the past six years but she really struggled at the start. She had great ideas, but translating them to something she could apply was frustrating. *Anything* that could have helped her there would have been worth a look.

Re: Thoughts and feelings around Claude Design

#118

Post by sebmellen »

doug_durham wrote: post #34
sebmellen wrote: post #5

This design tool space died a long time ago for me when InVision shut down and pivoted to a digital whiteboard. It’s a really difficult space. But the fundamental problem is that it’s hard to get a design system right long-term, especially because it’s so intertwined with your code and whatever component library you use, which is a layer your designer will never touch. I don’t really see Claude Design fixing the fund…

What if the approach isn't reusable, but instead is rebuildable? We are stuck in the mindset of creating components that we can grab and plug in to new designs. When we have a component that we like, why not ask the tool to create a markdown definition of it. Later on, when we're doing a new design where we would like to reuse that component, we tell the tool to read the markdown and use that whenever they need to us…

I don’t know what level of complexity you’ve seen in your software buildouts, but at anything “enterprise” scale, building your own components from scratch is a recipe for absolute disaster. There are so many nuances, especially with accessibility, and edge case bugs, that I would really strongly recommend against it. And by extension, I’d be against this approach.

Maybe you could make it work if everyone agrees on a base set of headless components to use, but we seem to be moving in the opposite direction with things like ShadCN.

Re: Thoughts and feelings around Claude Design

#119

Post by alwillis »

mickdarling wrote: post #51

I used it today to take a look at my previously built design system with Logos, branding, fonts, and everything else. After a lot of annoying tweaking back and forth, finally, I got something that was satisfactory. Then I looked at the usage and it said I had used 95% of my Claude design usage for the week! This isn't a real tool. This is a plaything, if that's what they're providing as examples.

Things to keep in mind:

• Claude Design uses Opus 4.7, which is more expensive than earlier models.

• It's just Day 2; it's not a finished product. It's ridiculous how quickly Anthropic iterates.

• If you've been using Claude for a while, Design already knows your style and preferences. You'd have to start from scratch using a different AI design tool. I don’t doubt that'll pay dividends in the long run.

Re: Thoughts and feelings around Claude Design

#120

Post by wahnfrieden »

alwillis wrote: post #119
mickdarling wrote: post #51

I used it today to take a look at my previously built design system with Logos, branding, fonts, and everything else. After a lot of annoying tweaking back and forth, finally, I got something that was satisfactory. Then I looked at the usage and it said I had used 95% of my Claude design usage for the week! This isn't a real tool. This is a plaything, if that's what they're providing as examples.

Things to keep in mind: • Claude Design uses Opus 4.7, which is more expensive than earlier models. • It's just Day 2; it's not a finished product. It's ridiculous how quickly Anthropic iterates. • If you've been using Claude for a while, Design already knows your style and preferences. You'd have to start from scratch using a different AI design tool. I don’t doubt that'll pay dividends in the long run.

Be glad it's not Day 200: Opus models are only getting more expensive to use.
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