#153 Claude Design: I Tested It So You Don't Have To

In this episode of Future of UX, host Patricia dives deep into Claude Design, a new research preview from Anthropic that enables visual creation through conversational AI. She shares her hands-on testing of three real-world use cases: building a design system for her course website, creating an interactive infographic on design skills for 2030, and generating social media carousels. Her key insight? Claude Design's true power lies not in its visuals alone, but in its ability to integrate custom design systems—transforming generic, default outputs into brand-accurate, professional work. Without a design system, outputs resemble typical 'vibe-coded' templates. She emphasizes that prompting is more like writing a design brief than typing a request, and warns that the tool is token-heavy, making it best suited for users on the higher-tier plans. While still in preview with bugs and limited integrations (no Figma or Adobe support yet), Patricia sees immense potential as the tool evolves into a full design workflow layer connecting intent, design, and code. She concludes with a strong recommendation to experiment now, especially for presentations, social content, and quick prototypes, while treating it as a sandbox—not a production pipeline.