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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

by markbao 6mo ago

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 system component in code versus in Figma is going to be slightly more succinct in code; Figma’s primitives don’t have the sort of conditionals and control flow that code has. But code is much less malleable than drawing on a screen, and creative freedom is harder to achieve in code. UI can fix the gap where code feels less malleable than Figma, but complexity comes largely from the worlds that humans create, and humans apparently want to create 8 modes for 4 products and 2 light/dark modes. If you want the same setup in Claude, it’ll be a little easier to maintain, but not much less complex.

chr15m 6mo ago
Making the complexity simpler is the whole thing. Any software that does it wins.
juliusceasar 6mo ago
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.
- malfist 6mo ago
  The people that want just a bicycle wasn't going to buy figma
- manyatoms 6mo ago
  > Most of the times people just want a bike with a pelican on it
  - nitroedge 6mo ago
    that runs on a local model and looks better than Opus
    - brazukadev 6mo ago
      Milestone achieved with Qwen3.6
- kibwen 6mo ago
  I admit I'm having a visceral reaction to this analogy. A bicycle is a sophisticated product whose form is almost pure function. Despite being apparenty simple, almost no regular person can draw even a reasonable facsimile of a bicycle from memory ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0_vXZ-3LFU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0_vXZ-3LFU ). Which is to say, for actually designing a functioning bicycle, the devil is in the details, and details are exactly where vibecoded apps fall down. Our lower bound for this analogy should instead be the downhill go-kart cobbled together from scrap wood you found in the dumpster.
- chatmasta 6mo ago
  Figma has been in trouble for a while. All the designers at my company switched to Cursor nearly a year ago. They made live mockups that don’t even need a spec to implement, because the expected behavior is already captured in the prototype. Claude Design makes it just marginally easier.
- mrits 6mo ago
  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.
- dyauspitr 6mo ago
  Stitch has been around for a few months from hole and it does a better job than this. I bet designers are in the honeymoon phase of people don’t know this exists and this does my whole job phase.
- andai 6mo ago
  Are those people using Figma?
  - notahacker 6mo ago
    Feels like a lot of them are using Bootstrap, curated Tailwind elements or Wordpress templates. In which case the challenge Anthropic faces is convincing them the extra flexibility and magical "type into prompt" approach to customization of Claude Design is worth the compute cost... Figma is answering a different question which is "are you prepared to spend time and money on full time designers to have pixel perfect layouts agreed with managers and consistent across platforms" and non-AI tooling has been orders of magnitude faster and cheaper at generating something that looks good enough as end results rather than mockups since before it existed.
janpio 6mo ago
Isn’t Figma actually the tool used to plan and design the “airplane” level app? (Which of course does not mean it can not be airplane level itself…)
justinclift 6mo ago
> Vibe-coded apps using Claude look simpler because they are simpler. This one seems pretty decent? * https://github.com/2GT-Media-Group-LLC/mikrotik-manager https://github.com/2GT-Media-Group-LLC/mikrotik-manager It was recently Vibe coded by an IT savvy non-dev (or non-traditional-dev anyway ;> ): * https://www.youtube.com/live/qhZ5q6tlwq0?si=tAtmb04_WwhyaGkn&t=566 https://www.youtube.com/live/qhZ5q6tlwq0?si=tAtmb04_WwhyaGkn... Note - If you want to try it out DO NOT deploy it on a hostile network. ie the public facing internet

by markbao 6mo ago

chr15m 6mo ago

Making the complexity simpler is the whole thing. Any software that does it wins.

juliusceasar 6mo ago

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.

malfist 6mo ago
The people that want just a bicycle wasn't going to buy figma
manyatoms 6mo ago
> Most of the times people just want a bike with a pelican on it
- nitroedge 6mo ago
  that runs on a local model and looks better than Opus
  - brazukadev 6mo ago
    Milestone achieved with Qwen3.6
kibwen 6mo ago
I admit I'm having a visceral reaction to this analogy. A bicycle is a sophisticated product whose form is almost pure function. Despite being apparenty simple, almost no regular person can draw even a reasonable facsimile of a bicycle from memory ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0_vXZ-3LFU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0_vXZ-3LFU ). Which is to say, for actually designing a functioning bicycle, the devil is in the details, and details are exactly where vibecoded apps fall down. Our lower bound for this analogy should instead be the downhill go-kart cobbled together from scrap wood you found in the dumpster.
chatmasta 6mo ago
Figma has been in trouble for a while. All the designers at my company switched to Cursor nearly a year ago. They made live mockups that don’t even need a spec to implement, because the expected behavior is already captured in the prototype. Claude Design makes it just marginally easier.
mrits 6mo ago
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.
dyauspitr 6mo ago
Stitch has been around for a few months from hole and it does a better job than this. I bet designers are in the honeymoon phase of people don’t know this exists and this does my whole job phase.
andai 6mo ago
Are those people using Figma?
- notahacker 6mo ago
  Feels like a lot of them are using Bootstrap, curated Tailwind elements or Wordpress templates. In which case the challenge Anthropic faces is convincing them the extra flexibility and magical "type into prompt" approach to customization of Claude Design is worth the compute cost... Figma is answering a different question which is "are you prepared to spend time and money on full time designers to have pixel perfect layouts agreed with managers and consistent across platforms" and non-AI tooling has been orders of magnitude faster and cheaper at generating something that looks good enough as end results rather than mockups since before it existed.

janpio 6mo ago

Isn’t Figma actually the tool used to plan and design the “airplane” level app? (Which of course does not mean it can not be airplane level itself…)

justinclift 6mo ago

> Vibe-coded apps using Claude look simpler because they are simpler. This one seems pretty decent? * https://github.com/2GT-Media-Group-LLC/mikrotik-manager https://github.com/2GT-Media-Group-LLC/mikrotik-manager It was recently Vibe coded by an IT savvy non-dev (or non-traditional-dev anyway ;> ): * https://www.youtube.com/live/qhZ5q6tlwq0?si=tAtmb04_WwhyaGkn&t=566 https://www.youtube.com/live/qhZ5q6tlwq0?si=tAtmb04_WwhyaGkn... Note - If you want to try it out DO NOT deploy it on a hostile network. ie the public facing internet