You tried Claude.
It felt generic.
That's a setup problem.
Claude doesn't know you design for first-time mobile users on low-end Android in a price-sensitive market. It knows you're a person with a question. These guides fix that. Pick the journey that matches how you work, and start with Guide 1 to tell Claude who you actually are.
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The thinking partner
Claude lives in a Project tab alongside Figma. No terminal. No code.
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The active collaborator
Claude is in the session with you, pushing back in real-time.
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The prototype builder
Claude touches files, generates code, and changes the handoff.
Same tool. Three completely different jobs.
Each journey reflects a different mode of adoption and a different structural shift in how you work. Pick where you are today.
"The Thinking Partner"
Designer who never leaves the browser. Claude lives in a Project tab alongside Figma. No terminal, no code.
Entry path
Brief work
Re-explain your users, constraints, and preferences at the start of every session.
Claude.ai Projects hold your working context. Every session starts already knowing your work.
Evaluation
Gut-check your designs and hope obvious issues surface in review.
Structured critique against all 10 heuristics, severity-rated and ready for sprint planning.
Research
8 hours of affinity mapping. Post-its everywhere. Themes that shift when someone new joins.
45 minutes. Paste raw notes, run the synthesis, review and challenge the themes.
The structural shift
Claude doesn't touch files. Can't build. Everything happens in conversation. Getting challenged in dialogue is a different experience from getting challenged in a review meeting.
Applies to these guides
"The Active Collaborator"
Designer using Claude's co-working mode in the desktop app. Claude is in the session with them, actively challenging and building alongside.
Entry path
Research
Manually copy-paste interview notes into a chat window, session by session.
Save notes as all-notes.md. Claude reads the file directly and runs synthesis on the full set.
Figma handoff
Export specs, open a chat, paste everything, explain the context again.
Save exports to your project folder. Claude reads tokens, layer names, and annotations in place.
Brief decoding
Explain the brief from scratch. Paste it. Add background. Re-explain the users.
brief.md is already in the folder. Claude reads it, asks the 20 questions before you open Figma.
The structural shift
The critique loop moves from post-design (review meetings) to in-design (co-work sessions). You stop defending decisions you already made.
Applies to these guides
"The Prototype Builder"
Designer who has crossed into the terminal. Uses Claude Code in VS Code or Cursor. Builds working HTML prototypes, not just static specs.
Entry path
Everything Co-Work can do
Brief work, evaluation, and research synthesis still take manual setup each session.
All guides apply. Claude reads your files and runs every workflow Co-Work supports.
Prototyping
Write a brief, hand it to a dev, wait two days to see if the interaction feels right.
Describe the component in plain English. Claude builds and runs it in the same session.
Design handoff
Static screens plus annotations. Dev interprets spacing, states, and edge cases.
Working React component from your Figma prep. Devs review code, not specs.
The structural shift
The handoff artifact changes. Designer arrives at review with a working prototype. The lost-in-translation moment between design and code shrinks dramatically.
Applies to these guides
What each journey unlocks
Each journey covers everything the previous one does, and adds new stages on top. Pick your level and see what you gain.
[AI] Claude.ai
Everything in conversation. Interrogates briefs, synthesizes research, critiques designs. No files, no code, no terminal.
[CW] Co-Work
Reads files from your local folder. Challenges direction before you commit to frames. Reads Figma exports for handoff prep.
[CC] Claude Code
Full coverage. Every stage from brief to ship. Adds prototype generation, working code from Figma prep, and Git-based version control.
Pick your path
Three ways to work with Claude. Select your path below to see the 8 guides for that journey.
Chat in your browser. No setup. No local files.
Everything lives in the cloud. Claude.ai Projects let you share context across sessions. Great starting point for any designer.
Brief work
Evaluation
Research and automation
Synthesize User Research with Claude
Turn raw interview notes into prioritised findings in one session.
Get Started with Claude Design
Use Anthropic's text-to-prototype tool to go from brief to interactive prototype.
Automate Repetitive Design Tasks
Build a personal prompt library for microcopy, specs, accessibility, and more.
Getting started
Three steps, and the first one takes 10 minutes.
Pick your tool
Claude.ai for 8 guides with no setup. Claude Co-Work if you want Claude reading your local files. Claude Code if you want to build and run real components.
Write your working agreement
Guide 1 walks you through it in 10 minutes. One block of text that tells Claude who you are, who you design for, and how you want output delivered. Every session starts from there.
Start Guide 1→Pick any guide that matches today
Got a brief kickoff tomorrow? Guide 2. Running a heuristic eval next week? Guide 5. Each one is self-contained. No order required after the first.
Browse all guides→Why these guides exist
Most Claude guides are written for developers. They assume you want to write code, run tests, or build infrastructure. Useful if that is your job. Frustrating if it is not.
Designers use Claude every day: summarising research, wrestling with briefs, trying to get feedback that is not just “looks good.” But the default output is generic because Claude does not know you design for first-time mobile users on low-end Android in a price-sensitive market. It knows you are a person with a question.
These guides fix that. They are built around what UX and UI designers actually do at work: the brief that arrives too vague, the evaluation that needs to happen before the sprint, the research synthesis that is due Friday, the Figma file that needs to survive a handoff.
Start with Guide 1 to write your working agreement. After that, pick whichever guide matches today.
New guides, when they ship
One email, roughly weekly. CLAUDE.md templates, workflows I actually use, and the cut-for-length stuff that does not make the public guides. One-click unsubscribe.
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