Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth
00:15:42 · Lenny Rachitsky, Jenny Wen
[00:15:42] S1: Yeah. Just problem keeps getting harder. I'm just keeping track of what's going on. Okay. Okay. So that's part of the job. What else? [00:15:48] S0: There is still some of the traditional, let me think about what's happening in the future and let me make some designs for that. That's something that, for example, this week I've allotted some time to, where I'm like, "Okay, cool. We have been in a lot of execution mode for Cowork, and now I want to set aside some time to think about, hey, what does the next three months look like, and where could that actually go given where the market's at, where the models are at, and what could that be?" Because I think it still really helps to visualize that and show that to the team, and point everyone in the same direction. And then I also spend a bunch of my day just jamming on stuff with engineers. A lot of it is just a conversation, or white boarding, or going through something that they built and giving them feedback on it and being a designer in that kind of way, we're really consulting. And then I spend a part of my day in code, polishing, implementing stuff. Sometimes what happens is an engineer and I have worked through something and they've implemented a first version of it, and I just go in and polish it with them. And that's a really fun part of my job that I think didn't exist as much a few months ago. [00:16:59] S1: Are you still doing elements of the traditional design process? Prototyping, user research, panels, I don't know, just going out and the whole thing you described?
00:16:59 · Lenny Rachitsky, Jenny Wen
[00:16:59] S1: Are you still doing elements of the traditional design process? Prototyping, user research, panels, I don't know, just going out and the whole thing you described? [00:17:09] S0: Yeah, I think we're still doing all of that to some extent. We have a user researcher on the team who is putting together both traditional studies as well as surveys, and the whole team is reading those studies and that feedback. We are still prototyping stuff. I'm still mocking stuff up. I think it's just I have a wider set of tools now, and I think the proportion of time I spend doing each thing just has changed. [00:17:40] S1: Got it. Okay. So that's a really interesting takeaway. It used to be that was a huge ... I guess what would be the pie chart of what your life was before, where it's like traditional thinking, planning, prototyping, mocking, research, and then just feedback and execution and out, today? [00:17:58] S0: Yeah. I think as a designer a few years ago, I would say maybe 60 to 70% of it was mocking and prototyping stuff up, and then spending some of the last 20 or so doing the sort of jamming with engineers, consulting with them, and the last 10% maybe doing coordination meetings, et cetera. But now I feel like the mocking up part of it is 30 to 40%. And then there's that other 30 to 40% there that is now jamming and pairing directly with engineers. And then there's a slice, I don't know how much I have left, but there's a slice of it that is now implementation as well. Yeah. [00:18:44] S1: Actually building and shipping? [00:18:45] S0: Yeah.
00:18:45 · Jenny Wen, Lenny Rachitsky
[00:18:45] S0: Yeah. [00:18:46] S1: Amazing. So kind of following that thread, what's in your AI stack? What do you, as a designer, I know you're a manager and I want to talk about how you actually are IC also. What's in your AI stack? What tools are you using in your role? [00:18:57] S0: What is in my AI stack? Well, we work at Anthropic, so we're going deep on the Claude stack. I'm using, obviously, chats, Claude Chat, but increasingly more and more Claude Cowork. I've basically shifted all of my chat use cases over to Cowork, because I've been finding that it sort of is better at these longer running tasks. And most of the things I was asking Claude for are these longer running tasks. And then there's Claude Code, of course. I use it mostly with VS Code and the IDE because I'm usually tweaking front-end stuff, and it helps to just be able to see the code and then talk to Claude as well. I've been trying to actually use Claude Code more remotely, through both mobile and through Slack as well. It's really fun for somebody to say, "Oh yeah, this one icon's off or something," and you just at-mention Claude and Claude does it, and then you pick up the PR and it's done. That's been really, really fun too. And yeah, I think we're a fully Claude house here. So yes, that's basically my stack. [00:20:04] S1: Are you still using Figma as a designer? [00:20:05] S0: I am still using Figma, yes, yes. [00:20:08] S1: Okay. I was waiting to hear. Okay. So Figma is still part of your life. Being a former Figmate, is that what y'all are called? [00:20:08] S0: Yeah, Figmates, yeah.
00:20:08 · Jenny Wen, Lenny Rachitsky
[00:20:08] S0: Yeah, Figmates, yeah. [00:20:17] S1: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So I know there's this big debate on Twitter, just like, is code the future of design? Do we need many more, do we need a design? What's your sense? Figma's still important?
00:20:27 · Jenny Wen
[00:20:27] S0: I mean, as a former Figmate, maybe I'm biased in that way, but I think there is still ... When I use Figma, I'm like, "Yes, this is what I should be using." And it still fills a very good gap for me. I think a lot of that is actually just, one is exploring a lot of different options. I think that's a really important part of the design process, to be able to just think about 8 to 10 different ways to do something. I think the best design happens when you're able to just throw a bunch of ideas at the wall, and curate and push yourself to come up with a bunch of these different directions. Right now, coding, or right now working with some of these coding tools doesn't lend itself super well to that, because it's super linear, you get super invested in one direction and you just iterate with Claude on them, for example. So Figma has been really great at just exploring all these different options, and I think it's still going to exist that way to some extent. And then I think there's really fine visual and interaction details that are also really great to be able to just try out in Figma. Again, it's a lot of different directions, but it's micro directions. It's being able to think about different typography or styles. Having those in a canvas where you can just explore that specifically is still so, so helpful, and is not something that I always want to go directly to code in.
00:21:51 · Lenny Rachitsky, Jenny Wen
[00:21:51] S1: It's interesting you still use an IDE, because in engineering, it's clearly shifting to command lines, agents, IDEs are kind of moving to not be cool anymore. And it makes a lot of sense. You just want to edit some CSS things, some color stuff. And so I could see why not just telling the agent, "Hey, just come on, change this one hex value." Just changing it is so much easier. [00:22:12] S0: Yeah. It's really annoying to be like, "Can you change this to this class?" When you can just go in and change it to a different class. [00:22:18] S1: So it's interesting. I wonder if IDEs now become the useful for designers and PMs, and engineers have moved on? [00:22:24] S0: Yeah, maybe. Yeah. [00:22:27] S1: Okay. So a lot of your time you spend working with engineers, giving feedback, nudging them in the right direction. There's a sense, I feel, of just your advice is let go. Don't feel like you need to be this gatekeeper, but there's this piece of, okay, help them move in a direction that is cohesive and is creating products we're proud of. A lot of designers I think are in this boat right now, just like, "Oh my God, I can't keep up with all these engineers shipping stuff all day." What's something you learned about just either how to help your engineers get better at design so that it just ends up being better, or just keeping on top of this and not going crazy?