YouSaid · the spoken record

Jenny Wen

lines on the record: 88
first: 2026-03-01
most recent: 2026-03-01
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Yeah, it takes on this. Yeah, so this past year at Anthropic, I joined as an IC at first. And then I managed a team for a few months in like an orchestra that sort of needed it. And now I'm actually back to doing full-time IC work. And I joined N topic as an IC because I was just really excited about the kind of work that there was to be done as an IC here, but also because I was feeling like You know, I sort of want to be closer to the work and I think this feels like a really important time to do it before I like ascend the corporate ranks, you know. And I was having these like questions and doubts about like, is middle management like, is that safe in the future? Is the way that we're working actually is this going to be a job that persists into the future?”
2026-03-01 · Lenny's Podcast · The design process is dead. Here’s what’s replacing it. | Jenny Wen (head of design at Claude) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah. And it's like chatting and talking to someone is still like, you know, we as humans aren't doing it. And it's a way for us to interact in a really rich way. And now we just have this other medium to like interact with a computer, basically.”
2026-03-01 · Lenny's Podcast · The design process is dead. Here’s what’s replacing it. | Jenny Wen (head of design at Claude) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't think Tad is ever going away because this opened up this new way of infinite ways to work with the model and to sort of like talk to the computer that we just didn't have before. But I think that it will still be most direct for very specific things to exist in this UI. And I think that what will probably happen here is that a lot of those UIs will be generated more and more often by the models as opposed to something that we're like hand coding each instance. But I think we, yeah, we're in this space where I don't think chat and maybe even like talking to the terminal is going to go away.”
2026-03-01 · Lenny's Podcast · The design process is dead. Here’s what’s replacing it. | Jenny Wen (head of design at Claude) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Will likely be a combination of both, like both UIs and interfaces that you are interacting with, clicking with and that feel like more tactile. We are already seeing this and playing with this within Claude, like the chat bot. So we recently released a bunch of these widgets that let Claude sort of elicit and ask you questions and also show you things like the weather and stocks and whatnot in interactive ways. And I think that's a really good reception because people still like to see UIs and touch them and click them and they are much more efficient than, you know, typing something to Clyde. But at the same time, when we really leaned into this chatbot paradigm, I think that just gave us this whole world of flexibility that we didn't get with these sort of like baked in UIs. So my read here is like.”
2026-03-01 · Lenny's Podcast · The design process is dead. Here’s what’s replacing it. | Jenny Wen (head of design at Claude) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah. Yeah. I think someone will still have to decide, oh, we want to build this kind of product or like given what the AI is presenting us, like someone still needs to be accountable for the decision, you know, the same way that like even though Claude can write all this code for you today, it is still an engineer who's accountable for like does that code actually work? Does this actually make sense in the product? So I think there's that like decision making slash judgment layer which feels like maybe one day we won't have to do that, but it's still falls on us. Yeah”
2026-03-01 · Lenny's Podcast · The design process is dead. Here’s what’s replacing it. | Jenny Wen (head of design at Claude) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Or solve this dispute between you and somebody else. And so there is something about like deciding what actually goes into the things we build, which I guess is taste in some way, but maybe not taste in the way we think about aesthetic taste or whatnot. There's some sort of like, it's like judgment around what to do next.”
2026-03-01 · Lenny's Podcast · The design process is dead. Here’s what’s replacing it. | Jenny Wen (head of design at Claude) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it will get better at tastes and judgment and design. Yeah, like I think we might be holding on to that a little bit too much and saying like, oh yeah, like, you know, a designer or somebody will always know the best thing to ship or the best version of this. But I do think AI's sense of taste will get better. At the end of the day, someone has to decide what is actually going to get built and what actually matters. And when I think about people saying like, oh, you know, like AI is just going to build this software for us. A lot of the hard parts of building software are actually not building it. If you think about the hardest times that you've had at work learning, it's probably things like, oh, you and some other person like disagreeing about like what should go into this feature or what shouldn't go into this feature. And those things still feel like, yes, AI can weigh in, but it can't.”
2026-03-01 · Lenny's Podcast · The design process is dead. Here’s what’s replacing it. | Jenny Wen (head of design at Claude) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, for sure. Yeah, it's building trust through speed, but also just like making people feel like they've been heard and that we're fixing things based on what they're trying to use it for and their feedback is actually appreciated and used.”
2026-03-01 · Lenny's Podcast · The design process is dead. Here’s what’s replacing it. | Jenny Wen (head of design at Claude) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, and I think if there's anything listening can take away from it, it's like, yeah, we're continuing to do that. And I think that is actually really fun for me as a designer because you put something out there and you actually learn and you get feedback about it immediately and you know what to do next.”
2026-03-01 · Lenny's Podcast · The design process is dead. Here’s what’s replacing it. | Jenny Wen (head of design at Claude) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Be the highest quality. It might have some issues with it, but we're going to put it out there because we believe the benefits outweigh the cons. I think that is like okay to do, especially when there is something really valuable with the product already and it's worth putting it out there. But I think the promise, you sort of have to make your users is like, hey, we're going to put it out there, but we're going to iterate. We're going to take your feedback and we're going to iterate and we're going to make it better. And you have to sort of commit that. You have to show that to the world. You have to respond to people's feedback and you have to show that you are continuously shipping and improving it. Because I think the way that you really lose trust around quality and releasing something early is if you release it early and then nothing ever happens. That is something that degrades a brand. But whenever you put something out early, like it's possible to do that and like maintain the brand of your company. And I think that's something that we've been doing pretty well.”
2026-03-01 · Lenny's Podcast · The design process is dead. Here’s what’s replacing it. | Jenny Wen (head of design at Claude) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's not that there's no designer involved, it's more just like there's almost that there's too much for one designer to handle. But I think with this, I think about where the features or products are, like where they are sort of in the cycle of adoption versus like kind of early preview. So for example, like we sometimes will launch things and we will say, hey, this is a research preview. It's early. It's going to have a bunch of these flaws and we caveat that a bunch. I think quad cowork is actually a good example of this where we labeled it a research preview and we put it out there knowing that, hey, this is like similar to our models. You know, this is the worst it's ever going to be. But we're going to put it out there because we believe, you know, internally we've tried it a bunch and there's something really powerful here that some people will benefit from. It might not yet be the easiest to work with. It might not.”
2026-03-01 · Lenny's Podcast · The design process is dead. Here’s what’s replacing it. | Jenny Wen (head of design at Claude) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Trying not to go crazy. I think it's hard. You know, I think it's really hard right now. And I see this a lot from actually both engineers and designers where it's like now that we're sort of capable of doing so much, we want to do more. And so I think it's not just designers who are feeling like, oh, yeah, we have to keep up with engineers. I think even engineers are like, how do we keep up with ourselves right now? So that's something I'm hearing a lot.”
2026-03-01 · Lenny's Podcast · The design process is dead. Here’s what’s replacing it. | Jenny Wen (head of design at Claude) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Whenever I do work with engineers on projects and it's more on like a consulting basis, I do just try to explain, you know, why I'm thinking a way that I'm thinking to help them like extract principles as opposed to me just being like, no, I don't think this should go here. It's like, no, I think we should have a button here because not everybody realizes you can prompt this. And here's an example where it comes from research and whatnot. I also just like try to point engineers to our design system and stuff like that in code because right now Claude is like writing a lot of the code and it's like not always it's not always like picking up stuff in the design system and whatnot. So as much as I can sort of equip them with stuff that they can use in the future without me, that's helpful. And then on your point of”
2026-03-01 · Lenny's Podcast · The design process is dead. Here’s what’s replacing it. | Jenny Wen (head of design at Claude) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It is so much easier. 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?”
2026-03-01 · Lenny's Podcast · The design process is dead. Here’s what’s replacing it. | Jenny Wen (head of design at Claude) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And then I think there's really fine sort of 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 like 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 like go directly to code in.”
2026-03-01 · Lenny's Podcast · The design process is dead. Here’s what’s replacing it. | Jenny Wen (head of design at Claude) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, as a former fig mate, maybe I'm biased in that way, but I think there is still, like, 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 like 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 like eight to ten different ways to do something. I think the best design happens when you're able to just like throw a bunch of ideas at the wall and curate and just like 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 could super invest in one direction and you just iterate with clothing on them, for example. So Figma has been really great at just like exploring all these different options. And I think it's still going to exist that way to some extent.”
2026-03-01 · Lenny's Podcast · The design process is dead. Here’s what’s replacing it. | Jenny Wen (head of design at Claude) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What is in my AI stack? Well, we're going to tropic. So we're going deep on the clod stack. I am using obviously like chats, cloud chat, but increasingly more and more Clod Cowork. I've basically shifted all of my chat use cases over to cowork because I've been finding that yeah it sort of is better at these longer running tasks and most of the things I was asking Claude for are these these longer running tasks and then there's cloud code of course I use it mostly in the with with VS code in the IDE because I'm usually tweaking front end stuff and it helps to just like be able to see the code and then talk to Claude as well I've been trying to actually use Claude code more remotely like through both mobile and through Slack as well it's really fun for somebody to say like oh yeah this this one icon's off or something and you just mentioned 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.”
2026-03-01 · Lenny's Podcast · The design process is dead. Here’s what’s replacing it. | Jenny Wen (head of design at Claude) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I think as a designer a few years ago. I would say maybe 60 to 70 percent of it was mocking and prototyping stuff up and then spending the last 20 or so some of the last 20 or so like doing the sort of like jamming with engineers consulting with them and the last like 10 maybe doing you know coordination meetings etc uh but now i feel like the the mocking up part of it is like 30 to 40 percent and then there's that other 30 to 40 percent there that is now jamming and pairing directly with engineers and then there's like a slice i don't know how much i have left but like there's a slice of it that is now like implementation as well”
2026-03-01 · Lenny's Podcast · The design process is dead. Here’s what’s replacing it. | Jenny Wen (head of design at Claude) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, we're still, 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 that those studies and that feedback. We are still prototyping stuff. We are still, 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.”
2026-03-01 · Lenny's Podcast · The design process is dead. Here’s what’s replacing it. | Jenny Wen (head of design at Claude) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“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.”
2026-03-01 · Lenny's Podcast · The design process is dead. Here’s what’s replacing it. | Jenny Wen (head of design at Claude) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There is still some of the traditional let me think about what's happening in the in the future and let me like 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 like we have been in a lot of like execution mode for co-work and now I want to set aside some time to think about hey what is the next like three months look like and and where does that actually 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 um and then i also spend a bunch of my day just jamming on stuff with engineers like a lot of it is just a conversation or like whiteboarding or going through something that they built and giving them feedback on it and being a designer in that kind of way where we're like consulting um and then i spend a part of my day in code you know like polishing”
2026-03-01 · Lenny's Podcast · The design process is dead. Here’s what’s replacing it. | Jenny Wen (head of design at Claude) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, yeah. It's like, I don't think that is the best AI news is probably internally if you're ever at one of these companies in the Slack.”
2026-03-01 · Lenny's Podcast · The design process is dead. Here’s what’s replacing it. | Jenny Wen (head of design at Claude) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I think part of it is just curiosity. You know, like it feels like I have this front row seat to so much happening in the industry. And so a lot of it is like, yeah, our slack is a golden eye. You know, like, I'm just excited to read through the things that people are working on and they're saying.”
2026-03-01 · Lenny's Podcast · The design process is dead. Here’s what’s replacing it. | Jenny Wen (head of design at Claude) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Have a bunch of like we have a bunch of prototypes and products internally that we can use. And I am just curious and I want to try those things out. And then I think there's also a lot of folks who internally have a lot of insights and opinions on where the industry is going. And some of those are just like really interesting to read because a lot of these are like philosophical debates or directions of the company and stuff like that. And yeah, I feel like I just want to keep up with these things. Whereas I think in a normal company, I'm like, it's fine, this is stuff that's happening outside of my reach. I don't, I don't really care as much where here I think it's both the volume and the kinds of things that are happening that I'm really interested in keeping up with. And then aside from that sort of keep up, that's not a huge part of my job, but I do think it's a really interesting part of it.”
2026-03-01 · Lenny's Podcast · The design process is dead. Here’s what’s replacing it. | Jenny Wen (head of design at Claude) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A good amount of time at anthropic is actually just like catching up on what's happening at the company. I think this is the company where I've worked at a few other companies around this size where I think there's just a lot of like information and a lot of things going on, but I feel really compelled to keep up with it. You know, like there's stuff that is like model developments on the research side. And then at any given time, there are just so many different teams prototyping and trying different ideas out. And there's a bunch of different like code names and stuff like that. And a lot of time I'm just trying to navigate and figure out what those projects are because I think I'm just trying to spot and see like, hey, what's coming up ahead for me? Because there's stuff from both the research team, but also some of our labs teams that are closer to research and try out and prototyping stuff. And then there's just like stuff I want to try out.”
2026-03-01 · Lenny's Podcast · The design process is dead. Here’s what’s replacing it. | Jenny Wen (head of design at Claude) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think you sort of have to choose and use your discussion as to when to actually ship something, but I think the ability to execute try something out and try it with real data and a real user's kind of mindset in the product. I think that does lead to a better product, especially as we're all working with these new developing AI models that are non-deterministic. You just can't mock up all the states, you know, and you can't theorize and you can't even make a clickable prototype with it. You sort of have to use the actual models underneath and you have to sort of see people try it out with their use cases because with these models, like you discover, you can design them for different use cases, but you have to discover use cases as you see people using them. So yes.”
2026-03-01 · Lenny's Podcast · The design process is dead. Here’s what’s replacing it. | Jenny Wen (head of design at Claude) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, the top that I did last year has weirdly been like the most resonant talk that I've done. And so I think it's something that people are starting to feel across the industry where they're like, oh, yeah, we can't do the old design process anymore. You know, we are using tools like CloudCode and B0 and whatnot to start to spin up prototypes. And PMs are starting to spin up prototypes and stuff like that as well. So I think there's something there emerging. But the other interesting observation with that talk too was there was actually also a decent amount of like backlash. Like people were clearly have invested their entire careers in learning, teaching, using this really stable design process. And I think there was a lot of like discrediting like, oh yeah, like we can't do without discovery. We can't do without these pieces of process. So I think there is still a piece of the industry that is not quite there yet in terms of this way of working.”
2026-03-01 · Lenny's Podcast · The design process is dead. Here’s what’s replacing it. | Jenny Wen (head of design at Claude) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I think so. Yeah, I don't think there is one unifying voice that's like, designers, we need to change right now. But there is sort of like the follow-on effects of engineering tooling really changing. I think we'll probably see design tooling change in this next year or so as well, but a lot of it right now is trailing bats. And I think it's also really empowering for us too, because as designers, we also now have access to a lot of these coding tools. And we can be a part of the process in a way where we're implementing stuff like it's like, I'm doing a lot of last mile stuff where I'm implementing all the polish and sort of like working with engineers really closely to get the feature across the line and also prototype stuff in actual code as opposed to like relying on engineers to do that again.”
2026-03-01 · Lenny's Podcast · The design process is dead. Here’s what’s replacing it. | Jenny Wen (head of design at Claude) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Creating a prototype that points people in the right direction. And I think this kind of work is still really important in this world because in a world where people can spin off their seven clods, make whatever features they want in any kind of like direction or implementation, you need to point them towards something. And in order to make sure that we're all making something that makes sense together and is also done in a way where it's like efficient, right? Like if we're all working towards something that has one greater cause, it's like much more efficient to do that than just random things. So that's like the big shift that I'm seeing. And I think I have opinions about it now, but ask me in like three months and it might actually change even more.”
2026-03-01 · Lenny's Podcast · The design process is dead. Here’s what’s replacing it. | Jenny Wen (head of design at Claude) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Technology is changing now. Like, we actually don't know, we don't know what's going to happen in two years. There's too much changing. And it usually becomes a vision that's like three to six months out and isn't necessarily something that is like creating this.”
2026-03-01 · Lenny's Podcast · The design process is dead. Here’s what’s replacing it. | Jenny Wen (head of design at Claude) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, engineers are using their seven clods to create all these features, and anybody can like put an idea out there. And you can just like talk about an idea and somebody, usually actually an engineer, because they're still better at implementing this stuff than we are, they will just make a scrappy version of it and you can try it out. And you as a designer actually like do not have the time to make these beautiful mocks anymore or to like kind of lead in this way. And then I think there's like the second kind of work that feels also really important, which is like creating the sort of vision or direction for things. This one feels like the hardest to make time for. And it's one that we still did before, but I think the shape of it's very much changing because I think we used to go off and say, you know, we're going to do this design vision. We're going to go off and make this like two-year, five-year, whatever, 10-year vision even. And we're going to like point us towards something. But the way that”
2026-03-01 · Lenny's Podcast · The design process is dead. Here’s what’s replacing it. | Jenny Wen (head of design at Claude) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Given now that engineers can go off and spin off their like seven clods, I think as designers, we really have to let go of that process. And I think that's the big thing that's changing. But I think even in the past three to four months since I did that talk, that talk actually starts to feel pretty, it kind of feels outdated to me, which is a little embarrassing, but especially with the big shift of like Opus 4.6 and a bunch of folks just like really discovering and using Cloud Code over the whole day break, I think we're seeing this like forced to change our process happen even more. The way I sort of see it now is like there are basically two types of design work and design work is kind of like becoming really stratified in this new world. So there's like the first one, which is really just like supporting the implementation and execution. So this is the one where”
2026-03-01 · Lenny's Podcast · The design process is dead. Here’s what’s replacing it. | Jenny Wen (head of design at Claude) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Changing a lot. I think it's still also got a lot to go in terms of the way it's changing. Like I think we've actually seen engineering change a lot more in the past little while than design actually has. But I think the result of engineering changing a bunch is that design has sort of forced to change. And so I think some context around this is I did a talk at a conference in Berlin a few months ago in September and I called it like don't trust the design process where I basically just said like, hey, you know this design process that designers have been taught where you go and you go off and you do a bunch of research and discovery and then you like diverge, you converge, diverge, converge. And it's like this process that we sort of treated as gospel and tried so hard to preserve. And we were like, trust the process. That is basically dead. I think it was sort of dying before the age of AI, but.”
2026-03-01 · Lenny's Podcast · The design process is dead. Here’s what’s replacing it. | Jenny Wen (head of design at Claude) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“At the end of the day, someone has to decide what is actually going to get built and what actually matters. Someone still needs to be accountable for the decision.”
2026-03-01 · Lenny's Podcast · The design process is dead. Here’s what’s replacing it. | Jenny Wen (head of design at Claude) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Results of engineering changing a bunch is that design is sort of forced to change. We used to go off and make this two year, five year, 10 year vision even now. It becomes a vision of three to six months out and isn't necessarily creating this beautiful death, it's sometimes just creating a prototype that points people in the right direction.”
2026-03-01 · Lenny's Podcast · The design process is dead. Here’s what’s replacing it. | Jenny Wen (head of design at Claude) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's not just designers who are feeling like, oh, yeah, we have to keep up with engineers. I think even engineers are like, how do we keep up with ourselves?”
2026-03-01 · Lenny's Podcast · The design process is dead. Here’s what’s replacing it. | Jenny Wen (head of design at Claude) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Few years ago. 60 to 70 percent of it was mocking and prototyping. But now I feel the mocking up part of it is 30 to 40 percent.”
2026-03-01 · Lenny's Podcast · The design process is dead. Here’s what’s replacing it. | Jenny Wen (head of design at Claude) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This design process that designers have been taught, we sort of treat it as gospel. That's basically dead. You as a designer actually do not have the time to make these beautiful mocks anymore.”
2026-03-01 · Lenny's Podcast · The design process is dead. Here’s what’s replacing it. | Jenny Wen (head of design at Claude) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source