Jenny Wen: belief

1 Mar 2026 Lenny's Podcast The design process is dead. Here’s what’s replacing it. | Jenny Wen (head of design at Claude)

“I wonder though, as the models, both the models and the products get better, I mean, we probably will continue to move up the abstraction layers and you won't have to actually know how each single line of code will work. But I think what I would say is start to bring that into your toolkit, the coding tools, whether or not it's like you're actually becoming technical, I think any designer should just be really aware, and know how to use the tools that are at hand, as opposed to maybe learning and going off and learning React or et cetera, et cetera.”

— Jenny Wen

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Speaker: Jenny Wen
Attribution: Verified speaker
Claim type: belief
Recorded: 1 Mar 2026
Publisher: Lenny's Podcast
Episode: The design process is dead. Here’s what’s replacing it. | Jenny Wen (head of design at Claude)

Transcript context

…For current designers that are [inaudible 00:52:54] career, [inaudible 00:52:55] senior, do you think that you need to get technical and learn to code, at least build, or do you think you could be really successful and just not lean into that and get better at other stuff? I think it definitely helps to maybe not learn how to code so much that you're building something from scratch, but it does feel like more and more of the designer's vocabulary right now is implementing some stuff. I wonder though, as the models, both the models and the products get better, I mean, we probably will continue to move up the abstraction layers and you won't have to actually know how each single line of code will work. But I think what I would say is start to bring that into your toolkit, the coding tools, whether or not it's like you're actually becoming technical, I think any designer should just be really aware, and know how to use the tools that are at hand, as opposed to maybe learning and going off and learning React or et cetera, et cetera. How good of a designer is Claude, would you say, or Claude Code, however you want to describe ... Would you hire Claude as a designer or is it not there yet?…

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