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The design process is dead. Here’s what’s replacing it. | Jenny Wen (head of design at Claude)

1 Mar 2026 30 published claims 2 attributable people
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Speakers in the public record

Jenny WenLenny Rachitsky

Claim mix

belief 12uncertainty 5recommendation 4preference 4evaluation 3commitment 1observation 1

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The useful parts, with receipts.

30 published records

01 / recommendation

Recommends The Power Broker.

“The first one is The Power Broker by Robert Caro, which is an incredibly aggressive recommendation, given that it's like 1100 pages. But I think, in this era, when our attention spans are so short, I think this is actually worth reading end to end, because I think there are very few collections or memoirs where it spans through someone's entire life, and you sort of see how somebody changes throughout those decades. And it's also somebody who's really controversial too. And it's nice to read a really nuanced view of somebody, Robert Moses. And I think we just lose out on some of this long arc thinking, because we're thinking so much about right now. So it's just an important reminder that careers are long, and is also really good for understanding how somebody just gets things done really well. So Power Broker. The second one that I recommend to a lot of people is a book called Insomniac City, which is written by Bill Hayes, who was the partner of the scientist, Oliver Sacks, around the time that Oliver Sacks died. And it's just this really beautiful, ethereal memoir of Oliver Sacks' last days, and their sort of love story. I think this has very little to do with the stuff on your podcast, Lenny, but it's just a book that I really love, and just makes you think about mortality, but also love and life and stuff like that. So that's one of my favorite books.”
Speaker
Jenny Wen
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

02 / belief

I think for some reason that became the viral thing that got taken away from all of the cowork announcements, is that it only took 10 days, but I think there have just been so many different explorations, and people that have worked on different pieces of cowork, that it was not just 10 days, and there was a lot of different people involved.

“I think for some reason that became the viral thing that got taken away from all of the cowork announcements, is that it only took 10 days, but I think there have just been so many different explorations, and people that have worked on different pieces of cowork, that it was not just 10 days, and there was a lot of different people involved.”
Speaker
Jenny Wen
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

03 / belief

I think so. And I think traditionally, at least what I've seen, a lot of the engineering disciplines, when they hire EMs or even sometimes directors there, they actually make the EMs take a rotation for a few months and pick up a few tasks, and really understand how the technology works before they become a full-time manager.

“I think so. And I think traditionally, at least what I've seen, a lot of the engineering disciplines, when they hire EMs or even sometimes directors there, they actually make the EMs take a rotation for a few months and pick up a few tasks, and really understand how the technology works before they become a full-time manager.”
Speaker
Jenny Wen
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

04 / belief

With Cowork specifically, we have had a bunch of different prototypes internally of what that could look like. And it's one of those things where we tried a lot of things, and then I think we weren't really sure when it was actually going to be ready to ship.

“With Cowork specifically, we have had a bunch of different prototypes internally of what that could look like. And it's one of those things where we tried a lot of things, and then I think we weren't really sure when it was actually going to be ready to ship.”
Speaker
Jenny Wen
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

06 / belief

I think that that is not a thing as much anymore, but I think somebody who can really function as giving the team direction, as well as doing some of the people management stuff, that tied together, I think is the future of what managing looks like, at least for now.

“I think that that is not a thing as much anymore, but I think somebody who can really function as giving the team direction, as well as doing some of the people management stuff, that tied together, I think is the future of what managing looks like, at least for now.”
Speaker
Jenny Wen
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

07 / uncertainty

Another, I don't know, ritual and way of running teams that I heard about you, is you encourage team members roasting each other, which on the surface doesn't sound like a wonderful environment, but on the other hand, I hear constantly that the teams that you've built are just the happiest, the highest performing teams.

“Another, I don't know, ritual and way of running teams that I heard about you, is you encourage team members roasting each other, which on the surface doesn't sound like a wonderful environment, but on the other hand, I hear constantly that the teams that you've built are just the happiest, the highest performing teams.”
Speaker
Lenny Rachitsky
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

09 / belief

I think that sometimes they're actually unburdened by that, because we have expectations of ourselves after being in the industry for so long, but they actually don't and they sort of feel like anything is possible.

“I think that sometimes they're actually unburdened by that, because we have expectations of ourselves after being in the industry for so long, but they actually don't and they sort of feel like anything is possible.”
Speaker
Jenny Wen
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

10 / belief

I think I just want to call out the Anthropic design team and shout them out, just because it's a team of folks that are just really humble, and they're not always [inaudible 01:07:49] on social, but they're doing a lot of really great work.

“I think I just want to call out the Anthropic design team and shout them out, just because it's a team of folks that are just really humble, and they're not always [inaudible 01:07:49] on social, but they're doing a lot of really great work.”
Speaker
Jenny Wen
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

11 / commitment

Does this actually make sense in the product? So I think there's that decision making/judgment layer, which feels like maybe one day will come when we won't have to do that, but it still falls on us.

“Does this actually make sense in the product? So I think there's that decision making/judgment layer, which feels like maybe one day will come when we won't have to do that, but it still falls on us.”
Speaker
Jenny Wen
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

12 / belief

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.

“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.”
Speaker
Jenny Wen
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

13 / evaluation

Even an example you've shared, it could give these two people trying to make a decision, "Here's all of the data you need to make a decision and here's why this is the right answer and just press yes, press one, and I'll go ahead and build this.

“Even an example you've shared, it could give these two people trying to make a decision, "Here's all of the data you need to make a decision and here's why this is the right answer and just press yes, press one, and I'll go ahead and build this.”
Speaker
Lenny Rachitsky
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

14 / belief

I think just given how much stuff is going on in the world right now, and especially with the industry and whatnot, you can't control everything.

“I think just given how much stuff is going on in the world right now, and especially with the industry and whatnot, you can't control everything.”
Speaker
Jenny Wen
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

16 / uncertainty

There's a couple management, I don't know, rituals or takes you have that I've heard from folks that you work with, that I want to touch on.

“There's a couple management, I don't know, rituals or takes you have that I've heard from folks that you work with, that I want to touch on.”
Speaker
Lenny Rachitsky
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

18 / belief

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.

“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.”
Speaker
Lenny Rachitsky
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

19 / belief

Seeing that prototype and seeing the kinds of information that people found really helpful, seeing Claude's plan and to-dos, seeing Claude's context and the files that it was going through, those kinds of things are things that I ended up pulling out of that prototype into Claude cowork. So yeah, I think about how can designers almost be more like VCs in this way, internally when we're looking at prototypes.

“Seeing that prototype and seeing the kinds of information that people found really helpful, seeing Claude's plan and to-dos, seeing Claude's context and the files that it was going through, those kinds of things are things that I ended up pulling out of that prototype into Claude cowork. So yeah, I think about how can designers almost be more like VCs in this way, internally when we're looking at prototypes.”
Speaker
Jenny Wen
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

20 / uncertainty

We tried a bunch of different ways to teach people what the use cases are and whatnot. And I don't know if we landed on the best form factor ever, but essentially it was stuff that was already working internally that people liked, that we just thought we were going to get some more signal on by releasing it.

“We tried a bunch of different ways to teach people what the use cases are and whatnot. And I don't know if we landed on the best form factor ever, but essentially it was stuff that was already working internally that people liked, that we just thought we were going to get some more signal on by releasing it.”
Speaker
Jenny Wen
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

21 / preference

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.

“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.”
Speaker
Jenny Wen
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

22 / preference

I think one of my favorite, any sort of use case that I really like out of cowork, is just giving it a folder of my stuff, and it doesn't really matter what's in that folder, but I'm able to extract something good out of it.

“I think one of my favorite, any sort of use case that I really like out of cowork, is just giving it a folder of my stuff, and it doesn't really matter what's in that folder, but I'm able to extract something good out of it.”
Speaker
Jenny Wen
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

24 / preference

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 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.”
Speaker
Jenny Wen
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

25 / evaluation

I think Claude 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 similar to our models. This is the worst it's ever going to be, but we're going to put it out there because we believe, internally we've tried it a bunch, and there's something really powerful here that some people will benefit from.

“I think Claude 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 similar to our models. This is the worst it's ever going to be, but we're going to put it out there because we believe, internally we've tried it a bunch, and there's something really powerful here that some people will benefit from.”
Speaker
Jenny Wen
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

26 / evaluation

I think you sort of have to choose and use your discretion 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 can't mock up all the states, and you can't theorize and you can't even make a clickable prototype with it.

“I think you sort of have to choose and use your discretion 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 can't mock up all the states, and you can't theorize and you can't even make a clickable prototype with it.”
Speaker
Jenny Wen
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

27 / observation

We are using tools like Claude Code and v0 and whatnot, to start to spin up prototypes, and PMs are starting to spin up prototypes and stuff like that as well.

“We are using tools like Claude Code and v0 and whatnot, to start to spin up prototypes, and PMs are starting to spin up prototypes and stuff like that as well.”
Speaker
Jenny Wen
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

28 / recommendation

Mentions personal use of IA writer.

“And so I have this folder, basically, of local notes that I have that I use IA writer for. And I basically just write whatever, and over the years have collected it with a bunch of different notes, and they span all different things like one-on-one notes, random thoughts, tiny memos, interview notes, et cetera.”
Speaker
Jenny Wen
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast
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