Jenny Wen leads design for Claude at Anthropic. Prior to this, she was Director of Design at Figma, where she led the teams behind FigJam and Slides. Before that, she was a designer at Dropbox, Square, and Shopify.
Listen on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts
We discuss:
Why the classic discovery → mock → iterate design process is becoming obsolete
What a day in the life of a designer at Anthropic looks like, including her AI tool stack
Whether AI will eventually surpass humans in taste and judgment
Why Jenny left a director role at Figma to return to IC work at Anthropic
The three archetypes Jenny is hiring for now
Why chatbot interfaces may be more durable than most people expect
Brought to you by:
Mercury—Radically different banking
Orkes—The enterprise platform for reliable applications and agentic workflows
Omni—AI analytics your customers can trust
Where to find Jenny Wen:
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jennywen
• Substack: https://jennywen.substack.com
• Website: https://jennywen.ca
Referenced:
• Figma: https://www.figma.com
• Anthropic: https://www.anthropic.com
• v0: https://v0.app
• Navigating a Design Career with Jenny Wen | Figma at Waterloo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHcBPMh2ivk
• Claude Cowork: https://claude.com/product/cowork
• Use Claude Code in VS Code: https://code.claude.com/docs/en/vs-code
• Claude Code in Slack: https://code.claude.com/docs/en/slack
• Lex Fridman’s website: https://lexfridman.com
• Head of Claude Code: What happens after coding is solved | Boris Cherny: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/head-of-claude-code-what-happens
• OpenClaw: https://openclaw.ai
• OpenAI’s CPO on how AI changes must-have skills, moats, coding, startup playbooks, more | Kevin Weil (CPO at OpenAI, ex-Instagram, Twitter): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/kevin-weil-open-ai
• Marc Andreessen: The real AI boom hasn’t even started yet: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/marc-andreessen-the-real-ai-boom
• Socratica: https://www.socratica.info
• Anthropic’s CPO on what comes next | Mike Krieger (co-founder of Instagram): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/anthropics-cpo-heres-what-comes-next
• Radical Candor: From theory to practice with author Kim Scott: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/radical-candor-from-theory-to-practice
• Evan Tana’s ‘legibility matrix’ on X: https://x.com/evantana/status/1927404374252269667
• How to spot a top 1% startup early: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/how-to-spot-a-top-1-startup-early
• Palantir: https://www.palantir.com
• Stripe: https://stripe.com
• Linear: https://linear.app
• Notion: https://www.notion.com
• Julie Zhuo’s website: https://www.juliezhuo.com
• Sentimental Value: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt27714581
• The Pitt on Prime Video: https://www.amazon.com/The-Pitt-Season-1/dp/B0DNRR8QWD
• Noah Wyle: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noah_Wyle
• ER on Prime Video: https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/B0FWZSDYRP
• Retro: https://retro.app
• Granola: https://www.granola.ai
Recommended books:
• Radical Candor: Be a Kick-Ass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity: https://www.amazon.com/Radical-Candor-Kick-Ass-Without-Humanity/dp/1250103509
• The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York: https://www.amazon.com/Power-Broker-Robert-Moses-Fall/dp/0394480767
• Insomniac City: New York, Oliver Sacks, and Me: https://www.amazon.com/Insomniac-City-New-York-Oliver/dp/162040494X
Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email [email protected].
Lenny may be an investor in the companies discussed.
