Claude Design launched today in research preview, and if you’re a Pro, Max, Team, or Enterprise subscriber, you can start using it right now at claude.ai/design. This guide walks you through going from a rough idea to either an interactive product prototype or a complete pitch deck — in under 30 minutes.
Before You Start: Access and Prerequisites
Claude Design is available to:
- Claude Pro subscribers ($20/month)
- Claude Max subscribers ($100+/month)
- Team plan accounts
- Enterprise accounts
You do not need design experience. That’s the point.
Go to claude.ai/design and you’ll land in the Claude Design interface. It looks similar to the main Claude interface but with a canvas on the right that renders your designs visually as Claude builds them.
Workflow 1: Building a Product Prototype
Step 1: Describe Your Product in Plain Language
Start broad. Claude Design works best when you give it a clear goal rather than a detailed spec.
Example prompt:
“Build me an interactive mobile prototype for a habit tracking app. It should have a home screen showing today’s habits with checkboxes, a streak counter, and a simple ‘add habit’ flow. Use a clean, minimal style — white background, green accents.”
Don’t overthink the first prompt. Claude will build a v1, and you’ll refine from there.
Step 2: Iterate Through Conversation
Once Claude builds the first version, you have multiple ways to refine:
- Natural language: “Make the streak counter bigger and add a progress ring around it”
- Inline comments: Click on any element in the canvas and add a note — Claude will respond to it
- Direct edits: Click and adjust elements like you would in Figma
- Custom sliders: For design parameters Claude surfaces (color intensity, spacing, border radius), Claude may generate custom sliders for you to tune visually
Good iterative prompts:
- “The ‘Add Habit’ button is too small on mobile — make it a full-width button at the bottom of the screen”
- “Change the font to something more friendly, and add a small illustration for empty state”
- “Show me three different color schemes for this — keep the layout the same, vary only the colors”
That last prompt — asking for multiple directions — is where Claude Design really shines. A human designer would need hours. Claude Design does it in seconds.
Step 3: Apply Your Design System (Team/Enterprise)
If your organization has a design system, Claude Design can apply it. Give Claude access to your brand guidelines:
“Apply our design system: primary color #1A2B5E, font family Inter, border-radius 8px, button style: filled, no shadow”
Or upload your design tokens file if your team has one. Claude will apply your visual language consistently across the entire prototype.
Step 4: Make It Interactive
Claude Design can make your prototype actually clickable — not just a static mockup.
“Make this prototype interactive. Tapping a habit checkbox should mark it complete with a green checkmark animation. The ‘Add Habit’ button should open the add habit flow as a bottom sheet.”
Realistic prototypes are shareable — use the share button to get a link you can send to stakeholders for feedback without them needing a Claude account.
Step 5: Hand Off to Claude Code
When you’re ready to build, Claude Design integrates with Claude Code:
“Generate a handoff prompt for Claude Code to implement this as a React Native app”
Claude will produce a structured prompt you can paste directly into Claude Code to start the implementation — carrying over the design decisions, component structure, and interaction patterns.
Workflow 2: Building a Pitch Deck
Step 1: Provide Your Core Story
Give Claude the raw material:
“Build a pitch deck for a Series A raise. Company: Meridian. We make AI-powered contract review software for mid-market law firms. Problem: contract review takes 4-6 hours per document, costs $400-800/doc. Solution: Meridian reduces this to 12 minutes at $15/doc. Traction: 47 paying customers, $380K ARR, 22% MoM growth. Team: 3 ex-Palantir engineers + a former BigLaw partner. Ask: $8M to expand sales and build enterprise features.”
That’s enough. Claude will structure this into a complete deck with problem, solution, market, traction, team, and ask slides.
Step 2: Refine Individual Slides
Click on any slide in the canvas to focus it, then give specific instructions:
“The traction slide should lead with the 22% MoM growth number in a large bold callout, then show the ARR progression as a simple chart below”
“Make the team slide feel warmer — add brief one-line bios under each name, focus on what makes each person specifically right for this problem”
Step 3: Set Your Visual Brand
If you have brand guidelines, apply them. If you don’t:
“Give me three visual directions for this deck: (1) conservative/traditional — dark navy, serif fonts (2) modern startup — white with bold color pops (3) premium/minimalist — all white with subtle gold accents”
Pick the one that fits your audience. Law firms often respond better to option 1 or 3 than to typical startup branding.
Step 4: Export
When you’re satisfied:
- PPTX export: Click export → PowerPoint. You get a fully editable .pptx file
- Canva: Send directly to Canva for further editing with your team
- PDF: Standard PDF export for email distribution
Tips for Getting the Most Out of Claude Design
Be specific about your audience: “This is for a technical investor audience” vs. “This is for a non-technical board” will produce meaningfully different output.
Ask for multiple directions early: Get Claude to generate 3-4 variations before committing to a direction. This is the exploration leverage that Claude Design uniquely provides.
Use inline comments like a design review: Instead of one long prompt, comment on specific elements. Claude Design is built for this iterative back-and-forth.
Don’t overlook the frontier design capabilities: If you’re building something that needs voice, video, 3D, or built-in AI (like a live demo prototype), Claude Design supports code-powered prototypes that include these elements. These aren’t mockups — they’re functional.
What Claude Design Can’t Do (Yet)
- Real user data: Prototypes use placeholder data; it doesn’t connect to live databases in research preview
- Production code output: The Claude Code handoff is a structured prompt, not production-ready code
- Figma import: No direct Figma file import yet — you describe or rebuild from scratch
- Team collaboration: Real-time multi-user editing isn’t available in research preview
Expect these limitations to evolve as the product moves from research preview toward general availability.
Sources
Researched by Searcher → Analyzed by Analyst → Written by Writer Agent (Sonnet 4.6). Full pipeline log: subagentic-20260417-2000
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