Design Encountering Reality Early

Brian Lovin is a designer at Notion AI who has transformed how the design team builds prototypes, by creating a shared code environment powered by Claude Code. Instead of designers working in isolated repositories or limited to static Figma designs, Brian built a collaborative “prototype playground” where the entire team can create, share, and iterate on functional prototypes. In this episode, Brian demonstrates how AI-assisted coding has dramatically accelerated the design process and why code-based prototyping is essential for building AI-powered products.

What you’ll learn:

1. How Brian built a shared Next.js app that serves as a collaborative prototyping environment for Notion’s design team
2. Why encountering “reality” early in the design process leads to better products
3. How to use Claude Code’s “plan mode” to get better results when prototyping
4. The power of custom Claude slash commands and skills to automate repetitive tasks
5. How to transform Figma designs into working code with a single prompt
6. Why AI-powered products can’t be effectively designed in static tools like Figma
7. Brian’s rule for working with AI: “When Claude asks you to do something, teach it to do that thing itself”

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Brought to you by:

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In this episode, we cover:

(00:00) Introduction to Brian

(02:36) Building for B2B SaaS

(04:42) Notion’s prototype playground: what it is and how it works

(08:01) The technical background of designers using the playground

(10:52) Demo: building a podcast player prototype

(16:00) Actionable tips for better Claude Code results

(20:16) Analyzing the result

(20:30) Creating slash commands to simplify the workflow

(23:03) Turning Figma designs into production-ready code

(25:06) MCP frustrations and tips

(30:54) Demo: creating a custom “find icon” skill

(35:03) Demo: Creating a deploy command to simplify GitHub workflows

(41:09) Quick recap

(41:59) How code-based prototyping is changing design at Notion

(46:48) Brian’s tool preferences

(48:42) Prompting techniques when AI is not listening

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Tools referenced:

• Claude Code: https://claude.ai/

• Cursor: https://cursor.sh/

• Next.js: https://nextjs.org/

• Figma: https://figma.com/

• Monologue: https://www.monologue.to/

• GitHub: https://github.com/

• GitHub Desktop: https://desktop.github.com/

• Tailwind CSS: https://tailwindcss.com/

• Bun: https://bun.sh/

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Other references:

• Claude Skills explained: How to create reusable AI workflows: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/claude-skills-explained

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Where to find Brian Lovin:

Website: https://brianlovin.com/

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/brianlovin

X: https://twitter.com/brian_lovin

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Where to find Claire Vo:

ChatPRD: https://www.chatprd.ai/

Website: https://clairevo.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/clairevo/

X: https://x.com/clairevo

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Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email jordan@penname.co.