AI Design Starter Path
A plain-language beginner path from first setup to your first agent-ready design system context.
What you'll learn
- ✓ Set up the minimum AI workspace without tool overload
- ✓ Write prompts with enough context to get useful output
- ✓ Create a personal AI profile that travels across projects
- ✓ Troubleshoot bad AI output instead of regenerating blindly
- ✓ Move from chat into project-aware Claude Code practice
About this path
This is the recommended start for designers who want a clear sequence instead of a flat library. You will set up the minimum workspace, learn how to prompt, teach AI who you are, recover when output goes wrong, and then move into project-level context with Claude Code and CLAUDE.md.
In this path
11 lessons- 01
Set Up Your AI Design Workspace in 20 Minutes
The plain-language Day 0 guide: which accounts to create, which tools to install first, and how to run one sanity check before you go deeper.
- 02
AI for Designers 101
What AI tools are, how they differ, which ones matter for designers, and a practical first-week plan for getting started without the hype.
- 03
Run Your First AI-Powered Edit in Cursor
Install Cursor, open your first project, and make a real change with AI in under 10 minutes. No coding background required.
- 04
Set Up Claude Code (Step by Step for Designers)
Install Claude Code, open it in a folder, and run your first AI tasks. No coding background, no terminal experience needed. Just follow along.
- 05
Prompting Basics for Designers
Write better prompts for AI tools. Practical patterns for design work: component generation, token audits, documentation, and more.
- 06
Teach AI Who You Are
Create a portable personal profile file so AI understands your role, taste, tools, voice, boundaries, and the kind of design help you actually want.
- 07
How to Build a Customer Context Folder for AI
A lightweight folder structure that organizes your customer research so AI can use it for better copy, positioning, product ideas, and landing pages.
- 08
How to Evaluate AI Output Like a Senior Designer
A six-lens rubric for catching polished mediocrity, surface-level UI, and the gap between 'looks good' and 'actually works' in AI-generated design.
- 09
What to Do When AI Gives You Junk
A practical troubleshooting guide for designers: diagnose bad AI output, recover with better context, and know when to restart instead of polishing.
- 10
CLAUDE.md: Teaching Claude Your Design System
The single highest-leverage file in your repo. Compress your design system into a CLAUDE.md so Claude Code stops hallucinating tokens, inventing components, and forgetting your conventions every session. Includes a fill-in template and a before/after that you can run yourself.
- 11
CLAUDE.md + tools.md: The Two Files Every AI Project Needs
Why AI coding tools need both a project rules file and a tools file, what belongs in each one, and how to connect them so agents stop guessing your stack.
Ready to start?
Begin with lesson 01: Set Up Your AI Design Workspace in 20 Minutes
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