Thoughts on Designing with Coding Agents

Last week I wrapped up my new workshop Designing with Coding Agents and the entire process was illuminating. I aimed for something closer to a make-and-take, where we sat around and jammed on ideas together and overall it felt more like social software creation than a lecture hall. The core thesis of Generating, Generative Typography proved true: not having to fuss over syntax removed barriers for people. It left room to talk about the experiences we wanted to create without worrying about what was technically feasible.

Each week students walked away with a new vocabulary for what they could ask Claude to make, but it wasn’t all sunshine. Claude would routinely hallucinate function parameters and produce prototypes that were clearly broken, all while assuring you everything was fine. Those of us who work with agents are getting used to this, but for a new student it’s confusing.

My favorite parts were the discussions with students and the group-therapy feelings around them. Type@Cooper draws people from all kinds of backgrounds, from other educators to working designers to university students, but the common thread this time was a hesitant interest in AI. The comments ran the gamut (all editorialized):

“Isn’t this supposed to be a god-machine? Why is it wrong and lying?”

“This feels different than AI media generation because I can further refine it and jump in and edit the code“

“It feels like a junior designer that comes into work each day not remembering the last day”

“I struggle with the imperfect precision of language. The agent always finds a way to misunderstand me”

“I don’t feel like I created this output. I just pulled a lever on the slot machine”

There is a general anxiety about these tools that is hard to miss. The slot machine feelings are real and it is intoxicating to hit the jackpot as you one-shot a design tool out of thin air, and equally frustrating when the agent is stuck thinking for minutes on end and tokens are being spent with nothing to show for it. We are all worrying and wondering about our role in the design process, and what happens when “world class” design is just a markdown file away.

I will tell you what I told them: the future of design is still being written and you have a choice in how it turns out. You can learn the tool or you can ignore it and carry on. You can use coding agents to create personal tools for your own design process, or even go 100% AGI and spend your days refining your DESIGN.md file. Design has a way of transcending the conditions under which it is made, rewriting what is possible as it goes. My hope is for a design future where every person works in their own personal design software and I think this class was a vote for that.

-Mello

P.S. - In order to help the agents as they work with p5.js and other coding libraries I have written a set of skills: creative coding skillpack. The core idea is to guide the agent towards the documentation and to do more fact finding to ensure they understand the specifc syntax of the library version that they are using.