Method Designing to Solve Real Problems at Work

I designed and built a branded dashboard of concurrent countdown timers, complete with an alarm, so the front desk can track every wellness technology in one place. It was my first time using Claude Design, and in under two hours I art directed it from idea to working tool, then pushed the code to GitHub and published it live on Netlify.

Our new wellness technologies need staff to set each guest up, and between calls, texts, emails, and invoicing, it’s easy to lose track of time. On a busy shift, a session can quietly run past its end while the desk is pulled in five directions.

That’s not just an operations problem. It’s a guest experience problem. Someone who has finished their session shouldn’t be left in the room wondering if they’ve been forgotten, unsure whether to wait or walk out. A few minutes of that uncertainty can undo the calm the whole visit was designed to create.

Track several concurrent sessions in one place so every guest gets out on time and moves on to what’s next, whether that’s another treatment or the rest of their day. The calendar can’t do this alone, since booking times don’t always match how long someone actually spends in the technology.

As a designer, I can’t switch off the part of my brain that maps the user journey, even at a job that isn’t design. To me, a guest’s experience doesn’t end when the technology turns off. It includes the moment someone comes to get them, how smoothly they move to their next service, and whether they leave on schedule for whatever’s waiting after. A timer is a small fix, but small details are where good experiences are made or lost.

• Make the timers readable at a glance for staff juggling a dozen other tasks
• Run multiple timers at once, since several technologies are often in use at the same time
• Brand the dashboard to the retreat instead of settling for the default Windows Clock app (because I'm a designer, how can I not?)

New tool, new skills, but no dev background (just a little HTML/CSS knowledge).

• Designed, built, and launched in under two hours, from first prompt to live site
• No backend experience, so I learned GitHub commits and Netlify deploys along the way
• First time using Claude Design, after two people from different industries recommended it to me in the same day

I will admit, I did spend more than 2 hours after the initial publish to Netlify to get it just the way I wanted it, but it was still 10x faster than what I would have been able to accomplish all on my own.

One tool, and a backlog unlocked

• A live timer the front desk can use on every shift
• Upgraded to Claude Pro mid-build because I didn’t want to stop
• Pulled the next idea from my years-old backlog the same day since it was so fun prompting with Claude!
  

I came in skeptical, because after ten years of building my design skills, what could be better than my way? It turns out the answer was a collaborator. Claude Design did the hard work, and I did the creative work.

Method Designing
I don’t just observe this workflow. I live it, several shifts a week. I would call it method designing: the same way an actor lives a role, I know exactly what it feels like to lose track of a guest while answering the phone. That’s the insight user research has to dig for.

Art Director, Meet Junior Designer
Working with Claude Design felt like art directing a junior designer. I left comment bubbles on UI elements, and it addressed them right away. Ten years of pixel pushing gave me the vocabulary to say exactly what I wanted, which is why the result matched the vision in my head.

From Idea to Live Site
A mockup doesn’t help anyone at the front desk. I learned to create a GitHub repo, commit changes, and push them to a live Netlify site, which turned a two-hour experiment into a tool the team can open in any browser.

I don’t think Claude Design, or any AI tool, replaces human judgment, taste, or perspective. What it does remove is the gap between having an idea and having the technical skills to execute it. I've had a Notion ideas page full of projects that I’ve sat on for years because I didn’t have the development knowledge or the time to learn it. Now my only limit is my imagination (and, okay, my credit usage). I’ll be honest, I can’t tell you if the code is clean, while an experienced developer could. But it works, and it works fast, and it solves a real problem for my team.

This project reminded me that design extends far beyond the screen. I’m a designer whether I’m in Adobe Illustrator, prompting Claude, or standing at the front desk noticing a broken workflow. If a small tool helps my coworkers and keeps guests from sitting in their rooms wondering what’s next, that’s design doing its job.