At Qt World Summit 2026 in Espoo, Finland, Qt Group (Nasdaq Helsinki: QTCOM) unveiled Clate, a new design environment aimed specifically at designers who build interfaces for embedded, resource-constrained hardware. The tool is designed to replace generic web and mobile design software with a workspace that accounts for real device limits, letting designers retain control over both the look and the functional behavior of an interface.
Why Embedded Interfaces Need Different Tools
Consumer expectations shaped by smartphones have carried over into embedded devices, but the underlying hardware is far more limited in memory, processing power, and display capability. Mainstream design tools built for web and mobile apps don't account for these constraints, often producing interfaces that can't actually run well on the target hardware. According to Qt Group's own research, 59% of embedded UX designers said they needed a better tool, yet struggled to describe what it should look like, largely because no comparable product existed on the market.
What Clate Offers Designers
Clate is built as a no-code, AI-native workspace, meaning designers can work without writing code while still producing output that developers can use directly. Key capabilities include:
- AI-native integration: natural language prompting for tasks like screen generation, with MCP-based connections to other design and productivity tools.
- Real-world UI behavior: designers can set variables, data bindings, animations, and interactions while tracking performance metrics such as frame rate and memory footprint.
- No-code workspace: familiar design features including an infinite canvas, hierarchy trees, asset management, component libraries, and context-aware property controls.
- Production-ready handoff: Clate generates QML, a declarative language used for building user interfaces, so developers can build on top of designer output rather than recreating it from scratch.
Executive Perspective and Rollout Plan
Antti Kujala, Vice President of Design Products at Qt Group, said the tool is meant to end a long-standing compromise: "We created Clate to end that compromise, and to give designers back full control and ownership of the user experience." He noted that Clate runs on the Qt framework and generates QML code automatically, so designers don't need deep coding knowledge.
Thilak Ramanna, Senior Vice President at Qt Group, added that Clate is intended to speed up release cycles by removing the need for developers to manually rebuild designer work, while giving teams visibility into hardware performance limits during the design phase itself.
Clate is launching in beta, with its no-code workspace, AI assistants, integrations, and QML code output available at launch. Features for checking frame rate and memory consumption against real hardware limits will follow shortly after. Qt Group says the full feature set is planned for early 2027.