Ideas and Discoveries
Personal and professional notes about our craft, technique, and the role of design in the world.
agents
What Happens When Agents Meet?
Designing agent experiences means thinking beyond individual users—to swarms of agents colliding in shared systems. What could go wrong?
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What we’re reading
“I Suppose You Would Call It an Interface for the User”
Nicholas Evans on LinkedIn: What happens when we go all-in on a single AI interface to do all the things.
Why AI agents need to learn to read the room
Fin researcher Genna Bridgeman shares practical findings about how AI interactions are affected by social expectations of the specific communication channel.
SaaS Is Dead?
Benedict Evans deflates the frothy talk that AI agents and assistants will eliminate vast swaths of software.
The Shape of the Thing
Ethan Mollick notes that AI has begun to unlock radical changes in the shape of work. What that shape will ultimately become is uncertain—which means now is the moment to influence it.
Charlie's Fake Videos for AI Literacy
The banking app launched a fun and smart campaign to educate about the risks of deepfake scams.
The Cascade Effect in Context-Based Design Systems
TJ Pitre explains how to bake context into your design system, which pays dividends in AI-powered automation but also next-generation Sentient Design experiences.
Recent Writing
sentient design
When Interfaces Design Themselves
Radically adaptive experiences change content, structure, style, or behavior—sometimes all at once—to provide the right experience for the moment.
strategy
We Can Help
“What should we do?” Our new product strategy intensives help you find clarity and action amid AI and other seismic shifts.
sentient design
Wiring Interface to Intent
Create radically adaptive interfaces by telling large language models how to choose the right design pattern for the moment. A primer.
sentient design
Say Hello to Sentient Design
Sentient Design is the already-here future of intelligent interfaces and AI-mediated experiences. Discover this framework and philosophy for working with AI as a design material.
events & workshops
Private Sentient Design Workshops
Reserve a private workshop to teach your product and design teams to imagine, design, and deliver AI-powered features and products.
icons
Your Sparkles Are Fizzling
Let’s retire the sparkle emoji, purple hues, and rainbow gradients for AI-powered features.
sentient design
Data Whisperers, Pinocchios, and Sentient Design
Podcasts from PDFs! Working code from pen-and-paper sketches! Discover the new AI-powered design patterns that liberate content from frozen formats—and create new experience paradigms.
sentient design
Has the “AI Edge” Become a Dull Blade?
Today’s cutting-edge technology is becoming tomorrow’s ho-hum office tool. And that’s a good thing.
sentient design
The Shape of Sentient Design
Use this diagram to think through and explore AI-mediated experiences in your product design.
sentient design
A.I., Snake Oil, and Miracle-Cure Expectations
Be distrustful when AI is hyped as a cure-all—but don’t assume it’s useless just because it doesn’t live up to outlandish promises.
process
Ship Faster by Building Design Systems Slower
Successful design systems can and should move more slowly than the products they support—but a deliberate pace doesn’t have to create bottlenecks. Josh Clark shows how to reconcile the needs and speeds of product versus design system.
process
Only One Deliverable Matters
Too much design effort goes into artifacts that are not part of the working software. There’s a better way to work.