Ideas and Discoveries
Personal and professional notes about our craft, technique, and the role of design in the world.
“What an epic book”—John Maeda
Create experiences that crackle with awareness and agency, adapting to your users in the moment. Sentient Design: Crafting Intelligent Interfaces with AI gives you the framework and creative perspective to deliver AI-powered experiences that go way beyond text-based agents and chat. By Big Medium's Josh Clark and Veronika Kindred.
strategy
Look Up from Your Tools: AI for Product over Production
Today’s focus on AI production efficiencies is only the first stage of a far more exciting arc.
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What we’re reading
What does AI do to software?
Benedict Evans considers what intelligent interfaces will look like and concludes there’s “an enormous white space” to invent what’s next.
AI is the Closest Thing to a Genie Lamp
The “magic” might be remarkable, Alberto Romero writes, but it shifts the effort to the wish. And most people (and organizations) aren’t very good at that part.
An Anti-AI Moral Stance?
What do you do if you find the whole AI enterprise so immoral that you find its very use to be ethically unacceptable?
This Is Running
If you’re a runner (or just running-curious), you’ll love this beautiful, thoughtful new book by Raziq Rauf.
When Using AI Leads to ‘Brain Fry’
A BCG study of US-based workers found that intensive oversight of AI agents can cause cognitive exhaustion that the researchers call “AI brain fry.”
How Many Products Does Microsoft Have Named ‘Copilot’?
“There are now Copilots inside Copilots, Copilots for other Copilots, and a physical Copilot key on your keyboard for summoning them,” writes Tey Bannerman.
Recent Writing
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.