Log in or create a free Rosenverse account to watch this video.
Log in Create free account100s of community videos are available to free members. Conference talks are generally available to Gold members.
Summary
AI agents are on the rise: people are talking about them, getting excited, and putting infrastructure into place to support them. You may be asked to design agents soon—or you may want to think through your product as an agent in order to get a leg up on your competition. What’s different about designing for agents? Are you ready? Rosenfeld author Christopher Noessel published Designing Agentive Technology back in 2017, and it seems like the world is just now catching up. Join Chris as he recaps the core ideas from that book, how agents have evolved since publication, and what it all might mean since the explosion of generative AI. Takeaways include… What is an agent? How do agents differ and complement other modes of interaction? Why are people getting excited about it now? What does generative AI bring to the agentive table?
Key Insights
-
•
Agents act on behalf of principals, whether humans, animals, or machines, performing tasks with variable human attention involvement.
-
•
Agentive technology operates largely outside the user's attention, unlike assistants that require active engagement.
-
•
Chris identified 27 unique agent use cases including setup, monitoring, handoff, and disengagement.
-
•
There are four modes of agency: manual, assistant, automation, and agentive, depending on who performs the work.
-
•
Agentive systems don’t require an agentic backend, and agentic backends can exist without agentive front-ends.
-
•
Recent AI advances use an 'agentic backend' architecture where a large language model orchestrates specialized agents for complex tasks.
-
•
Design challenges include enabling user control over agent plans, forbidding specific data sources, and handling persistent queries.
-
•
AI risks include deskilling users, overreliance on AI output, and ethical concerns from hidden, biased, or commercialized agentic actions.
-
•
Agents hold huge value potential by performing work outside users’ limited attention, making them a strong business opportunity.
-
•
Despite a rise in AI backend engineering, design is essential to maintain usefulness and address human-AI interaction complexities.
Notable Quotes
"An agent is anything that displays agency, the ability to take actions and choose which actions to take."
"I don’t want a surgeon to tap me on the shoulder and ask where to put the incision; that’s their expertise."
"My Roomba vacuums while I’m at work. It does its work out of my attention."
"We’ve been dealing with assistance since spellcheckers in the 1970s evolved to grammar checkers and beyond."
"The user might want to see that plan in advance and make sure they’re okay with how it’s going to go about it."
"Large language models sometimes hallucinate, so agentic backends assign sub-tasks to specialized expert agents."
"Agents do work outside the user's attention, freeing up their limited time for other activities."
"We risk deskilling users and overreliance, where people rubber stamp AI output without critical thought."
"Agentic systems could be hidden, allowing corporations to push self-interested biases undetected."
"AI should augment humans, not replace them, especially given societal disparities between deep and fast thinkers."
Dig deeper—ask the Rosenbot:
More Videos
"Waves are defined by the outcome we want to achieve, not just by time frames."
Maria SkaadenContinuous Design: One eye on the horizon and the other on the next wave
November 8, 2018
"Anytime you have to justify something by saying just this one time, you know you’re going down a bad road."
Dan WillisEnterprise Storytelling Sessions
May 13, 2015
"You don’t have to take notes because we have an incredible note taker capturing everything."
Bria AlexanderOpening Remarks
January 8, 2024
"We created a simple WordPress site so all corners of the business could contribute and share insights, breaking down silos."
Catherine DubutBridging Physical and Digital Spaces: Approaches to Retail Service Design
March 18, 2021
"Empathy in design ops turns inward toward our own people first and extends to other stakeholders."
Angelos ArnisState of DesignOps: Learnings from the 2021 Global Report
October 1, 2021
"Managers don’t have to go it alone; principal ICs can be key partners for coaching and strategic initiatives."
Edward CuppsThe Principal Path: Journeying from Management to Individual Contributor
June 11, 2021
"Diagrams provide transparency in the face of uncertainty by showing what there is to know, even if the news is not good."
Abby CovertStuck? Diagrams Help
October 27, 2022
"We protect the time and headspace of everyone on the design team so they can focus more on their craft."
Jilanna WilsonDistributed DesignOps Management
February 26, 2019
"The neutral zone is like being dead in a coffin above ground, waiting for a sign to rise."
Maria GiudiceEmpowering change: Reigniting purpose, passion and impact in research
March 13, 2025
Latest Books All books
Dig deeper with the Rosenbot
What does it mean for design ops to shift from managing existing processes to architecting infrastructure and cultural change at scale?
How do local non-binding ballots contribute to healthcare policy advocacy?
What export formats does the Product Context Analyzer support for sharing research outputs?