Rosenverse
Sentient Design: New Postures for AI-Mediated Experiences (2nd of 3 seminars)

Log in or create a free Rosenverse account to watch this video.

Log in Create free account

100s of community videos are available to free members. Conference talks are generally available to Gold members.

Sentient Design: New Postures for AI-Mediated Experiences (2nd of 3 seminars)

Wednesday, January 29, 2025 • Rosenfeld Community

This video is featured in the AI and UX playlist and 2 more.

Share the love for this talk
Sentient Design: New Postures for AI-Mediated Experiences (2nd of 3 seminars)
Speakers: Josh Clark and Veronika Kindred
Link:

Summary

How do you get your head around all the different machine-intelligent experiences available to you as a designer? What are the new design patterns, and which old ones fall away? How do you name and organize those experiences? And how do you develop an intuition for how and when to use each interaction paradigm? Watch Josh Clark and Veronika Kindred, authors of our forthcoming book Sentient Design, explore the emerging diversity of AI-mediated experiences. Just as the natural world demonstrates intelligence in many forms, the same is true for machine intelligence. New “species” of interfaces roam our screens, the manner of each tailored to purpose and environment—copilots, agents, chatbots, assistants, tools, adaptive interfaces, and many more. Sentient Design offers a framework for exploring and organizing these new experience patterns, or “postures”—the way each kind of experience positions itself in relation to the user. More than just distinct functionality, each posture has its own interaction style, manner of communication, and expectations that it sets. Josh and Veronika share over a dozen of these postures, from familiar options like dedicated tools to more exotic patterns including sculptors, bespoke UI, non-player characters, and data whisperers. Get a map for exploring these postures to expand both your perspective and your toolkit as a designer.

Key Insights

  • Sentient Design reframes AI as a design material that enables adaptive, context-aware experiences rather than just a tool for output generation.

  • The Sentient Triangle categorizes AI experiences by grounded accuracy, interoperability, and radical adaptivity to better understand their trade-offs.

  • Four key interface postures—tools, sculptors, assistants, and agents—describe how AI interfaces relate to users, from simple inputs/outputs to autonomous task management.

  • Traditional deterministic tools like Shazam remain powerful but represent early-stage AI experiences compared to more interactive and adaptive forms.

  • Inline tools integrate AI assistance seamlessly within user workflows, offering continuous and ambient support without breaking context.

  • Sculptor interfaces enable iterative collaborative content creation, exemplified by in-painting in image and audio editing.

  • Chat-based characters and personas excel in creative, exploratory scenarios where factual accuracy is less critical than engagement.

  • Agents increasingly perform delegated tasks autonomously but currently face challenges with brittle, slow, and complex multi-step workflows.

  • Bespoke UIs dynamically generate or rearrange interface components in real-time tailored to user intent, enhancing flexibility and personalization.

  • Designers must embrace AI’s inherent weirdness and unpredictability as an asset, balancing risk and opportunity to create new interaction paradigms.

Notable Quotes

"Sentient design is about intelligent interfaces that are aware of context and intent so they can be radically adaptive to user needs in the moment."

"We think of AI not just as a maker of stuff but as an enabler of experiences."

"These intelligent interfaces are collaborative, proactive partners on the user’s journey."

"Traditional software is grounded—accurate and reliable—but lacks radical adaptivity."

"In-painting allows precise, targeted edits that don’t disturb the rest of the content."

"Characters live at the extreme of radically adaptive AI—they react in the moment and follow the user’s lead."

"Assistance interfaces combine open-ended dialogue with the ability to do tasks on your behalf."

"Agents set goals, plan steps, execute them, and decide when they’re done, often without user attention."

"Bespoke UI can generate interfaces on the fly based on immediate need or intent."

"Embracing AI’s weirdness can turn unpredictable outputs into experience assets rather than liabilities."

Ask the Rosenbot
Abby Covert
Panel: Collaboration Tools
2017 • DesignOps Summit 2017
Gold
Peter Boersma
How to Define and Maintain a DesignOps Roadmap
2023 • DesignOps Summit 2023
Gold
Tony Turner
Capturing Deep Insights
2021 • DesignOps Summit 2021
Gold
Susan Weinschenk
Evaluating the Maturity of UX in Your Organization
2020 • Enterprise Community
Peter Merholz
The Trials and Tribulations of Directors of UX
2023 • Enterprise Community
Peter Van Dijck
Building impactful AI products for design and product leaders, Part 1: The new product journey
2025 • Rosenfeld Community
Irina Tikhonova
Small Wins, Big Impact: Leveraging and Elevating User Engagement
2021 • Civic Design 2021
Gold
David Cronin
Discussion
2015 • Enterprise UX 2015
Gold
Sarit Geertjes
People, not Petri Dishes: Stories from a Research Recruiter
2019 • DesignOps Community
Daniel J. Rosenberg
Designing with and for Artificial Intelligence
2022 • Enterprise Community
Greg Petroff
Exit Interview #1: Greg Petroff: From Silicon Valley Executive to Sonoma County Possibilitarian
2025 • Rosenfeld Community
Dan Willis
Enterprise Storytelling Sessions
2018 • Enterprise Experience 2018
Gold
Lisa Gironda
Opener: Chief of Staff–An unexpected journey
2024 • DesignOps Summit 2020
Gold
Snehal Pendharkar
Conducting pre-research with AI agent personas: Pressure-testing concepts for expert workflows
2026 • Designing with AI 2026
Conference
Bruce Gillespie
Learning from journalism: Balancing impactful communication with compassionate storytelling
2025 • Advancing Research 2025
Gold
Nathan Shedroff
How Will Design be Taught When the Schools Shut Down?
2026 • Rosenfeld Community

More Videos

Jon Fukuda

"The heart of the storyteller is actually the heart of the story."

Jon Fukuda

Storytelling for DesignOps

August 17, 2023

Chris Geison

"Most people have a marketing or sales strategy, but many research leaders look puzzled when asked about their research strategy."

Chris Geison Cristen Torrey Eric Mahlstedt

What is Research Strategy?: A Panel of Research Leaders Discuss this Emergent Question

March 4, 2021

Himanshu Bharadwaj

"Create islands of joy at work, because everybody in this world is yearning for happiness."

Himanshu Bharadwaj

If design had a heart

April 16, 2026

Stephen Anderson

"We need just enough structure and no more to avoid chaos or stifling control."

Stephen Anderson

Puzzled? How to Coordinate Humans for Complex Challenges

May 27, 2021

John Paul de Guzman

"Design is really a team sport. Everyone is responsible to keep the workspace up to date."

John Paul de Guzman

10k Screens Later: How We Became a Data-Driven Design Organization

September 24, 2024

Nalini Kotamraju

"I believed we could do more — more for the company, customers, stakeholders, and ourselves if we had more agency."

Nalini Kotamraju

Research After UX

March 25, 2024

Jennifer Bolduc

"Remote work is becoming less niche and more of a standard in attracting and retaining talent."

Jennifer Bolduc Diane Gregorio Emily Day

What's involved with getting people back to work?: A panel discussion

July 1, 2021

Sarah Brooks

"Designing services increasingly span these blurred lines between our digital and public worlds."

Sarah Brooks

Theme Three Intro

November 18, 2022

Sam Proulx

"When we solve accessibility problems, we create innovations that benefit everyone, not just people with disabilities."

Sam Proulx

To Boldly Go: The New Frontiers of Accessibility

March 11, 2022