In the past decade, digital experiences have shifted from simple user interfaces to highly complex, AI-powered systems that anticipate, respond, and adapt as users interact and engage with them. But what comes after predictive UX? Enter agent experiences—a fast-emerging paradigm where autonomous agents act on behalf of users, completing tasks, negotiating outcomes, and even coordinating with other agents in real time. It refers to the experience these AI agents deal with when working as a part of a holistic system.
Agent experiences (AX) represent a fundamental shift in the way we design for interaction, not just between humans and systems, but between intelligent agents and everything else. Let’s explore this shift, why it matters, and what it means to design such an experience.
Stuti Mazumdar - July 2025
What Are Agent Experiences (AX)?
Agent experiences are digital experiences designed, developed, and optimized for AI agents to efficiently and effectively operate in a system, on behalf of users to fulfill goals, make decisions, and interact with other agents or experiences. These agents, unlike traditional AI assistants, don’t wait for your prompts. They can:
- Interpret multiple instructions at once
- Break related or relevant tasks into subtasks
- Execute these subtasks across multiple apps within an environment
- Learn and adapt consistently
It’ll help if you don’t think of them as your AI assistant, commonly found in smart devices. Think of them as digital task managers. You don’t tell them how to do something—you just tell them what to do. For instance, you never say, “Open my calendar. Book a slot for Mr. XYZ, my dentist.” You say, “Find me a slot for a dentist visit this week.” The rest is done for you automatically. A holistic, well-designed AX would help your agent better navigate through the system to carry on the stated tasks.
Why Are Agent Experiences Rising Now?
Several trends are converging to make AX possible:
1. Enhancements in LLMs & AI
LLM models like GPT-4, Claude, Gemini, and others are able to handle language, vision, and logic simultaneously, making task delegation more fluid. Thus, pushing boundaries of what AI agents can do within a constrained system, allowing us to enjoy a hands-free experience.
2. Integration Infrastructure
No-code tools, plug-and-play environments, APIs, and cloud services are now one too many, enabling seamless integration across services for agents to operate within. This helps create holistic environments to design improved, sophisticated AX flows.
3. Demand for Hands-off UX
In a world of choice overload, task fatigue, and app hopping, users increasingly want outcomes, not processes. Hence, the rise of seamless AX, where an agent could interact with apps to take tedious tasks off of a user’s hands.
The New Design Principles of Agent Experiences
Designing for AX requires rethinking some of the foundational UX principles:
1. Design for Delegation
Users must always feel confident handing over their critical tasks to an agent. That means:
- Clear and simple language used at all times (“What would you like to do?”)
- Seamless preview of actions that an agent would follow
- Trust-building through transparency
2. Multi-agent Interactions
In many cases, an agent may not act alone. For instance, your personal health agent in an app may be coordinating with your tracker, as part of a wearable system on your wrist. Hence, we now need to design intersecting ecosystems that solve for information transfer instead of interfaces.
3. Context-Aware, Consistently
Agents need context to perform optimally. Ensure integration of access to relevant parts of the system to effectively carry out tasks.
4. Recoverability
Mistakes happen. In case of a user intervening to bring the problem to light, the system should have the capability to:
- Review past decisions
- Undo or edit actions
- Intervene mid-process
What Designers Need to Prepare For?
Agent experiences (AX) won’t eliminate the need for designers. However, this new and seamless system would demand better design proficiency to manage interfaces never seen before. As a designer or strategist, here’s what you need to start practicing:
1. Conversational Design: Interfaces that accept natural language inputs and return helpful summaries.
2. AI-Powered Task Flows: Understanding how an agent breaks down a task can help users visualize and structure journeys.
3. Trust Design: Build UX that makes autonomy transparent. Let users set boundaries.
