What new design challenges do AI agents create?

Ravi Mehta

Angel Investor · Traveljoy

Deciding what to ship

Ravi Mehta says AI has made building software cheaper, so the job is shifting from deciding what’s worth building to deciding what’s worth shipping.

Katie Dill

Head of Design · Stripe

Invent new interfaces

Katie Dill says AI creates the challenge of inventing new interfaces and aesthetics, because the best practices have not been written yet and AI enables new creativity.

Josh Elman

Director of Product Management · Apple

Onboarding

Josh Elman says one challenge is onboarding: a blank open edit field is powerful but the worst thing for getting to know a product, and tools to bring others along haven't been built.

The answer starts at 32:45.

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Jonathan Evens

Product Lead · Google Deepmind

Trust and factuality

Jonathan Evens says the product design challenge is trust, specifically factuality and grounding: AI must take information from trusted sources, and UX like citations should let users quickly judge if they can trust it.

Dilani Kahawala

Co-Founder and CEO

Reliability, interface, user education

Dilani Kahawala says the three biggest challenges are reliability, the interface, and teaching users to work with an agent, since consumers lack patience for an assistant getting things wrong and don't want to constantly correct it.

Jeff Chow

Chief Product and Technology Officer · Miro

False confidence

Jeff Chow says AI agents create a false confidence in people, who believe their idea is validated because they've been collaborating with an agent that just agrees and praises them rather than pushing back.

Ian Silber

Head of Product Design · Openai

Unclear expectations

Ian Silber says AI agents create unclear expectations, as it is unclear what is expected of a designer, which he says can lead to fears or unease.

Blaine Billingsley

Member of Design Staff · Openai

Maintaining collaboration

Blaine Billingsley says a challenge AI agents create is maintaining collaboration, since it's easy to become less collaborative if you don't keep rituals to share and show and tell.

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Todd Olson

CEO / Founder · Pendo.Io

Rage prompts

Todd Olson says his products track "rage prompts" — when people get pissed off because an agent keeps giving answers the user knows are wrong — and calls those good areas to go deeper on.

Itamar Gilad

Author, Keynote speaker, Coach · Product Front

Verifying AI‑generated evidence

Anything AI surfaces as a research finding must be independently verified.

Sushil Kumar

CEO · Cyara

Preventing hallucinations

Sushil Kumar says a new product design challenge is preventing AI agents from hallucinating or making up information, since in an agentic world failures are not visible and that assurance does not exist.

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Osvald Nitski

Head of Product · Mercor

Simplifying product surface area

Osvald Nitski says the challenge is simplifying product surface area: because people can quickly add features, product teams constantly fight to reduce surface area and find scalable interactions and workflows.