The Dawn of Autonomous Experiences: Embracing Agentic UX
- Shaivi Kant
- Apr 9
- 3 min read
Beyond Buttons: Embracing AI Agents That Understand, Anticipate, and Act.
Imagine this: you wake up on a gloomy Tuesday morning. The London weather, which had just begun to beam with sunshine, has now taken a detour towards grey skies. Staring outside your window in utter disbelief, you whisper, “I need a break.”By lunch, your AI agent has booked a seaside Airbnb, checked the tide charts, packed your weather-appropriate outfits (mentally, not physically… yet), and added a relaxing playlist to your Spotify. You didn’t lift a finger.
Sounds like a scene from Her or Iron Man. But this isn’t sci-fi anymore, it’s the dawn of
Agentic UX.
As a UX designer and futurist, I have been obsessing over the shift from systems that respond to us to systems that act for us. We have long worked with assistive AI — auto-fills, spellcheckers, and your camera’s portrait mode. But now, we are entering a new realm where autonomous agents don’t just help us; they do things on our behalf.
Agentic vs. Assistive AI
Before we go any further, there are two terminologies one must familiarize oneself with — Assistive and Agentic AI.
Assistive AI is like having a helpful intern. You give instructions, it helps you work faster. The new kid on the block — Agentic AI is like hiring a smart executive assistant who anticipates your needs and acts on them, sometimes before you even realize them.
And that’s a game-changer. Because with that shift, we stop designing just interfaces….drumrolls…we start designing relationships!
So What Does This Mean for UXers?
It means revisiting every critical journey and asking:
Where does the user feel stuck or unsupported?
Where are the burdens too heavy logistically, emotionally, or cognitively?
Where can an AI agent step in and take the weight off?
Let me give you an example. Think healthcare onboarding. To date, it mostly begins with you filling out forms, scheduling appointments, and remembering to fast before blood tests. But What if, tomorrow, your AI health agent books your check-up, reminds you to hydrate, pre-fills your forms securely, and nudges you when lab results come in?
That’s not just convenience, that’s designing care.
The stepping stone: Trust
But here’s the thing: none of this care and convenience matters if users don’t trust these systems. Trust isn’t a nice-to-have. It’s a must-have. Autonomy without trust is creepy. With trust, it’s magical.
To curate the UX of such a system, we need:
Transparency: Let people know when and why the agent is acting.
Explainability: Offer clear, human-language explanations (not just “the model said so”).
Ethics: Stay aligned with user values, avoid manipulation, and treat human dignity as sacred.
As designers, we must lead on this. Work with engineers, ethicists, and policy folks. Embed these values in the core, not as an afterthought.
The Agentic Shift Is Already Happening
This isn’t an “Imagine 2050 scenario”, we are seeing it irl:
Dovetail’s Magic features are summarizing and tagging research insights with eerie accuracy.
Amazon’s Nova Agent doesn’t just browse, it books, buys, and navigates for you.
Healthcare AI agents are streamlining patient care journeys without overburdening clinicians.
Finance bots are detecting fraud and executing trades, all in real-time.
AI Super Agents (like the ones from DeepSeek or OpenAI’s rumored projects) are interpreting intent and handling complex multi-step tasks.
These are early signals of a very different digital future.
My Take: Recalibrating from Usability to Trustability
As a young resident of the “real work” world, and a London-based UX designer who straddles the line between the now and the next, I believe this:
Our job is no longer just about frictionless flows or clean UIs. It’s about orchestrating trust, autonomy, and humanity.
Agentic UX isn’t about surrendering control, it’s about creating systems that understand us so well we want to let go.
The future is autonomous. Let’s make sure it’s also humane.
If you’re exploring the space between design, intelligence, and the human experience, let’s connect. I’m building, thinking, dreaming… and I would love to know what you see coming too.
References
Got inspired by this insightful piece by
Kshitij Agrawal: https://medium.com/ai-ux-designers/era-of-agentive-ux-not-agentic
Patricia Reiners’ podcast on Designing for AI Agents: https://podcasts.apple.com/ee/podcast/101-designing-for-ai-agents-the-future-of-ux/
Microsoft explaining it in simple terms: https://news.microsoft.com/source/features/ai/ai-agents-what-they-are-and-how-theyll-change-the-way-we-work/
Glad to see how far we have come in 11 months of this article: https://uxdesign.cc/the-agentic-era-of-ux/
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