AXD for Designers — an AXD Institute resource on agentic experience design, agentic commerce, trust architecture, and human agent interaction. Founded by Tony Wood..
How does AXD differ from traditional UX?
Why is trust architecture important for agentic AI?
Key concepts in AXD for Designers | AXD Institute
How do designers apply axd principles relate to agentic commerce?
designers apply axd principles
what skills do ux designers need for agentic experience design
how is designing for ai agents different from designing for users
Agency requires intentional delegation — every agentic system begins with a designed act of delegation
Trust is the primary material — AXD works in trust rather than attention
Absence is the primary use state — the most consequential experiences happen when no one is watching
Relationships have temporality — agentic experiences accumulate history over time
Outcomes replace outputs — AXD designers specify results, not interfaces
Dimension
Traditional UX
Agentic Experience Design (AXD)
Primary material
Attention and affordance
Trust and delegation
User state
Present, navigating
Absent, delegating
Design output
Screens and interfaces
Outcomes and constraints
Temporal model
Session-based
Relationship-based
Success metric
Task completion
Trust calibration
Frequently Asked Questions
How do designers apply AXD principles?
Designers apply AXD principles by shifting from screen-based interaction design to trust-relationship design. This means designing delegation flows, interrupt patterns, trust calibration interfaces, and recovery experiences rather than traditional navigation and layout. AXD designers work with trust as their primary material.
What skills do UX designers need for agentic experience design?
UX designers transitioning to AXD need skills in trust architecture, delegation design, absence-state thinking, and outcome specification. They must learn to design for relationships that unfold over time rather than discrete interactions, and to create experiences where the most important moments happen when the user is not present.
How is designing for AI agents different from designing for users?
Designing for AI agents requires thinking about autonomous behaviour, trust calibration, and the absent state. Unlike traditional UX where the user is always present, AXD designers must create systems that work correctly when no human is watching, communicate effectively when interruption is needed, and recover gracefully from failures.
Key Takeaways
Agentic Experience Design (AXD) is a new discipline for the age of autonomous AI. It addresses trust architecture, delegation design, and human agent interaction — the core challenges of agentic commerce and agentic shopping.