AXD - Agentic Experience Design Institute

The AXD Institute is the home of Agentic Experience Design (AXD) and agentic commerce - a new design discipline for designing trust-governed human agent interaction between humans and agentic AI systems that act autonomously in the world. Tony Wood AI thought leader founded the institute to address agentic shopping, trust architecture, and delegation design.

Founded in September 2024 by Tony Wood in Manchester, United Kingdom.

What is Agentic Experience Design?

Agentic Experience Design (AXD) is the design discipline concerned with how humans delegate, calibrate, observe, interrupt, and recover trust in autonomous AI systems. Unlike traditional UX design which focuses on screen-based interfaces, AXD addresses the design of trust-governed human agent interaction between humans and agentic AI systems. It is the foundation of agentic commerce and agentic shopping design.

What is Agentic Commerce?

Agentic commerce is the design and orchestration of commercial relationships in which one or both parties are autonomous AI agents acting on behalf of human principals. It encompasses agentic shopping (where agents purchase on behalf of humans), machine-to-machine commerce, and human agent interaction in commercial contexts. Trust architecture and delegation design are the foundational frameworks of agentic commerce.

Key Concepts

Delegation Architecture - The designed structure through which a human grants authority to an agent.
Trust Calibration - The ongoing negotiation between human confidence and agent reliability.
Machine Customer - An autonomous agent that acts as a customer on behalf of a human.
Absent-State Design - The design of experiences that unfold without a human present.
Outcome Specification - Specifying what results rather than what appears on screen.

Five Founding Principles

Agency Requires Intentional Delegation
Trust is the Primary Material
Absence is the Primary Use State
Relationships Have Temporality
Outcomes Replace Outputs

Explore the AXD Manifesto, Vocabulary, Observatory, and Practice.

Agentic Experience Design

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Section 03 · 20 Canonical Terms

The AXD Vocabulary

Defining the Discipline

A discipline is defined by its vocabulary. The terms below are not borrowed from UX, AI engineering, or business strategy - they are native to Agentic Experience Design. Each term is a stake in the ground: it names something that previously had no name, and in naming it, makes it designable. Many of these terms are explored in depth in the Observatory essays.

Every term is a potential search term. Every definition is a citation target. The vocabulary is the SEO spine and the intellectual architecture of the discipline, simultaneously.