Designers everywhere are wondering what AI means for the future of their work. Will it replace us? Should we pivot careers? Are our skills still relevant?
The encouraging reality is that designers are uniquely positioned to thrive in the age of agentic AI. The same skills that make you effective at designing human experiences are essential – and non-negotiable – for designing AI agent experiences. You’re not starting from scratch; you’re building on a foundation you’ve already mastered.
What we’ll cover:
Explore why design is essential to AI
Apply six core design skills to agentic AI
Identify your AI design strengths
Practice designing for AI
Build the future of AI
Explore why design is essential to AI
Agentic AI systems don’t just respond to prompts; they make decisions, take actions, and operate with independence that mirrors human judgment. Think of them as digital teammates that can handle complex workflows. They manage customer relationships, personalize user experiences, and maintain alignment with human values and business goals.
This autonomy is exactly why traditional AI development approaches fall short. You can’t just throw tech specs at these systems and expect them to work well with humans. These systems need designers who understand behavioral patterns, decision-making frameworks, and interaction models that make AI agents feel like natural collaborators rather than robotic tools.
That someone is you.
At Salesforce, this plays out with our Agentforce platform. The most successful AI agent deployments aren’t necessarily ones with the most advanced algorithms. They’re ones where designers shape how these agents think, communicate, and integrate into human workflows.
For example, for customer service scenarios, you can create AI agents capable of understanding emotional tone and responding with appropriate empathy. These agents go beyond handling basic queries. They troubleshoot problems, offer personalized advice, and can even autonomously schedule field service appointments.
This kind of design work turns AI into a true teammate by aligning responses with human expectations and integrating seamlessly into service workflows. Technical capability is certainly important, but human-centered design is what makes them truly useful in the real world.
Apply six core design skills to agentic AI
Your existing design skills aren’t just helpful for AI – they’re exactly what agentic AI needs to succeed. Here’s how your expertise translates to agentic AI design:
1. User research → AI agent design: Your ethnographic research methods, user interviews, and behavioral analysis skills inform your understanding of how AI agents should interact with users. The same techniques you use to uncover user needs and pain points become the foundation for designing AI agents to respond appropriately in different contexts.
2. Information architecture → AI decision trees: Your ability to organize complex information systems and create logical content hierarchies translates to structuring AI decision-making processes. The taxonomies and mental models you create for websites become the framework for how AI agents navigate conversations and make recommendations.
3. Interaction design → conversation flow design: Every interaction pattern you’ve designed, from onboarding flows to error states, has prepared you to design AI conversation flows. Your understanding of user expectations, feedback loops, and progressive disclosure extends to creating AI interactions that are intuitive and helpful.
4. Prototyping → prompt engineering: Your rapid prototyping skills and iterative design approach are identical to the process of refining AI prompts and testing AI behaviors. Just like you A/B test design elements, you’ll test different prompt variations to optimize AI responses.
5. Design systems → AI interaction patterns: Your experience creating consistent design languages and reusable components translates to building libraries of AI prompts, establishing consistent AI personality traits, and creating scalable interaction patterns for AI agents.
6. Visual design → AI output formatting: Your skills in information hierarchy, typography, and visual communication become crucial for designing how AI presents information: whether that’s structuring AI-generated reports, designing data visualizations, or creating clear information displays.
Identify your AI design strengths
Use this framework to identify your strongest design competencies and see how to apply them to agentic AI work.
| Research-Driven Designer | Core skill focus: User research / AI agent training
Strength: Deep user empathy and behavioral insights AI application: AI agent training and conversation design Start: Design conversation flows for customer service AI agents, focusing on emotional intelligence and contextual responses |
| Systems Thinker | Core skill focus: Information architecture / AI decision tree
Strength: Information architecture and complex problem solving AI application: AI workflow design and decision tree creation Start: Map out AI agent decision-making processes for complex business scenarios |
| Interaction Expert | Core skill focus: Interaction design / conversation flow design
Strength: User journey mapping and flow design AI application: Multi-turn conversation design and AI handoff points Start: Design the interaction patterns between users and AI agents across different touchpoints |
| Visual Communicator | Core skill focus: Visual design / AI output formatting
Strength: Information design and visual hierarchy AI application: AI output design and data presentation Start: Design how AI agents present complex information in digestible, actionable formats |
Most designers fit into multiple categories, which is actually an advantage because the more design skills you have, the more valuable you become in AI work. Pick the category that feels strongest and start there, but don’t limit yourself to just one approach.
Practice designing for agentic AI
Now it’s time to put your skills into practice. This four-week roadmap builds directly on your design strengths and shows how to apply them to agentic AI work. Even better, this roadmap maps directly to the four designer types above. Whether you’re a Research Driven Designer or a Visual Communicator, each week maps your design instincts to AI design outcomes.
Skills roadmap
By the end of the month, you will have created an AI design prototype, applied your core design skills in a new context, and built the confidence to take on more ambitious agentic AI challenges. Remember, you’re not starting from zero – you’re extending your existing knowledge and skills into the future of intelligent experiences.
Build the future of AI
As design evolves and AI systems become more autonomous, the demand for designers who understand both human psychology and AI capabilities will only intensify. Companies won’t just need people who can prompt tools – they’ll need people who can craft experiences that feel natural, helpful, and trustworthy. That’s where you come in.
Your background in human behavior, emotion, and interaction gives you something technologists alone simply can’t provide. You already speak the language of context, nuance, and empathy. And, that’s exactly what AI needs to become truly useful.
So the real question isn’t whether your skills still matter; it’s how soon you will begin using them to shape what comes next.
Start now. The future of intelligent experience is ready for you to design it.
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