finelybook
Sentient Design: Crafting Intelligent Interfaces with AI
Author(s): Josh Clark (Author), Veronika Kindred (Author), John Maeda (Foreword)
- Publisher Finelybook 出版社: Rosenfeld Media
- Publication Date 出版日期: June 9, 2026
- Language 语言: English
- Print length 页数: 432 pages
- ISBN-10: 1959029185
- ISBN-13: 9781959029182
Book Description
Create experiences that crackle with awareness and agency, adapting to your users in the moment. Sentient Design is the practice of crafting intelligent interfaces: dashboards that design themselves, apps that manifest on demand, agents that just get it done, and much more. This groundbreaking book gives designers and product leaders the practical framework and imaginative perspective to deliver extraordinary new products using AI as a design material.
Who Should Read This Book
Sentient Design is for designers, product leaders, and design-minded developers who want to create entirely new categories of experience with AI. This book helps you decide what to make and why it matters, giving you the patterns and process to conjure the next generation of AI-powered products.
Takeaways
- Design interfaces that adapt their content, style, structure, and behavior on the fly in response to user context and intent.
- Adopt AI as a design material: learn what it’s good at, where it stumbles, and how to work with its grain.
- Evolve from crafting static interfaces to directing systems that make design decisions in real time.
- Explore the Sentient Triangle framework to discover over a dozen experience patterns that go far beyond text-based agents and chatbots. Build systems that amplify human judgment and agency instead of replacing them.
- Practice defensive design to manage risk, build trust, and recover gracefully when AI stumbles.
- Follow an innovative sprint process that combines “practical magic” with hands-on methods for designing intelligent interfaces.
Editorial Reviews
Editorial Reviews
Review
“I f*cking love this book. Josh and Veronika have done something so rare. They’ve named a thing that was already happening, but we didn’t have language for. Sentient Design is a smart, generous exploration of how we’ll engage with AI as humans and as designers. Essential reading for anyone building the next generation of digital experiences.”
—Katja Forbes, CX futurist and author, Machine Customers: The Evolution Has Begun
“AI is more than chat. Amen. Sentient Design is an expansive guide to the emerging interactions that define the next era of design. A must-read.”
—Adam McClean, chief product officer, People Inc.
“Sentient Design is the ultimate guidebook to a world where the best interface is a thinking one.”
—Golden Krishna, author of The Best Interface Is No Interface: The Simple Path to Brilliant Technology
“Josh and Veronika have given us the pattern library we need to ensure that designing with AI remains distinctly human.”
—Jeff Veen, design partner at True Ventures and founder of Typekit
“Sentient Design offers clear vocabulary and concrete examples to help designers better imagine what’s possible with machine intelligence as design material.”
—Randy Hunt, head of design, Notion
“Sentient Design is a rare kind of tech book that is immediately useful and approachable but built for longevity.”
—Pamela Pavliscak, author of Emotionally Intelligent Design: Rethinking How We Create Products and All the Feels: How to Stay Human in the Digital World
“This in-depth book pairs Josh’s veteran perspective with Veronika’s fresh voice. Together, they cut through the AI hype, offering specific patterns and down-to-earth advice for crafting intelligent, sentient-feeling experiences.”
—Carla Diana, associate professor and director of product design, Lawrence Technological University
“Packed with inspiration from the frontier, Sentient Design is full of actionable strategies for interaction designers.”
—Matt Webb, co-founder, Inanimate
“Sentient Design is the disambiguation artifact our industry needs right now.”
—Ioana Telanu, founder of AI-R Design Studio and creator of UX Goodies
“This historic era in technology demands open minds from designers, and Sentient Design gives you the skills to rise to the occasion.”
—Aarron Walter, Design Better co-founder
“You could hardly ask for a better set of tools to help makers of software evaluate, rethink, and reimagine the experiences for which they’re designing.”
—Chris Noessel, author of Designing Assistant Technology: AI That Makes People Smarter and Designing Agentive Technology: AI That Works for People
“Shouldn’t AI write this book? Nah, Josh has been at it since ChatGPT was a gleam in a researcher’s eye. This book brings his years of patterns and principles together for you.”
—Luke Wroblewski, managing director, Sutter Hill Ventures
About the Author
Josh Clarkis principal of Big Medium, a digital agency that helps complex organizations design for what’s next. He is a design leader specializing in emerging technology, user experience, and design innovation. His projects include future-friendly interfaces for AI, connected devices, and the web for many of the world’s biggest companies.
Josh speaks around the world about what’s next for digital interfaces. He has keynoted hundreds of events in over 25 countries and has offered countless more private workshops and executive sessions. Josh is also author of several other books, including Designing for Touch and Tapworthy: Designing Great iPhone Apps.
Before the internet swallowed him up in the 1990s, Josh was a producer of national PBS programs at Boston’s WGBH. He shared his three words of Russian with Mikhail Gorbachev, interviewed the cabinet secretaries of nine US presidents, and wrote trivia questions for a primetime game show.
In 1996, Josh created the “Couch-to–5K” (C25K) running program, which has helped millions of skeptical would-be exercisers take up running. His motto is the same for fitness as it is for user experience: no pain, no pain.
Josh lives, runs, and works in the mountains of Asheville, North Carolina.
Veronika Kindredis a designer and researcher at Big Medium, where she defines and solves design problems alongside some of the world’s biggest companies. She travels internationally to lead Sentient Design workshops and speak to teams at startups and Fortune 100 companies alike.
Veronika holds degrees from New York University (Politics and Data Science) and the Fashion Institute of Technology (Photography). Her photographs have appeared in O, The Oprah Magazine and UN Women. Her research has ranged from AI’s effect on user experience to mobile technology’s impact on African political engagement to the nuances of congressional climate hearings.
