Delightful agent interaction
In early 2025, the world was still defining how AI agents look and feel.
Meanwhile, new users were struggling to understand how AI agents worked. I was part of a broader goal to improving our activation rates.
I had an idea to create a delightful interaction that helps users reach the 'magic moment' with AI agents. It takes advantage of the loading state, visually showing the steps and thought process the AI agent takes while working autonomously.
The idea was quite novel at the time.
Original animation (3 hours work)
This design accomplishes a few things:
Previously, we had an empty loading state that invoked uncertainty and brokenness. Even having anything helps communicate trust that the agent is progressing.
Helps users reach the 'magic moment' of AI agents in 2025. Agents are autonomous software that does work on user's behalf.
Educates users how AI agents actually work. Looks at it's available tools, chooses which one it needs to execute, read's the tool input's title and subtext, and fills it in. This came from a big problem we noticed: users weren't giving descriptive subtext, causing agents to work sub-optimally.
Visual treat.
Production
🎨
Design process
The prototype's role was to show my vision and gather signals.
After building momentum, my next task is to work with eng to scope down to something feasible.
After working with eng to scope down, I shared the new prototype in Slack, and it was ready to start development!
Early code, feedback was it was too slow
Feedback from peers after launch
