Design Better · The Curiosity Department, sponsored by Wix Studio

Josh Clark and Veronika Kindred: Sentient Design and the future of interfaces

·36 min·3 clips

Josh Clark envisions a future where users sketch interfaces that instantly materialize as disposable software on demand.

AI begins here as a people pleaser. The cold open treats that agreeable default as understandable but limited, because a nice answer is not always a useful one. The question belongs to design. Clark and Kindred come across as collaborators thinking about AI not only as a backstage tool, but as something designers now work with and design for. Static interfaces start to feel less fixed. The conversation suggests that intelligent, adaptive systems change old assumptions about experience, context, intent, and user agency. Then the host presses harder. If AI can query the web, summarize knowledge, and complete tasks through agents, decades of website making start to look less secure. Google I.O. becomes the pressure point. Headless search raises a practical fear: users may not need to visit websites when the answer and the action happen somewhere else. The guest pushes back on total collapse. Their more measured view is that AI becomes a capability inside many applications, while domain focused products remain easier for people to understand and use. Still, content is exposed. Commodity informational sites are named as especially vulnerable when knowledge gets broken apart, repackaged, and delivered through conversational systems. Publishing becomes the test case. Clark mentions work with one of the biggest publishers in the world trying to understand its value when information is easier to separate from its source. The answer turns toward trust. Storytelling and an audience's relationship with a source are harder to replace than raw facts or interchangeable pages. Podcasts fit that argument. A podcast example suggests people may keep listening because they trust the framing, not simply because the information is unavailable elsewhere. The tone stays grounded. Instead of treating AI as magic or apocalypse, the discussion asks what designers need to protect as interfaces become more agentic, conversational, and adaptive.

As heard by us

A grounded AI-design conversation about websites, trust, and what still has value when agents handle the task.

Design Better treats AI interface work as a practical question for teams whose products may soon act on behalf of users, not just wait for clicks.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

A sober guide to designing AI that is not just nice, but useful.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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