3 MONTHS AGO • 4 MIN READ

A Little Big Medium: When Interfaces Design Themselves

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A Little Big Medium

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When Interfaces Design Themselves

In this edition: radically adaptive experiences, a fresh way to think about AI, new design responsibilities and techniques, upcoming workshops and events, and our favorite reads.

At Big Medium HQ, we’re seeing an exciting shift in the conversations we’re having with clients. Instead of “how do we use AI to grind out efficiencies,” teams are asking something savvier: “how do we create valuable new experiences?”

It’s the right question. In only the past two weeks, we’ve shared product vision with design teams at Google Gemini, Docusign, SAP, and more. We’re here to help you and your team, too.

This edition is all about using AI to create radically adaptive experiences, interfaces that bend to the user instead of demanding the reverse. These are fun to make and powerful to use—sometimes just a dash of intelligence in a familiar interface, sometimes entirely new interactions.

Designing what’s next. Below we explore the opportunities for interfaces that design themselves to fit the moment, and the new roles those experiences create for designers. We show exactly how to do it with a primer on wiring interface to intent, creating systems that reliably adapt UI to user cues. And we share our favorite recent reads about how others are making this happen, too.

Book update. These themes are all part of Sentient Design, a framework for creating intelligent interfaces that have awareness and agency. It’s also a forthcoming book by Veronika Kindred and me—now in final edits, thanks to kind feedback from advance readers.

What about you? Are you having conversations at your company about what AI means for the next generation of product design? We can help. In particular, we have some new and impactful services to help companies shape product strategy. That’s all in addition to Big Medium’s longstanding production engagements, workshops, and training. Shoot me a note.

You’re right on time. We’ll point you in the right direction, but also: you’re doing great. This is a strange and exciting time for product design, and everyone feels a little behind. Spoiler: if everyone feels behind, nobody is. It’s a great time to learn.

—Josh Clark and the Big Medium team

🍿 The latest

When Interfaces Design Themselves

Radically adaptive experiences change content, structure, style, or behavior—sometimes all at once—to provide the right experience for the moment. It’s tricky territory, but this strange frontier of intelligent interfaces is already here. Learn to navigate it.

WIRING INTERFACE TO INTENT

This primer for designers shows how you implement an interface that changes based on the intent of the user. Just like AI can speak in whatever tone, language, or format you specify, it can equally speak UI. Teaching a LLM to do this can be both easy and reliable.

UX Fika: Josh Clark & Veronika Kindred

Podcast: Don’t settle for an interview that “only” talks about the future of design when you can also get life advice about the Beastie Boys, embarrassing childhood stories, practical magic, and what it’s like for this father-daughter duo to work together.

We Can Help

“We’re facing a big shift, and we’re not sure what to do next.” Big Medium is offering a new set of lightweight, impactful engagements with Josh Clark, focusing on product strategy for AI and for seismic business shifts.

🤓 What We're Reading

  • The Cascade Effect in Context-Based Design Systems
    Nobody’s thinking more crisply about AI and design systems than TJ Pitre. He explains how to bake context into your design system, which pays dividends in both AI-powered automation and next-generation Sentient Design experiences. Plus: free tools!
  • Boring Is Good
    Scott Jenson suggests AI is likely to be more useful for “boring” tasks than for fancy outboard brains that do all our thinking for us.
  • How Developers Are Using Apple’s Local AI Models
    Proving Scott's point, here’s a collection of “casual intelligence” examples in iOS apps, all powered by the small on-device LLMs in iOS 26. Good inspiration for modest interventions. (Also: local models make for implementation that's easy, inexpensive, respectful of privacy, and low in energy consumption.)
  • AI Will Happily Design the Wrong Thing for You
    Anton Sten says that while AI hardly created the problem of ill-considered products, it will certainly accelerate them. Informed choices and strategic thinking are more important than ever.
  • The 28 AI Tools I Wish Existed
    Sharif Shameem pulled together a wishlist of fun and practical ideas for AI-powered applications. Good to get the gears turning.

🪩 Upcoming Events

AI Design Workshop

Online workshop: October 15–16, 2025

Sentient Design: Craft Radically Adaptive Experiences with AI is a two-day online workshop with Josh Clark and Veronika Kindred. This hands-on, zero-hype session provides measured, practical techniques that your team can use today—like right now— to imagine surprising new experiences or to improve existing products.

Enterprise UX

Amersfoort, Netherlands: November 21, 2025

Josh Clark and Veronika Kindred are putting the chocolate of Sentient Design into the peanut butter of enterprise software—delicious! Josh and Veronika will give the closing keynote at this gathering of enterprise UX professionals. They’ll also teach a hands-on master class about how to design and implement AI behavior that drives radically adaptive experiences. (You bring the peanut butter.)

This is Big Design

Big Medium helps complex organizations design for what's next.

We do forward-looking product design and strategy; we create Sentient Design experiences; and we transform digital organizations.

Learn how we can help your team.

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Sign up for practical insights about product design and UX practice—including everything about Sentient Design: the form, philosophy, and framework for creating AI-mediated experiences.