What might design systems for AX look like?

[quarterback]

If we’re designing for agents, not just users, what new elements need to be part of a design system? Tone and voice are obvious starting points, but what about morphology—the ways we visually or structurally represent agents?

This feels a bit like the early chatbot era, where everything was focused on user input, but with agents, we’re dealing with multi-modal interactions. Not everything needs to be user-triggered—so how do we design for autonomy versus centralization?

Do we focus on visible, transparent agent actions or lean toward seamless integration that "just works" behind the scenes?

Just some scattered thoughts.

[sean-roberts]

This is a great conversation to have. My thinking here is that there's going to be a principle for AX that includes supporting established structures for providing interaction and context to agents. I think it will be through that that we see more opinions on the conventions we have for it. I do believe that this would be what true generative AI could look like - tell an agent that you'd like to see common structures branded and toned in a specific way and it produces that

[kaelig]

The Salesforce team just published Lightning Design System v2, which includes guidelines for designing agentic experiences: https://www.lightningdesignsystem.com/2e1ef8501/p/95c37a-agentic-experiences

They wrote about their approach here: https://www.salesforce.com/blog/modular-design-benefits-agentforce/

[sean-roberts]

Very cool. Yeah with the traditional areas of tool call based "generative UI" this is the right approach. I also believe this pattern is applicable across design systems and frameworks. You just need the proper context and tools calling. Which is what you see with Salesforce baking this into the SDK