Human-Agent-Experience (HAX) Design

Designing for the Internet of Agents

The Framework Guiding Human-Agent Collaboration

Human-Agent-Experience (HAX) Design

Designing for the Internet of Agents

The Framework Guiding Human-Agent Collaboration

The Human-Agent Experience

We’re moving beyond assistants and copilots. Today’s agents act with greater autonomy, coordinate across systems, and collaborate with humans in more nuanced ways. Designing for this shift requires new patterns of interaction and trust.

This work is grounded in years of design research and product development by the Outshift Product Design team, defining principles, frameworks, and patterns for agentic systems that are trustworthy, transparent, and truly collaborative.

Build Better Agent Interfaces with the HAX SDK

The HAX SDK gives developers everything they need to integrate agents into their apps, without losing clarity, structure, or control. Use structured schemas, prebuilt components, and clear boundaries to keep agent behavior collaborative and predictable.

Guiding Principles

Control

Humans guide interactions. Agents adapt to human intent and follow their lead through every step.

Clarity

Keep partnership transparent. AI communicates actions clearly, using progressive disclosure to reveal more detail when needed.

Recovery

Own the mistakes. When Agent gets it wrong, it helps users identify the issue, offer clear paths to correct it, and learns from the experience.

Collaboration

Work together towards shared goals. Agents contribute actively while staying responsive to user preferences and feedback.

Traceability

Build understanding and trust. Agent makes their reasoning visible so users can see how decisions were reached.

A Research-Driven Framework for Agentic Design

These five principles emerged from studying how people actually interact with agentic systems - what works, where trust breaks down, and how collaboration succeeds or fails in practice.Dive deeper into the patterns, failures, and design insights.