Agentic design: what leaders are prioritizing now
Designing agentic products means balancing capability with control. Leaders from companies including Accor, Expedia, and Atlassian have been working through how to build tools that are knowledgeable enough to act as true partners while keeping trust and security at the center. Across recent leadership events and conversations, several clear patterns have emerged.
The trust bar comes first
Trust is the non-negotiable foundation for agentic products. Users are more likely to trust an agent when it shows its work and cites its sources. Product leaders should push their teams to design for transparency and clear communication from the very beginning of development, rather than treating it as an afterthought.
That trust bar is also the gate for shipping. Leaders should give teams permission to launch once that bar is cleared, even if the product isn’t perfect. Real-world usage is a core part of learning how an agentic product behaves, and waiting for perfection can stall progress indefinitely.
Governance needs early checkpoints
Alignment on governance should happen before deployment, not after. Leaders need everyone to agree on which routine tasks an agent can handle on its own, and what should always require human involvement. Anything touching sensitive health information, for instance, should remain firmly in human hands.
What leaders are saying
A few comments from leaders have stuck with us:
“Our goal is not to ensure that we design what AI can do, but to create the conditions and the rules for the system to behave consistently.” — Thomas Vidal, VP of Product Design, Accor
“You’re not going to launch something that’s perfect on day one, because that’s not how building agents works. You need to learn a lot through actual usage and execution. Rigor around testing and launching is important.” — Rachel Been, SVP of Design, Expedia
“Fairly soon, we’re going to be giving agents increasingly autonomous control over workflows. We need to make sure a person remains accountable for what those agents do.” — Charlie Sutton, Chief Design Officer, Atlassian
“The job for leaders isn’t to push your team to try harder. It’s redefining what good actually means, so that people can see a gap that they couldn’t otherwise see on their own.” — Jake Albaugh, Developer Advocate, Figma
Beyond the basics
Leaders are also exploring broader questions about how agentic design intersects with team velocity and organizational change. Common threads include how to harness speed without accruing tech debt, and how to keep design teams steady through periods of constant change as AI reshapes workflows.
