The eleven commandments of AI UX
Sacred principles for the intelligence era.
In the beginning, there was chaos.
Interfaces without intelligence. Intelligence without empathy. Designers building for yesterday while AI reshapes tomorrow. Teams drowning in possibility, paralyzed by complexity, lost in the noise of a thousand AI tools promising everything and delivering confusion.
The old rules no longer apply. The familiar frameworks have crumbled. We stand at the edge of a new world, watching the foundations of user experience transform before our eyes.
But from chaos comes order.
Just as the original commandments brought moral structure to humanity’s dawn, the AI UX era demands new sacred principles — immutable laws that will guide us through this transformation and beyond.
These are not suggestions. These are not best practices. These are commandments — fundamental truths that will separate the AI UX leaders from the lost.
As Rob Chappell observes, “The future of interaction isn’t just about guiding users smoothly from point A to B. It’s about designing relationships between people and models.” These commandments provide the sacred framework for building those relationships.
Written in silicon, carved in code, sworn by the designers who will shape tomorrow.
I. Thou shalt design intelligence, not just interfaces
The First Law: In AI-native products, the interface IS the intelligence
Gone are the days when UI was merely a pretty wrapper around functionality. In the intelligence era, every pixel is a decision about how AI behaves. Every interaction teaches the system how to think. Every design choice shapes the personality of artificial minds.
When you design a notification, you’re not choosing colors — you’re defining when intelligence interrupts. When you craft a conversation flow, you’re not writing copy — you’re teaching AI how to speak to humans.
As Rachel Kobetz observes, “Intelligence is no longer hidden behind the interface — it is the interface. As systems become adaptive, multimodal, and context-aware, experience is no longer downstream from strategy. It is the strategy.”
Sacred Practice:
- Design behavior flows before visual interfaces
- Create AI personality guides alongside style guides
- Think in learning loops, not user journeys
- Make every interaction a teaching moment
The Consequence of Breaking This Law: Interfaces that feel artificial, intelligence that seems disconnected, and users who never trust the system enough to let it truly help them.
II. Thou shalt lead from the future, not follow the present
The Second Law: Visionary designers shape tomorrow, they don’t perfect yesterday
While others debate whether AI will change design, you must be actively creating that change. The future belongs to those who see around corners, who build bridges to worlds that don’t yet exist, who translate emerging possibilities into present realities.
Do not wait for briefs. Write them. Do not wait for strategy. Create it. Do not wait for permission. Take ownership.
Sacred Practice:
- Prototype futures, not features
- Anticipate user needs that emerge from new AI capabilities
- Build for the world of 2030, deploy in 2025
- Create the conversation before others join it
The Consequence of Breaking This Law: Eternal catching-up, reactive design, and watching others define the future you could have created.
III. Thou shalt make transparency sacred, not optional
The Third Law: Trust is the ultimate conversion metric in AI products
Users don’t just need to understand what happened — they need to feel confident about what will happen. In a world of black-box algorithms, transparency becomes the bridge between human doubt and digital faith.
But transparency without clarity is just noise. Your sacred duty is to reveal AI decision-making in ways that build understanding, not overwhelm cognition.
Think of control maps as the new journey maps for AI experiences. Instead of mapping what users do, map who is in control — user, AI, or both — and when that control shifts.
As Rob Chappell notes, “The question is no longer ‘What is the user trying to do?’ The more relevant question is: ‘Who is in control at this moment, and how does that shift?’”
Sacred Practice:
- Show AI confidence levels visually
- Reveal reasoning in human-friendly terms
- Create control maps that visualize who has agency at each moment
- Provide meaningful controls over AI behavior with clear handoff points
- Build progressive trust through contextual understanding
- Implement steerability: let users adjust AI behavior mid-task
The Consequence of Breaking This Law: Users who never fully trust the AI, limiting adoption, reducing effectiveness, and ultimately failing to realize the true potential of intelligent systems.
IV. Thou shalt orchestrate collaboration, not competition
The Fourth Law: The future is human WITH AI, not human VERSUS AI
Your role is not to protect humans from AI or to replace humans with AI. Your sacred mission is to orchestrate the dance between human intuition and artificial intelligence — creating partnerships that amplify the best of both.
Design for Andrej Karpathy’s “autonomy slider” — a dynamic spectrum where control flows between two fundamental modes:
Human-as-Driver Mode: Users give detailed, explicit commands. The AI executes based on instructions. Focus on input clarity and structured guidance.
Model-as-Driver Mode: Users give high-level goals. The AI plans, decides, and iterates. Focus on explainability and override controls.
This isn’t a toggle — it’s a fluid scale that shifts throughout each session, creating what researchers call “co-agency.”
Design for augmentation, not automation. Create workflows where AI handles complexity while humans provide wisdom, creativity, and empathy.
Sacred Practice:
- Design AI as a creative partner, not a replacement
- Create clear handoffs between human and AI decision-making
- Build systems that learn from human feedback
- Ensure humans maintain meaningful control
The Consequence of Breaking This Law: AI that feels threatening rather than empowering, users who resist intelligent features, and products that fail to capture the magic of human-AI collaboration.
V. Thou shalt design for adaptation, not static perfection
The Fifth Law: AI-native experiences evolve, they don’t just execute
Forget pixel-perfect mockups. Abandon fixed user journeys. In the intelligence era, experiences adapt to context, learn from behavior, and evolve over time. Your designs must be living systems, not static artifacts.
Build interfaces that can become more intelligent, more personalized, and more helpful with every interaction — while maintaining coherence and user control.
Sacred Practice:
- Create design systems that adapt without breaking
- Design for personalization at scale
- Build learning mechanisms into every interaction
- Plan for evolution, not just launch
The Consequence of Breaking This Law: Experiences that feel outdated immediately, AI that never improves, and products that can’t compete with systems that learn and adapt.
VI. Thou shalt honor multimodal harmony above screen obsession
The Sixth Law: The future of interface design transcends screens.
As AI becomes more conversational and contextual, experiences will span voice, gesture, ambient signals, and predictive actions. Your sacred duty is to create coherent experiences across all these modalities — designing for a world where the best interface is often invisible.
Think beyond the screen. Design for the entire environment. Create experiences that flow seamlessly between voice, touch, and ambient intelligence.
Sacred Practice:
- Map experiences across all interaction modalities
- Design for context-aware interface transitions
- Create ambient intelligence that respects boundaries
- Build voice-first, screen-second experiences
The Consequence of Breaking This Law: Fragmented experiences across modalities, AI that feels confined to screens, and missing the opportunity to create truly ambient intelligence.
VII. Thou shalt be proactive in creation, not reactive in execution
The Seventh Law: Great designers shape the conversation before it starts
Do not wait for specifications. Do not polish other people’s ideas. Do not react to requirements. In the AI era, the most valuable designers are those who bring vision to chaos, who see opportunities before problems are defined, who create coherence when others see only complexity.
Lead with conviction. Shape with purpose. Create with intention.
Sacred Practice:
- Bring solutions to meetings, not just questions
- Create prototypes that provoke decisions
- Shape product roadmaps through design vision
- Turn ambiguity into opportunity
The Consequence of Breaking This Law: Being relegated to execution instead of strategy, missing opportunities to shape meaningful innovation, and watching others define the future of your product.
VIII. Thou shalt curate AI personality with intentional design
The Eighth Law: Every AI system has a personality — design it deliberately
Whether you design it or not, your AI will develop a personality through its interactions. Users will form emotional relationships with intelligent systems. Your sacred responsibility is to ensure this personality serves users and represents your values intentionally.
Define how your AI thinks, speaks, and behaves. Give it consistent values. Set clear ethical boundaries. Make it human-friendly without making it fake-human.
Sacred Practice:
- Define AI personality guidelines as rigorously as brand guidelines
- Create consistent voice and tone across all AI interactions
- Set clear ethical boundaries for AI behavior
- Design emotional intelligence into AI responses
The Consequence of Breaking This Law: AI personality that emerges accidentally, inconsistent experiences that confuse users, and missing the opportunity to create meaningful emotional connections with intelligent systems.
IX. Thou shalt respect asynchronous intelligence over immediate gratification
The Ninth Law: The most powerful AI experiences happen outside real-time interaction
Not all AI value comes from instant responses. Some of the most transformative experiences happen when AI works autonomously — analyzing, preparing, optimizing — while users live their lives. Design for these asynchronous moments as thoughtfully as real-time interactions.
Create AI that works while users sleep, that prepares insights before users ask, that solves problems before they become urgent.
Sacred Practice:
- Design clear handoffs for autonomous AI work
- Create meaningful progress indicators for background processing
- Build trust in AI that works independently
- Design re-engagement patterns when AI completes autonomous tasks
The Consequence of Breaking This Law: AI limited to reactive responses, missing opportunities for proactive assistance, and failing to leverage the full potential of intelligent automation.
X. Thou shalt design for both human and AI audiences
The Tenth Law: Your next user might be artificial
In an agentic future, AI systems will interact with your products on behalf of users. Your interfaces must serve both human intuition and machine readability. Design systems that humans love and AI agents can navigate efficiently.
This dual-audience design challenge will separate the visionary designers from those stuck in human-only thinking.
Sacred Practice:
- Create interfaces that are both beautiful and machine-readable
- Design APIs and experiences simultaneously
- Build structured data into user interfaces
- Plan for AI-to-AI interactions within human experiences
The Consequence of Breaking This Law: Products that become obsolete as AI agents proliferate, missing the opportunity to be part of the agentic ecosystem, and limiting your product’s ability to integrate with the AI-powered future.
XI. Thou shalt design fluid control, not rigid handoffs
The Eleventh Law: Control flows like water, not like switches
Control in AI systems isn’t binary — it’s negotiated moment by moment. Users must feel they can seamlessly move between leading and following, between commanding and collaborating.
Design control transitions that feel natural: ensure the current control state is always visible, provide clear entry and exit points for AI assistance, allow users to interrupt, redirect, or take over at any moment, and create “control affordances” — interface elements that communicate who has agency in each interaction.
Sacred Practice:
- Map control flows, not just user flows
- Design visible control states and transition points
- Implement “steerability” at every AI interaction
- Create clear reversibility pathways
- Test control transitions as rigorously as you test features
The Consequence of Breaking This Law: Users who feel trapped by AI decisions, systems that feel unpredictable, and the failure to achieve true human-AI collaboration.
The covenant: Living by these laws
These commandments are not mere guidelines — they are the foundation upon which the future of AI UX will be built. Every great designer who shapes the intelligence era will embody these principles. Every product that truly transforms human capability will reflect these truths.
To follow these commandments is to:
- Lead the transformation instead of being led by it
- Create order from chaos
- Build trust in an era of uncertainty
- Design experiences that feel magical, not mechanical
- Shape the future of human-AI interaction
To ignore them is to:
- Remain trapped in outdated paradigms
- Miss the greatest design opportunity of our lifetime
- Watch others define the future you could have created
- Build products that feel obsolete the day they launch
The choice is sacred
Every designer working today faces a choice that will define not just their career, but the future of human-computer interaction itself.
You can cling to the old commandments — the familiar rules of traditional UX, the comfort of known patterns, the safety of reactive design.
Or you can embrace these new sacred principles, step into the role of an AI UX pioneer, and help write the next chapter of human-digital interaction.
The tablets have been carved.
The commandments have been revealed.
The only question remaining is: Will you follow them?
The future of AI UX will be shaped by those who understand these principles are not suggestions — they are laws. Natural laws of the intelligence era, as fundamental as gravity, as powerful as evolution, as inevitable as progress itself.
Choose your path. The future is watching.
The eleven commandments of AI UX was originally published in UX Collective on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
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