Howdy folks! Below are 3 key design tactics I learned from interviewing Carol Lei at Mercury about her agentic design process.
1. Understand how the agent thinks before prototyping
Carol didn't jump straight into pixels. She sketched a little diagram in Figma to map what the agent actually does. For example the agent gets context, does its thinking and crunching, then outputs something the customer can read without hunting for a button.
That mental model was her grounding moment. Once she understood how the agent operates she began vibe coding different ideas!
2. Design in production vs Figma/AI tools
Carol started in Figma and then vibe coded prototypes in Cursor but kept hitting a ceiling. Agentic experiences are non-deterministic so a prototype can only take you so far.
To really understand how the agent responds she had to design directly in production with the actual model and real data.
3. Agentic design principle
A key principle Carol designed around is intentional confirmation. The system asks follow up questions and drafts the transfer for you but it never transfers the money on its own.
You confirm the final action with a deliberate button press. This prevents customers from accidentally moving money to the wrong account or recipient!
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