Two years ago, Josh Clark and Veronika Kindred previewed a book about a coming era of sentient digital experiences on this show. That book, Sentient Design, is out now — and the future it predicted arrived faster than most companies' data, governance, or restraint could keep up with.We talk with them about why most "agentic" features are still just a chat sidebar bolted onto an old product, what a gym-booking AI agent's very bad week reveals about designing for agents instead of people, and why Google running the biggest sentient design experiment alive — its own AI Overviews — is already rewriting how businesses get found.In this episode we cover:➜ Don't wait for perfect data — legacy data, not ambition, is blocking three live Fortune 50 sentient design projects.➜ Personalization is quietly becoming individualization — reading the moment, not building a permanent profile.➜ Defensive design: teaching AI systems humility and users healthy skepticism, so neither is taken at face value.➜ Agents need their own front door — if you don't design one, somebody finds the back door instead.➜ AI is a reckoning, not a feature: the real opportunity is removing interface entirely, not adding more of it.➜ Google's AI Overviews are the biggest live sentient design experiment, and businesses never agreed to it..................."Putting a chat sidebar on an existing thing, it's like bolting a spoiler onto a crummy Honda." — Josh Clark"With LLMs, it's a really siloing technology." — Veronika Kindred"We're not gonna have a single interface that swallows them all — although clearly OpenAI would like to see that happen." — Josh ClarkAbout Josh Clark & Veronika Kindred:Josh Clark is principal of Big Medium, a design studio working with organizations on next-generation interfaces, and coined the term "Sentient Design" in 2024. Veronika Kindred is a designer and researcher at Big Medium who leads Sentient Design workshops for startups and Fortune 100 companies. Together they're the co-authors of Sentient Design: Crafting Intelligent Interfaces with AI (Rosenfeld Media, 2026) — and returning guests, having first previewed the book on this show in October 2024.Find Josh on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshclark/Find Veronika on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vkind/Get the book: https://rosenfeldmedia.com/books/sentient-design/Josh & Veronika set up a coupon code for Product Impact listeners: 20% off Sentient Design at Rosenfeld Media.➜ Use coupon code: SENTIENT-PI at https://rosenfeldmedia.com/books/sentient-design/➜ Expires September 12..................If you found this episode useful, please like, share, and send it to anyone on your team who'd find it helpful.We built https://productimpactpod.com to be your AI product insights and strategic playbook hub. Check it out.Thank you for listening to the Product Impact Podcast — if you have feedback, guest recommendations, or want to chat — contact us.Hosted by:➜ Arpy Dragffy Guerrero — https://www.linkedin.com/in/adragffy/➜ Brittany Hobbs — https://www.linkedin.com/in/brittanyhobbs/Go to Substack to get AI strategy frameworks, news, and jobs: https://productimpactpod.substack.comThis episode was brought to you by:➜ PH1 (https://ph1.ca) — a strategy & research consultancy specialized in delivering evidence about the highest value use cases and customer profiles.➜ AI Value Acceleration (https://aivalueacceleration.com) — The consultancy specialising in enterprise value creation. Make sure that your spending doesn't go to waste. Find out exactly where the value creation of adopting AI products stalls.

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