Introduction to Agentic Experience Design

Learn how to design responsible, effective AI agents using the CDI Method for Agentic Experience Design (AXD). This course teaches how to decide where agents should act, design their behavior, and deploy them with governance, trust, and human-centric experience at the core.

Agentic systems are transforming how organizations design and deliver customer experiences. Instead of rigid workflows or scripted bots, AI agents can reason, take action, and coordinate across systems. Designing these experiences requires a new discipline: Agentic Experience Design (AXD).

In this course, you will learn the CDI Method for Agentic Systems, a structured approach for deciding where agents should act, designing how they behave, and deploying them responsibly at scale. Rather than focusing on prompts or specific tools, the course emphasizes human-centric design, governance, and real-world decision making. You will learn how to define agent roles, map complex context, design golden conversations, structure enterprise knowledge, and integrate agents into systems while maintaining trust and control.

This course forms the foundation of CDI’s Agentic Experience Design (AXD) Certification, with a condensed version available for current CDI course plan subscribers.

By the end of the course, you will understand how to design, validate, and deploy agentic systems that are effective, safe, and aligned with real human needs.

Understand the shift from traditional automation to agentic systems and why it changes how experiences are designed
Identify where AI agents add value in customer journeys, and where automation should not be used
Apply the CDI Agentic Method to define strategy, design behavior, and plan implementation
Design agent roles, guidelines, and behavioral boundaries for responsible AI systems
Map human, organizational, and data context using the Agentic Canvas
Create golden conversations that include failure handling, escalation, and action patterns
Test agent designs through user testing, adversarial scenarios, and evaluation sets
Structure enterprise knowledge and grounding systems to prevent hallucinations
Integrate agents with tools, APIs, and enterprise systems using governance and permissions
Deploy and operate agentic systems with monitoring, incident response, and continuous improvement

In 2018, Hans co-founded the Conversation Design Institute to establish processes, techniques, and organizational standards to professionalize the role of conversation design within large enterprises.

Hans also sits upon the board of CDI Foundation, which is focused on undertaking research, education and industry development, along with providing scholarships to help people from underrepresented and disadvantaged backgrounds enter the CAI industry.