Lessons

1A pattern language for AI48 min read

AI UX is not one component — it is a small, reusable vocabulary: suggestion, citation/provenance, permission/control, and uncertainty. The canonical libraries (HAX, PAIR, NN/g), the named patterns inside each domain, the shipped products that got them right and wrong, and how to choose a pattern by blast radius rather than by what looks nice.

  • →AI Pattern Systems
  • →Control Across Surfaces
Read lesson
2Naming & terminology46 min read

Naming is the highest-leverage, lowest-cost AI pattern work — and the foundation an AI design system has to fix first. How Microsoft, Google, and Adobe standardised their AI vocabularies, the three-layer naming taxonomy (capability · model family · trust tier), why names are now read by agents as well as humans, and the failure modes of ad-hoc naming.

  • →AI Pattern Systems
  • →AI Naming and Voice
Read lesson
3Provenance: authored vs suggested vs executed49 min read

Provenance is a three-mode model, not a binary “AI-generated” badge. Authored / suggested / executed each generate different design primitives, the user decision and rollback cost differ for each, and the sparkle icon is becoming a cross-product standard whose semantics are not yet locked. Adobe Content Credentials, IBM Carbon’s AI Label, Cloudscape, ServiceNow Horizon — the shipped systems and what to steal.

  • →Provenance and Trust
  • →Control Across Surfaces
Read lesson
4Consistency across unpredictable output47 min read

You cannot promise the same paragraph twice — but you can promise the same uncertainty surface. The five hallucination-mitigation patterns NN/g names, the bounded-container approach to variable-length output, confidence at the point of prediction, why warnings must activate at the low-confidence moment instead of sitting at page-bottom, and how a token-and-component system keeps a design coherent when the model does not.

  • →Consistent Uncertainty
  • →AI Pattern Systems
Read lesson
5Capstone: an AI-suggestion pattern across 3 surfaces50 min read

The canonical AI-design exercise: design one reusable AI-suggestion pattern and apply it consistently across three surfaces. The staged 8-step framework reviewers grade on, the pattern spec (states, confidence, provenance, controls), how to make it survive three surfaces without re-inventing, the metrics to name, and a rehearsal of the portfolio-walkthrough probes — pulling every pattern from the track together.

  • →AI Pattern Systems
  • →Control Across Surfaces
  • →Consistent Uncertainty
Read lesson

Skills in this course

  1. 01AI Pattern SystemsSpecify reusable AI patterns by intent, state, risk, and surface.
  2. 02Control Across SurfacesMatch permissions, confirmation, and recovery to action consequence.
  3. 03Provenance and TrustDistinguish authored, suggested, and executed work with inspectable history.
  4. 04Consistent UncertaintyKeep variable output, confidence, and failure states coherent across products.
  5. 05AI Naming and VoiceUse a stable terminology system for capabilities, states, and trust levels.