Article
Designing for the Person Who Decides and the Software That Does
Picture this. Thandi’s car is overdue for a service. Rather than open the dealership’s website, she asks her AI assistant: “Book my car in for next week’s morning drop-off, and tell me what it will cost.”
The assistant visits the site for her. The service options are shown as icons with no names. The price reads “from R1 499”, with a workshop fee that only appears at the final step. Available dates sit inside an image of a calendar. After several attempts, the assistant returns with a half-finished booking and a question it can’t answer.
Thandi books with a competitor. The dealership sees one more abandoned session.
A new kind of visitor, not a new kind of customer
AI assistants and browser agents now complete everyday tasks on people’s behalf: comparing options, filling in forms, making bookings. In practice, they behave like any other user: they arrive with a goal, meet your interface and try to get the job done. Your site either helps them or it doesn’t.
The customer hasn’t changed. Thandi still decides where her car goes and what she’ll pay. What has changed is who does the clicking. UX now designs for two audiences at once: the person who decides and the software that does.
What an agent needs, and who else needs it
Agents don’t all use websites in the same way. Some interpret what’s on screen, much as a person would. Others use the page’s underlying structure and accessibility information to understand its content and controls. Many combine approaches.
Whichever route they take, a clearly structured site is easier to use. That comes down to a few fundamentals:
- Clear labels: buttons and links that say what they do, not just an icon or “click here”.
- Predictable steps: familiar forms that behave the same way every time.
- Structure that matches the screen: if information looks grouped, it is grouped underneath.
- Honest pricing: the full cost, shown early.
Accessibility pays off twice
Almost everything that helps an agent also helps a person, especially people who use screen readers, voice control or a keyboard instead of a mouse. Organisations that have taken accessibility seriously have, often without realising it, been building sites agents can already find their way around.
That moves accessibility beyond compliance. Every unlabelled button or confusing form is a point where a customer, or the assistant acting for them, can give up. Removing that friction makes it easier for more people to complete what they came to do, whether that’s booking a service, submitting an application or finding an answer without calling the contact centre. Accessible design widens the pool of customers who can do business with you, and the same investment prepares your service for the assistants they increasingly rely on.
Where it breaks
What trips agents up is largely what already frustrates people.
- Hidden fees. Costs that appear only at checkout are a recognised deceptive pattern. An assistant asked for the total cost may not be able to give the customer an accurate figure.
- Manipulative design. Pre-ticked add-ons, false urgency and confusing opt-outs. These patterns erode trust.
- Information locked in images or PDFs. Dates, prices or terms that only exist visually make it difficult for some agents and assistive technologies to interpret reliably, particularly when accessible text alternatives are missing.
- Pop-ups and time limits. In a 2025 test by Nielsen Norman Group, an AI agent booking a restaurant table had to close a pop-up, misclicked a time dropdown and took 11 minutes to complete forms the researcher finished in about two. The table hold expired before it was done.
For an agent, each obstacle risks ending the task. For someone using assistive technology, it often already does.
Trust moments, not just screens
If an assistant handles the browsing, where does your brand show up? Increasingly, in the moments around the task: the confirmation, the reminder the day before, the follow-up once the job is done.
As AI assistants take on more of the browsing, customers may encounter fewer of the screens where brands traditionally express their identity. This makes the moments surrounding a transaction increasingly important for building trust. That trust is built on transparency, control, consistency and support when something goes wrong. A confirmation that states exactly what was booked, and at what price, will do more for your brand than a homepage banner the agent never looked at.
Humans in the loop, by design
Not every decision should be handed over. While routine tasks can be automated, actions involving significant costs, sensitive information or lasting consequences need appropriate human oversight. The customer should understand what’s about to happen and have the opportunity to review or approve important decisions. These checkpoints are sometimes called decision gates: moments where the system pauses for a person before an action with real consequences.
Good design makes these handovers easy. Summarise what’s about to happen in plain language, show the final cost, and make it simple to confirm, change or cancel. In regulated sectors, some friction exists for good reason. The aim isn’t to remove every step. It’s to make sure the steps that remain are the ones that matter.
Five questions for this quarter
- Could someone understand every button, link and form field on your key journey without seeing it?
- Can customers see the total cost, including mandatory fees, before committing?
- Is any essential information only available in an image or PDF?
- Can customers complete your key journeys without unexpected pop-ups, confusing controls or unnecessary time limits?
- Where a decision carries real consequences, is it clear what the customer is agreeing to, and easy to confirm or undo?
If you answered “not sure” more than once, that’s worth looking into. Identifying potential barriers is the starting point. Understanding which ones affect your customers and business most takes a closer look.
For Thandi, those barriers meant an unfinished booking and a customer lost to a competitor. A clearer, more accessible journey could have made the difference.
As part of our Digital Experience Design service, So Interactive reviews key customer journeys to identify where people, and the agents acting for them, may encounter friction. We help businesses prioritise improvements that make digital experiences more accessible, usable and effective.
Is your website ready for both audiences? Talk to So Interactive about reviewing your most important customer journeys.
So Interactive is a digital experience design agency working with mid-to-large enterprises across South Africa and beyond. We design products that solve real problems for real users and deliver measurable results for the businesses behind them.
