Technology
Designing AI that people actually trust
Legibility beats personality. What we learned shipping AI products that people rely on every day.
Idris Mensah
Technical Director
7
min read
Most AI products fail the same way: they sound confident and explain nothing. People stop trusting them the first time an answer is wrong and they can’t see why.
Show your working
On Parallax we designed every suggestion to carry its sources in the interface — visible, tappable, and ranked by how much they contributed. Trust scores in testing rose more from that one decision than from any change to the model.
“Trust is a design decision, not a model decision.”
Calm by default
We remove typing animations, sparkles and personality. The assistant appears when asked, answers plainly, and steps aside. Quiet interfaces feel more capable — and they age far better than novelty.
Written by
Idris Mensah
Technical Director
at Kairo
Keep reading
More from the journal
Brand thinking
6
min
Kai Tanaka
How strategy shapes more memorable identities
The best identities start as a sentence, not a sketch. Why we write before we draw — and what that sentence has to do.
Technology
7
min
Idris Mensah
Designing AI that people actually trust
Legibility beats personality. What we learned shipping AI products that people rely on every day.
Design systems
5
min
Nadia Rahimi
Motion is the new logo
On screens, brands are remembered by how they move. Building motion systems, not animations.
Process
6
min
Theo Laurent
Inside the studio: how a two-week sprint really works
No account managers, no slide decks. A look at the rhythm behind every project we ship.