An essential guide for building responsible and revolutionary AI-mediated user experiences.
A veteran designer and a data scientist explore the idea of sentient design to provide a road map for the next era of design and user experience.
In this insightful manual, Clark and Kindred define sentient design as the practice of creating intelligent interfaces that adapt to real-time user context. The authors argue that AI should be treated as a new and unique design material, comparing its transformative potential to that of the versatility of the Roman concrete used to construct the Pantheon. As Clark and Kindred write, “Describe the thing you want, and the answer or artifact appears…In fact, thanks to the awareness and anticipation of these systems, you may not even have to ask at all.” The authors’ concept is built around the “Sentient Triangle,” a visual tool that maps experiences based on machine-intelligent characteristics. Within this framework are four fundamental user “postures” for sentient design, in addition to a variety of design patterns that contribute to the intelligent interfaces. (“You’ll learn the UI [user interface] patterns, interaction patterns, and functional patterns that animate each of these intelligent interfaces.”) This work is distinguished from standard tech guides by its measured, ethical stance; Clark and Kindred dedicate space to defensive design, teaching readers ways to manage the often fickle, sycophantic, and hallucinatory nature of AI. The authors offer practical design techniques for handling bias and overconfidence, emphasizing that systems must remain adherent to human interactions and judgment. By analyzing everyday digital tools, Clark and Kindred demonstrate how sentient design already functions and how it can be adapted for future experiences. The collaborative voice of the authors infuses a tone of experienced wisdom into the text, effectively blending high-tech subject matter with human-centric techniques and values that will be useful to product leaders and designers.
An essential guide for building responsible and revolutionary AI-mediated user experiences.Pub Date: June 9, 2026
ISBN: 9781959029182
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Rosenfeld Media
Review Posted Online: May 8, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.
Words that made a nation.
Isaacson is known for expansive biographies of great thinkers (and Elon Musk), but here he pens a succinct, stimulating commentary on the Founding Fathers’ ode to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” His close reading of the Declaration of Independence’s second sentence, published to mark the 250th anniversary of the document’s adoption, doesn’t downplay its “moral contradiction.” Thomas Jefferson enslaved hundreds of people yet called slavery “a cruel war against human nature” in his first draft of the Declaration. All but 15 of the document’s 56 signers owned enslaved people. While the sentence in question asserted “all men are created equal” and possess “unalienable rights,” the Founders “consciously and intentionally” excluded women, Native Americans, and enslaved people. And yet the sentence is powerful, Isaacson writes, because it names a young nation’s “aspirations.” He mounts a solid defense of what ought to be shared goals, among them economic fairness, “moral compassion,” and a willingness to compromise. “Democracy depends on this,” he writes. Isaacson is excellent when explaining how Enlightenment intellectuals abroad influenced the founders. Benjamin Franklin, one of the Declaration’s “five-person drafting committee,” stayed in David Hume’s home for a month in the early 1770s, “discussing ideas of natural rights” with the Scottish philosopher. Also strong is Isaacson’s discussion of the “edits and tweaks” made to Jefferson’s draft. As recommended by Franklin and others, the changes were substantial, leaving Jefferson “distraught.” Franklin, who emerges as the book’s hero, helped establish municipal services, founded a library, and encouraged religious diversity—the kind of civic-mindedness that we could use more of today, Isaacson reminds us.
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.Pub Date: Nov. 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781982181314
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
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