As AI embeds itself into everyday products, the challenge is no longer just generating better outputs or automating more tasks. It is about helping people stay connected to what they are doing and to what the tools are doing on their behalf.
When automation becomes too invisible or takes over too much, something important gets lost. The interface may work perfectly, but users begin to feel disconnected, less in control and less able to make sense of their own actions and decisions. Instead of reducing effort, automation can quietly increase cognitive load and erode the conditions for trust: legibility, predictability and a felt sense of agency.
This talk explores how behavioral UX, cognitive offloading and spatial thinking can help us design for what automation too often destroys in products: the user’s ability to understand what is happening, know why it is happening, and feel empowered to control it.
A central example is Bloomie, a habit tracker, Öykü designed and shipped herself, built around one research finding: most habit apps lose users not because of missing features but because they punish inconsistency instead of supporting people through it. Bloomie replaces guilt-based mechanics with emotional continuity. It stays with users through imperfection instead of abandoning them for it. This is one instance of a broader pattern: when we design for sense-making rather than mere task completion, we build products that people can trust emotionally.
Takeaways
Attendees will leave with:
- A reframing of sense-making as a design goal: how to build interfaces that help users understand what is happening and feel in control.
- Patterns for replacing punitive or guilt-based mechanics with systems that support users through inconsistency and imperfection.
- A guidance for recognizing when automation is helping versus when it is undermining transparency, trust and user control.
- Practical design principles drawn from behavioral UX, cognitive offloading and spatial logic.
Target Audience
This talk is relevant to anyone involved in designing or shaping digital products in an era of increasing automation:
- UX and product designers who work on AI-assisted or automated features and want to preserve user agency and trust.
- Product managers navigating decisions about how much to automate and what to keep visible to the user.
- Researchers interested in the cognitive and emotional effects of automation on user behavior.
- Design leads and strategists thinking about how to build internal design culture that puts human rationality at the center.
