Designing for uncertainty and control + Cost, rate limits and abuse in AI UIs
Comes up in: Frontend system design, AI system design, Hiring manager
This concept is being written. It gets the full five steps — explanation, predict, interview angle, practice with tests, and review cards. Here is exactly what it will cover, so you can study it elsewhere in the meantime.
What it covers
- setting expectations
- showing sources and confidence carefully
- easy correction and undo
- user control over autonomy levels
- graceful failure
- feedback (thumbs, edits) as eval data
- disclosure that content is AI-generated
- showing usage/quotas
- preventing runaway requests (debounce, cancel on navigate)
- abuse prevention (auth, Turnstile, per-user limits)
- graceful degradation when AI is off
Words you will know
What you will practise
- UX review of 3 AI features
- design quota UX for a free tier
Interview questions this answers
- How do you design an AI feature so users can trust and verify it?
- How would you collect user feedback that helps improve the model's outputs?
- How do you stop a free AI feature from being abused?