At World Summit AI, Atlassian’s Rachel Shepard shares how rethinking “agents” as Skills builds trust, reduces friction, and drives AI adoption.

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Atlassian AI design leader Rachel Shepard shares how the team tackled low AI adoption by rethinking how agents are presented to users. Facing 'agent sprawl' — dozens of inconsistent, role-based agents causing confusion — the team ran a design sprint and shifted from agent-focused UX to composable 'Skills': smaller capabilities embedded directly into the interface. This reduced cognitive load, aligned with users' mental models, and increased feature usage. On the platform side, a shared skills registry was introduced to centralize first- and third-party capabilities. The core insight: UX doesn't need to mirror architecture, and over-branding features as 'AI' or 'agent' can hurt adoption rather than help it.

Driving AI adoption through trust: Insights from Atlassian designer Rachel Shepard

How do you introduce powerful AI agents to users without overwhelming or confusing them?

Setting up the sprint: challenging agent assumptions

Design principles: meet users where they are

Scaling the model: tooling, patterns, and a skills playground

Closing advice: let experience strategy shape the platform