Why we need to design products for machines - Katja Forbes (Executive Director, Standard Chartered Bank)

Aug 27, 2025

Katja Forbes, Executive Director at Standard Chartered Bank and design leader, discusses the emerging world of machine customers. She explains why businesses must prepare for AI agents and autonomous vehicles acting as customers. Key insights include the importance of making value propositions machine-readable and establishing trust through quantifiable metrics. Katja also highlights that new roles like trust analysts will be vital in this landscape and warns about the ethical implications of agentic commerce. Small businesses can start by structuring their data to be machine-readable.

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INSIGHT

The Thing Can Become The Customer

Machine customers (AI agents, autonomous devices, procurement bots) will transact on behalf of humans and change buyer-seller dynamics.
Businesses must rethink customer experience beyond human UI to serve non-human decision-makers.

ANECDOTE

Tyler The Life-Organising Agent

Katja describes a hypothetical agent named Tyler that manages shopping and bookings on behalf of a human.
She uses Tyler to show how businesses must prepare to transact with non-human customers.

INSIGHT

APIs Aren't The Whole Answer

APIs provide the plumbing but don't solve trust, liability, or value-alignment between firms and machine agents.
Organisations must signal permissions, representation, and accountability to incoming agentic customers.

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In this episode of The Product Experience, Randy Silver and Lily Smith sit down with Katja Forbes, Executive Director at Standard Chartered Bank, design leader, and lecturer, to explore the fast-approaching world of machine customers.

Katja shares why businesses must prepare for a future where AI agents, autonomous vehicles, and procurement bots act as customers, and what this means for product managers, designers, and organisations.

Key takeaways

Machine customers are here already. From booking services for Tesla cars to procurement bots closing contracts, AI-driven commerce is no longer hypothetical.
APIs are necessary but insufficient. Businesses need to think beyond plumbing and address trust, compliance, and customer experience for non-human agents.
Signal clarity matters. Organisations must make their value propositions machine-readable to remain competitive.
Trust will be quantified. Compliance signals, ESG proof, uptime guarantees, and reliability ratings will replace human gut instinct.
New roles will emerge. Trust analysts and human–machine hybrid coordinators will be critical in shaping future interactions.
Ethics cannot be ignored. Without careful design, agentic commerce could amplify consumerism and poor societal outcomes.
Practical first step. Even small businesses can prepare by structuring their product and service data into machine-readable formats.
Product managers must adapt. The skill to manage ambiguity, think systemically, and anticipate unintended consequences will be central to success.

Featured Links: Follow Katja on LinkedIn | Katja's website | Sign-up for pre sale access to Katja's forthcoming book 'The CX Evolutionist'

Our Hosts
Lily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She’s currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She’s worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath.

Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury’s. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group’s Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether) and Product Coaches. He’s the author of What Do We Do Now? A Product Manager’s Guide to Strategy in the Time of COVID-19. A recovering music journalist and editor, Randy also launched Amazon’s music stores in the US & UK.