How Agentic AI Will Impact Streaming Navigation and UX Design
As streaming UX designers increasingly incorporate agentic AI technology innovation into streaming platforms and services, according to Google Senior Director of Engineering for Android Platforms Shobana Radhakrishnan, there’s an opportunity to revisualize the user journey in a much more modular way. Radhakrishnan discusses the modularity that’s built into agentic architectures, the expanded ways of working in UX design that the technology makes possible, and the new flexibility today’s engineers enjoy in this clip from her keynote with moderator Reality Software’s Nadine Krefetz at Streaming Media Connect 2026.
The Impact of Feature Modularity
Krefetz acknowledges that there are a lot of questions about where AI fits into the streaming industry. She wonders how agentic AI is impacting or will impact how consumers navigate streaming services, calling it a wide open space.
Radhakrishnan replies, “That’s exactly right, Nadine. It’s a wide open space, which is what makes it exciting because we are lucky to be the generation of bringing agentic innovation into the products we build. What I think is, having built consumer products for almost a couple of decades now, this is one of the most exciting opportunities because I feel that with agentic, you can revisualize user experiences in terms of … the user journeys in a much more modular way than was possible before.”
Radhakrishnan uses the example of a user having one goal at a time in mind when using a product, even if they access it on an ongoing basis. The addition of “feature modularity, which maps to individual user journeys much more naturally, is possible with agentic architectures,” Radhakrishnan notes. When a user, say, plays a movie, “the technical elements that are involved in making that happen are multifold. And you may see some things happening on the client [side], some things happening on the cloud and the server. It’s very complex. What if you could revisualize the unit of modularity as not code pieces, but features? It’s much easier to tie it to user journeys if you can revisualize the unit of architectural modularity as features rather than code components. And agentic architectures and agentic AI and UI visualization make this much more naturally possible.” She calls that a win for UX.
Speeding Up the Pace of Iteration
Krefetz says her mind goes to the engineers—do they have to change their focus? Or is agentic AI an organic extension of what they already do?
“I would say it’s an expanded way of thinking,” Radhakrishnan asserts. “I feel like there’s a lot more tools to do very effective engineering and architectures than we had before. And even when we take a step back and revisualize, I think the agentic era allows product leaders, UX leaders, and engineering [leaders] to all think differently and iterate together.”
Agentic workflows make iteration easier, she notes. A product leader, a UX leader, and an engineering leader can collaborate on how something looks, what changes to make, etc. This used to take months or quarters of a year, but now, with agentic AI, “this iteration can be a lot more natural than ever before because we have much more advanced tools to quickly show screens and sit together and talk about how does this look for the user rather than waiting [for] weeks and weeks of deep-code development before you can even see the first screen experience.”
Radhakrishnan continues, “All the functions can revisualize how they work together with agentic workflows. And also with agentic architectures, the way you build products has changed to having much more flexible architecture. So I think it’s a joy not just for engineers, but all functions involved in building products.”
Join us November 9–11, 2026 for more thought leadership, actionable insights, and lively debate at Streaming Media Connect 2026! Registration is open!
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