Smashing Magazine: Designing for emotional connection in an AI assistant

What the article is about

Oleksii Hrzhehorzhevskyi, a designer at MacPaw, describes the team’s process for creating Eney — the company’s AI assistant — as a character rather than an interface element. The article was published in Smashing Magazine on July 28, 2026, and uses MacPaw’s design decisions as a way to argue that character work, taste, and emotional intentionality become more valuable as AI tools become more widely available, not less.

Context

MacPaw is a software company best known for CleanMyMac and Setapp. Eney is their AI assistant, and the design team built it from scratch during a period when many companies were shipping AI features quickly with little attention to personality or presence. The team’s goal was for Eney to feel personal and accessible — like a distinct entity with opinions — rather than a generic chat interface.

Every visual decision was deliberate. The circular shape came from research into what reads as approachable without being threatening. Minimal facial features — two eyes, no mouth — were chosen specifically because eyes carry emotional range without the ambiguity that a fully rendered face introduces. The pink coloring separated Eney from the blues and grays that dominate AI design. Emotional states are communicated entirely through the eyes: blinking rhythms, pupil changes, and gaze direction. The team ran multiple rounds of expression testing before locking in the final range.

Key takeaway

The article’s central argument is that humanization and empathy become more important as AI becomes more common, not less. When AI assistants proliferate, the ones that feel like they have a point of view are the ones that retain user trust and come back to. The design process Hrzhehorzhevskyi describes is not about making AI feel human in a literal sense — Eney is clearly a character, not a person — but about giving it enough presence that users form a relationship with it rather than treating it as a utility.

He also draws a line between what AI can assist with in the creative process and what it cannot replace. Research, iteration speed, and variation generation are areas where AI tools helped the Eney project move faster. The decision about what Eney should feel like, and what emotional territory to cover, required human judgment throughout. The article ends with the observation that developing a strong personal taste is becoming a key professional differentiator for designers in an era when the mechanical parts of the work can be automated.

Who it is useful for

Product designers and UX leads working on AI products who want a concrete example of character-building at the component level. Also relevant for design teams debating how much to invest in the personality layer of an AI feature, particularly those working in consumer software where trust and daily engagement matter.