When we collaborated with the New York State Department of Health’s WIC program (Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children), our initial goal was to introduce a live chat feature, but it quickly became clear that no single tool operates in isolation. In practice, chatbots, websites, and human agents all comprise a shared digital ecosystem—and people experience them as one unified service. This was evident when nearly half of users who interacted with Wanda, the WIC virtual assistant, believed they were beginning their WIC application. The disconnect between what the system could do and what users expected revealed a core design challenge: the need for a seamless bridge between automation and human support.