A fast and seamless ChatGPT experience on your Mac.
It seems we will have to forget everything we’ve learnt about UX design soon, for real this time. All we need for talking to our computers is a text input box.
The chat UI (in non-messaging apps) happened before. In fact, quite popular for a long time in China, led by the ingenious design of WeChat. The “micro-program” (小程序) paradigm gave birth to all kinds of innovative use of a simple texting user interface. This proves again how a flexible and open (yes, I see the irony here, just shut up.) ecosystem sparks innovation. If you have been hanging around the internet long enough, you’d remember that hashtag (#) and @people on Twitter were invented by the users, and it got popular enough that Twitter built the feature in much later. The same can be said about pull-to-refresh gestures on touchscreen devices. Hint: it’s not Apple’s idea. But I digress.
So the most basic use of the chat UI is simply using the text input as a command prompt. Much like a shell terminal.
Funny how UI design is like fashion, that it came around back. command prompt -> click and drag with mouse -> touch the screen with fingers -> command prompt, but with your fingers. The problem is that the command needs to be precise. You can built-in some error tolerance, but still, it has its limits. 💡! why not make the most used commands buttons instead? With the option to fall back to text input.
- PO: can we put more buttons down there?
- Developer: not without violating the law of physics.
- PO: Good, I need accurate sizing for that work by the EOD.
So… it got out of hand pretty quickly.
It seems like Large Language Model is up for the challenge of solving the UX design problem once and for all. It’d be like walking into a store and talking to someone about your needs again. But instead of walking in, you open an app. Instead of talking, you text. Any time of the day, and you don’t need to care about her feelings. I am optimistic about the future.
