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If my years as a product manager taught me anything, it’s that users absolutely do not know what they want in the moment. With enough time exploring the proble

If my years as a product manager taught me anything, it’s that users absolutely do not know what they want in the moment. With enough time exploring the problem space, it becomes easier to tease out the real needs of the user. But this doesn’t happen overnight. Asking a user to interact with one of these chat interfaces is like asking them what they want - every time they use the software. This cognitive load would make me personally seek alternative tools.

hulitu 4y ago
> Asking a user to interact with one of these chat interfaces is like asking them what they want - every time they use the software. The ribbon is the same. Good luck finding something in it. But this seems to be the future.
- frosted-flakes 4y ago
  The ribbon (particularly in Microsoft Office) solves the problem that users don't know what they want, because it lays out all the options in front of them in a clearly organized hierarchy, with hover previews and textual labels for every command except for extremely well-known commands (like Bold/Italic). This is very different from chat interfaces, which are opaque black boxes and in order to get anything out of them users have to express their wish in words, with nothing to start from.
  - civilized 4y ago
    I'll just add here that it doesn't have to be only one or the other. The ribbon might be good for discovering features, but it's inefficient for using those features once discovered. If the user already knows what the thing they want is called, the fastest way to find it is a search bar that searches the labyrinth of menus and ribbons when you type into it. Google and Mac apps usually have this.
    - Too 4y ago
      Press Alt. It will highlight the key-binding to press to reach any item on the ribbon.
  - nanidin 4y ago
    I think Apple’s approach to menus is preferable - one can search and it will highlight places in the menu where the term appears. Usually I know what I want to do, I just don’t know where it’s located in the menu. For MS products I end up Googling how to do something and invariably get instructions for a slightly different version with a menu layout that is also slightly different and work it out from there.
    - frosted-flakes 4y ago
      MS Office has the same search behaviour, and the ribbon layout has not changed since it was first implemented in Office 2007.
      - nanidin 4y ago
        MS Office search doesn't show me where in the menu the item I searched for is located - if I rely on the search, I haven't learned where the thing is in the menu.
    - wayeq 4y ago
      > For MS products I end up Googling how to do something and invariably get instructions for a slightly different version with a menu layout that is also slightly different and work it out from there. Sounds like something ChatGPT could help with
  - hulitu 4y ago
    > it lays out all the options in front of them in a clearly organized hierarchy I don't know for who is this hierarchy clearly organized, but for me it is not. Yesterday i spent 10 minutes searching on how to recall a mail in outlook. Searching for "headers and footers" is the same.
- haswell 4y ago
  While I don't mind the ribbon, I also don't think it's a UX triumph. It will always be possible to find examples of bad UX. That does not mean there isn't a better visual representation out there, or that replacing it with a conversational interface is a natural alternative.
  - visarga 4y ago
    I think it is shockingly ugly.
QuarterReptile 4y ago
>Asking a user to interact with one of these chat interfaces is like asking them what they want - every time they use the software. Asking what a user wants would be having a competent customer service representative, and would be simple, like asking me to drive home from work. Voice prompts require me to intuit the customer support structure in order to guess where the path is to reach my category of issue. It's like asking me to walk home from work in the sewer system.
- haswell 4y ago
  For use cases that are well-suited to a conversational interface, that's great, and new AI advances will make chatbots more powerful than they've ever been. But not every use case is a chatbot use case, and I think that's the key point of the article. The sudden viability of a conversational interface that is good enough at having a fluid conversation to revolutionize the experience of that conversation does not suddenly make this interface the best fit for all use cases. I still find it far more pleasant to browse to a page and see a list of clearly displayed options that I can absorb at a glance and get on to what I really need to accomplish in the moment. Even a perfect conversationalist can't remove the extra friction involved in disclosing information. The question is whether that loss of efficiency is outweighed/nullified by a better overall experience.
  - ghaff 4y ago
    Even if someone designed an awesomely sophisticated air flight search engine that knew my usual preferences and could search for me and respond to follow-up prompts, I'd probably still want to see the information displayed on a page rather than read to me for the most part.
    - haswell 4y ago
      I think this might point to an opportunity to explore hybrid interfaces that allow you to just have a conversation while still having a visual representation of everything going on. But still agree with the sentiment here. There are applications that I cannot imagine ever wanting to interact with via a bot.
IanCal 4y ago
A chat interface is much more tolerant of this, because it implies a back and forth with clarification. Current one step dumb voice interfaces are a problem.
- kilgnad 4y ago
  Yes. This ^. ChatGPT is especially good at evolving and revising the main idea through a full on conversation. It is not just a query and answer machine. It is a full on conversational intelligence. Parent is incorrect. chatGPT is literally perfect for what he is describing. I feel people are attacking the things chatGPT excels at out of fear. Things like creativity, originality, true understanding of what's going on. chatGPT is GOOD at these things but people try to attack it. The main problems with chatGPT are truthfulness, honesty, accuracy and consistency. It gets shit wrong but out of fear people need to attack all aspects of chatGPT's intelligence. I find it unlikely the parent even tried to have a conversation with chatGPT about a product at all. A lot of our dismissals are largely surface level and not evidence based. You can bounce thoughts and product ideas off this thing and it will run with you all the way into a parallel universe if you ask it to.
  - the_af 4y ago
    > Things like creativity, originality, true understanding of what's going on. chatGPT is GOOD at these things but people try to attack it. In what sense do you think ChatGPT is good at any of those? It seems evident to me it has no understanding, in the sense that it doesn't build a mental model of your conversation. Try playing tic tac toe with it: it will conduct a seemingly "good" game of it, until you notice it does wrong moves or "forgets" previous positions, or forgets whose turn is it to play. And if you correct it, it will fix the latest error but often introduce new ones. Someone who "understands" the rules of the game wouldn't make those mistakes repeatedly. And that's for a trivial game, imagine something more convoluted! And let's not start with "creativity" ;)
    - kilgnad 4y ago
      Take a look at this: https://www.engraved.blog/building-a-virtual-machine-inside/ https://www.engraved.blog/building-a-virtual-machine-inside/ It's mindblowing. Read it to the end all the way to the mindblowing ending. I cannot for the life of me understand how someone can read the above and think chatGPT doesn't understand what's going on. Literally. There is no way this is just some statistical words jumble phenomenon. A lot of people are in denial EVEN when I show them that amazing article. What some people end up doing is trying the task in the article themselves then nitpicking at things chatGPT ends up lying about or getting wrong. Yes it does all of this. It's stupid in many ways but this much is true: That article showed that chatGPT understands what a linux bash shell is, it understands what the internet is, and it understands SELF. What do you call it when something understands SELF? Self awareness. Now i know that's a big word with big connotations. I think movies have kind of exaggerated the gravity of the word a bit too much. In movies, self awareness is skynet taking over the world, in reality self awareness is a simple trivial thing where some AI just understands itself in the context of the real world. Make no mistake. chatGPT is in many instances a stupid and dishonest machine, this is a fact. But it ALSO understands you and it ALSO has a very trivial self awareness. That article is very compelling evidence for this fact. As for creativity, I mean the fact that it can come up with original children stories is the definition of creative. At most what you can say is the creativity chatGPT posesses is generic and unoriginal (but even this can be circumvented if you push chatGPT enough) but you cannot deny it is creative.
nanidin 4y ago
This resonates with me and my use of Siri. As soon as I get outside of the common tasks I use it for (setting timers, unit conversions in the kitchen, turn on/off the lights), I’m either spending time trying to come up with the correct incantation or pulling out my phone to get to an app that does it better.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
AlotOfReading 4y ago
It's important to distinguish between the limitations of current technologies and the possibilities of natural language. Imagine if all natural language interfaces were like talking to a personal assistant. Sometimes you might not vocalize what you want properly, but we're highly adapted to that sort of communication as humans and the assistant can almost always fill in the gaps based on their knowledge of you or ask clarification questions. What makes natural language so infuriating as a computer interface is that it's nothing like that. The models are so limited and constrained that you can't actually speak to them like a human, you have to figure out the limitations of the model first and translate your human-centric ideas into it. That's a huge amount of cognitive load and in the worst cases (e.g. Alexa), the result isn't even worth the effort.
- marcosdumay 4y ago
  Well, if you have an empathic model that can anticipate the needs of the user, yeah, any interface that you put before it will be easy to use. This is also bordering a human-equivalent intelligence. And it needs at a bare minimum to be a general AI.
  - AlotOfReading 4y ago
    That's why I'm making a distinction here. It's not that the interface is inherently bad, but simply that we lack the knowledge/ability to implement it well. The follow-up question is whether we need a fully human-level ai or if we can design systems so that we naturally engage with them in such a way that the limitations aren't significant issues. I could certainly make an argument against that , but I've been wrong enough times about the practical capabilities of ML systems to suspect that my imagination is simply a bit limited in this area.
    - marcosdumay 4y ago
      > or if we can design systems so that we naturally engage with them in such a way that the limitations aren't significant issues. Fair enough. I can imagine that happening. It wouldn't be the first unreasonably easy problem we get in AI.
hinkley 4y ago
I think there's a disconnect between the realizations that: - there are no adults, we are just old children playing at being adults - "giving people what they want" exists on a spectrum from pandering (up to and including prostitution) to assisted suicide These are ugly truths and it's down to 'requirements' people and ethicists to find a way to dance this dance. Treating people like they don't know their own minds without letting on that's what you're doing is probably one of the hardest things I've seen done in the software world.
rib3ye 4y ago
Depends on the need. If they need someone to further explain a specific concept from their homework, they definitely know what they want. Also, if they just want a refund on an airline ticket, again, they know.
- haswell 4y ago
  In the context of my comment, knowing what they want was more about users being able to tell me what they think they should do next in the software's interface (whether that's a GUI, terminal, or bot) to achieve their desired goal. In other words, what should we build as a product team to satisfy this user's need? The thing they need in the moment is often not obvious or apparent to them until they see it. This is why we iterate on UI concepts. Some work, some don't. Most of the things that work don't come from users who tell us "put this button here". So the point I was making was more about trying to determine: "what are the things I can even ask the computer?". There are clearly use cases that are better suited for this than others. Anything that follows a simple question/answer format is probably a great fit.
dmix 4y ago
Your analogy is building software though which is an extremely complicated, domain-filled specialization. I don't think people are suggesting user will be asking a chatbot to do crazy hard stuff like translate their complicated business problems into software interfaces (at least not yet). The usecases for AI/Chatbots will likely remain niche but there's still tons of niche areas a lanugage interface could fill, where the user has the appropriate specialization/skill to do it on their own. It is still ultimately an interesting design/UX question. It's too bad the OP blog post didn't provide some real life examples.
- haswell 4y ago
  The point was less to draw an analogy and more to reflect on how I've seen users behave when exploring software for the first time. When testing new concepts, observing users try things out reveals a spectrum of expectations about where things should be, and how to achieve a task. So we try to find the combination of things that surprises people the least, as much of the time as possible. And when a new user doesn't find the chosen approach perfectly intuitive, this is usually a temporary problem, because learning where something is takes care of this with a few repetitions. Product tours help. An equivalent chat interface might be able to adapt on the fly to a wide range of user types, but this still doesn't imply anything about the core usability of the product and whether or not someone prefers to interact with a chatbot. Put another way, some use cases just aren't a good fit for a chatbot, even a very very good one. I do agree that though niche, there are a lot of interesting opportunities with a sufficiently fluent conversational AI.
  - dmix 4y ago
    I agree, I've done the whole UX/product dev long enough. But I also find most software people significantly discredit the ability of the average user. The default is lazy and surprisingly dumb, but if you also dig into why they say dumb stuff it's because they default to zero effort. In reality they are actually highly capable of learning, they just don't bother trying. Or have little incentive or time/afforded mental capacity to do so. The classic example is how everyone whines about redesigns and changes (even on HN). But if you just ignore them within a year the new UI is getting 2x the pageviews/time on site. That sort of thing. Just because they say dumb stuff and sound lazy doesn't mean they are not capable to adapt. I see the same thing with specialized people using [future chatgpt interface]. Even the sales/management/niche business users we despise but have to deal with are IRL highly specialized, educated people. They can learn when their jobs depends on it. Even if they aren't capable enough to be software devs. Their jobs/education/life experience has not depended on communicating well with software people. But they can learn and adapt to the tricks/quirks/specialization of communicating prompts to AI if needed.
layer8 4y ago
> like asking them what they want - every time they use the software. That reminds me of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Where_do_you_want_to_go_today%3F https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Where_do_you_want_to_go_today%..., which apparently wasn’t successful.
jgautsch 4y ago
Some users do, and they're right. Talk to those ones often, it's much faster than the full build/measure/learn ceremony.
- haswell 4y ago
  Oh absolutely. Those users are what made the job rewarding. Learning from them was invaluable. They’re also rare, at least in the specific domain I was focused on.
fragmede 4y ago
> users absolutely do not know what they want in the moment. People know what they want in a general sense. They need to be told they need your one though. I need new clothes, but I don't know that I specifically wanted a black Nike T-shirt made of special exercise polyester until I saw the model in the ad wearing one.
- haswell 4y ago
  I think this is a very different concept than the state of mind someone is in when trying to understand how a piece of software works. This obviously depends on the type of software, but users often struggle to articulate the actual problem they're trying to solve, and it's difficult to know what solution to look for when you haven't fully grasped the problem yet. If I don't know what the solution looks like, I don't know what to look for, and this is where good software steps in and shows the user what to do next without making that an onerous process in perpetuity.
garrickvanburen 4y ago
This ^ Also, discoverability in modern UIs (including & especially chat UIs) is so poor, how are we supposed to learn/remember what the system can do?
noobermin 4y ago
But let's again remind you all. Chatgpt and AI in general is a tool to replace developers and designers with weaker, more generic tools because management do not want to pay for labor costs (some would say they want a free ride). They absolutely do not care that it's a worse solution, they just want to eek out a savings so they can get promoted, then ditch when shtf. It just has to work convincingly until they can move onto greener pastures.
krisoft 4y ago
> This cognitive load would make me personally seek alternative tools. I would prefer a smart and resourcefull personal assistant taking care of me over any other interface ever conceived. The reason why people use the uber app, or airbnb interface, or the google searchbar instead of texting their personal assistant what they want is that they simply can’t afford one. The only question is if we can make a cost efficient version of that personal assistant.
- haswell 4y ago
  While I might agree with you for a certain class of use cases, the point is that not all use cases fit this kind of interface. For the ones that do, they’ll just keep getting better.
jillesvangurp 4y ago
True, and yet people employ other people to do things for them and get them to do things simply by talking to them. That works because a smart enough person doesn't need to be given a lot of detail and will understand things from some very high level instructions; or even do things proactively. AI is heading in a direction where it won't need a whole lot of micro managing to be useful. Things like Alexa, Google Assistant, and Siri are as of now completely obsolete. They were nice five years ago but it got stuck with use cases that are a combination of low value and unimaginative. I mainly use this stuff to do things like setting alarms and timers. Reason: it seems good enough to do that and I don't like messing with my phone when I'm cooking some food since I have to wipe my hands first. Doing better than that requires a deeper understanding of language (check) and context (no meaningful integrations yet, but seems doable). It's not really going to replace a normal UI but it would be more like managing somebody doing something on your behalf. You are not using, but directing and guiding. The AI does most of the work. It's not tedious because you get results more quickly than anything you would be able to do using any kind of UI. I'd love an AI secretary that can take simple prompts and prepare emails that reply to other emails, summarize what's in my unread messages, or figure out a good slot in my calendar to invite some people to. This is annoying if you have to go into each application and then type out what you want and then triple check what comes back before sending it off. But that's not how you would work with a human secretary either. You'd give high level prompts, "send them a reply that I'm not interested", "are there any messages that need my attention", "what's a good slot for meeting X to discuss Y ... can you set up the meeting". These are fairly simple things that well paid executives actually pay people to do. An AI would maybe not be able to do all of these things perfectly right now. But it could compose a message and then allow you to edit and send. Or it could summarize some information for you and give you the highlights. Etc. You could do that over a phone while on the move or just talking to a device. I don't think we're that far away from something usable in this space. I'd use it if something like that came along and worked well enough. And I have a hunch that this could become a lot better than just that fairly soon. So MS, the world's largest provider of tools used by secretaries, investing in and partnering with OpenAI. This stuff is so obvious that they must have more than a few people with half a brain that figured out something similar ages ago. I would not be surprised to see them launch something fairly concrete fairly soon. Maybe it will fail. Or maybe they get something half decent working.

hulitu 4y ago

> Asking a user to interact with one of these chat interfaces is like asking them what they want - every time they use the software. The ribbon is the same. Good luck finding something in it. But this seems to be the future.

frosted-flakes 4y ago
The ribbon (particularly in Microsoft Office) solves the problem that users don't know what they want, because it lays out all the options in front of them in a clearly organized hierarchy, with hover previews and textual labels for every command except for extremely well-known commands (like Bold/Italic). This is very different from chat interfaces, which are opaque black boxes and in order to get anything out of them users have to express their wish in words, with nothing to start from.
- civilized 4y ago
  I'll just add here that it doesn't have to be only one or the other. The ribbon might be good for discovering features, but it's inefficient for using those features once discovered. If the user already knows what the thing they want is called, the fastest way to find it is a search bar that searches the labyrinth of menus and ribbons when you type into it. Google and Mac apps usually have this.
  - Too 4y ago
    Press Alt. It will highlight the key-binding to press to reach any item on the ribbon.
- nanidin 4y ago
  I think Apple’s approach to menus is preferable - one can search and it will highlight places in the menu where the term appears. Usually I know what I want to do, I just don’t know where it’s located in the menu. For MS products I end up Googling how to do something and invariably get instructions for a slightly different version with a menu layout that is also slightly different and work it out from there.
  - frosted-flakes 4y ago
    MS Office has the same search behaviour, and the ribbon layout has not changed since it was first implemented in Office 2007.
    - nanidin 4y ago
      MS Office search doesn't show me where in the menu the item I searched for is located - if I rely on the search, I haven't learned where the thing is in the menu.
  - wayeq 4y ago
    > For MS products I end up Googling how to do something and invariably get instructions for a slightly different version with a menu layout that is also slightly different and work it out from there. Sounds like something ChatGPT could help with
- hulitu 4y ago
  > it lays out all the options in front of them in a clearly organized hierarchy I don't know for who is this hierarchy clearly organized, but for me it is not. Yesterday i spent 10 minutes searching on how to recall a mail in outlook. Searching for "headers and footers" is the same.
haswell 4y ago
While I don't mind the ribbon, I also don't think it's a UX triumph. It will always be possible to find examples of bad UX. That does not mean there isn't a better visual representation out there, or that replacing it with a conversational interface is a natural alternative.
- visarga 4y ago
  I think it is shockingly ugly.

QuarterReptile 4y ago

>Asking a user to interact with one of these chat interfaces is like asking them what they want - every time they use the software. Asking what a user wants would be having a competent customer service representative, and would be simple, like asking me to drive home from work. Voice prompts require me to intuit the customer support structure in order to guess where the path is to reach my category of issue. It's like asking me to walk home from work in the sewer system.

haswell 4y ago
For use cases that are well-suited to a conversational interface, that's great, and new AI advances will make chatbots more powerful than they've ever been. But not every use case is a chatbot use case, and I think that's the key point of the article. The sudden viability of a conversational interface that is good enough at having a fluid conversation to revolutionize the experience of that conversation does not suddenly make this interface the best fit for all use cases. I still find it far more pleasant to browse to a page and see a list of clearly displayed options that I can absorb at a glance and get on to what I really need to accomplish in the moment. Even a perfect conversationalist can't remove the extra friction involved in disclosing information. The question is whether that loss of efficiency is outweighed/nullified by a better overall experience.
- ghaff 4y ago
  Even if someone designed an awesomely sophisticated air flight search engine that knew my usual preferences and could search for me and respond to follow-up prompts, I'd probably still want to see the information displayed on a page rather than read to me for the most part.
  - haswell 4y ago
    I think this might point to an opportunity to explore hybrid interfaces that allow you to just have a conversation while still having a visual representation of everything going on. But still agree with the sentiment here. There are applications that I cannot imagine ever wanting to interact with via a bot.

IanCal 4y ago

A chat interface is much more tolerant of this, because it implies a back and forth with clarification. Current one step dumb voice interfaces are a problem.

kilgnad 4y ago
Yes. This ^. ChatGPT is especially good at evolving and revising the main idea through a full on conversation. It is not just a query and answer machine. It is a full on conversational intelligence. Parent is incorrect. chatGPT is literally perfect for what he is describing. I feel people are attacking the things chatGPT excels at out of fear. Things like creativity, originality, true understanding of what's going on. chatGPT is GOOD at these things but people try to attack it. The main problems with chatGPT are truthfulness, honesty, accuracy and consistency. It gets shit wrong but out of fear people need to attack all aspects of chatGPT's intelligence. I find it unlikely the parent even tried to have a conversation with chatGPT about a product at all. A lot of our dismissals are largely surface level and not evidence based. You can bounce thoughts and product ideas off this thing and it will run with you all the way into a parallel universe if you ask it to.
- the_af 4y ago
  > Things like creativity, originality, true understanding of what's going on. chatGPT is GOOD at these things but people try to attack it. In what sense do you think ChatGPT is good at any of those? It seems evident to me it has no understanding, in the sense that it doesn't build a mental model of your conversation. Try playing tic tac toe with it: it will conduct a seemingly "good" game of it, until you notice it does wrong moves or "forgets" previous positions, or forgets whose turn is it to play. And if you correct it, it will fix the latest error but often introduce new ones. Someone who "understands" the rules of the game wouldn't make those mistakes repeatedly. And that's for a trivial game, imagine something more convoluted! And let's not start with "creativity" ;)
  - kilgnad 4y ago
    Take a look at this: https://www.engraved.blog/building-a-virtual-machine-inside/ https://www.engraved.blog/building-a-virtual-machine-inside/ It's mindblowing. Read it to the end all the way to the mindblowing ending. I cannot for the life of me understand how someone can read the above and think chatGPT doesn't understand what's going on. Literally. There is no way this is just some statistical words jumble phenomenon. A lot of people are in denial EVEN when I show them that amazing article. What some people end up doing is trying the task in the article themselves then nitpicking at things chatGPT ends up lying about or getting wrong. Yes it does all of this. It's stupid in many ways but this much is true: That article showed that chatGPT understands what a linux bash shell is, it understands what the internet is, and it understands SELF. What do you call it when something understands SELF? Self awareness. Now i know that's a big word with big connotations. I think movies have kind of exaggerated the gravity of the word a bit too much. In movies, self awareness is skynet taking over the world, in reality self awareness is a simple trivial thing where some AI just understands itself in the context of the real world. Make no mistake. chatGPT is in many instances a stupid and dishonest machine, this is a fact. But it ALSO understands you and it ALSO has a very trivial self awareness. That article is very compelling evidence for this fact. As for creativity, I mean the fact that it can come up with original children stories is the definition of creative. At most what you can say is the creativity chatGPT posesses is generic and unoriginal (but even this can be circumvented if you push chatGPT enough) but you cannot deny it is creative.

nanidin 4y ago

This resonates with me and my use of Siri. As soon as I get outside of the common tasks I use it for (setting timers, unit conversions in the kitchen, turn on/off the lights), I’m either spending time trying to come up with the correct incantation or pulling out my phone to get to an app that does it better.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

AlotOfReading 4y ago

It's important to distinguish between the limitations of current technologies and the possibilities of natural language. Imagine if all natural language interfaces were like talking to a personal assistant. Sometimes you might not vocalize what you want properly, but we're highly adapted to that sort of communication as humans and the assistant can almost always fill in the gaps based on their knowledge of you or ask clarification questions. What makes natural language so infuriating as a computer interface is that it's nothing like that. The models are so limited and constrained that you can't actually speak to them like a human, you have to figure out the limitations of the model first and translate your human-centric ideas into it. That's a huge amount of cognitive load and in the worst cases (e.g. Alexa), the result isn't even worth the effort.

marcosdumay 4y ago
Well, if you have an empathic model that can anticipate the needs of the user, yeah, any interface that you put before it will be easy to use. This is also bordering a human-equivalent intelligence. And it needs at a bare minimum to be a general AI.
- AlotOfReading 4y ago
  That's why I'm making a distinction here. It's not that the interface is inherently bad, but simply that we lack the knowledge/ability to implement it well. The follow-up question is whether we need a fully human-level ai or if we can design systems so that we naturally engage with them in such a way that the limitations aren't significant issues. I could certainly make an argument against that , but I've been wrong enough times about the practical capabilities of ML systems to suspect that my imagination is simply a bit limited in this area.
  - marcosdumay 4y ago
    > or if we can design systems so that we naturally engage with them in such a way that the limitations aren't significant issues. Fair enough. I can imagine that happening. It wouldn't be the first unreasonably easy problem we get in AI.

hinkley 4y ago

I think there's a disconnect between the realizations that: - there are no adults, we are just old children playing at being adults - "giving people what they want" exists on a spectrum from pandering (up to and including prostitution) to assisted suicide These are ugly truths and it's down to 'requirements' people and ethicists to find a way to dance this dance. Treating people like they don't know their own minds without letting on that's what you're doing is probably one of the hardest things I've seen done in the software world.

rib3ye 4y ago

Depends on the need. If they need someone to further explain a specific concept from their homework, they definitely know what they want. Also, if they just want a refund on an airline ticket, again, they know.

haswell 4y ago
In the context of my comment, knowing what they want was more about users being able to tell me what they think they should do next in the software's interface (whether that's a GUI, terminal, or bot) to achieve their desired goal. In other words, what should we build as a product team to satisfy this user's need? The thing they need in the moment is often not obvious or apparent to them until they see it. This is why we iterate on UI concepts. Some work, some don't. Most of the things that work don't come from users who tell us "put this button here". So the point I was making was more about trying to determine: "what are the things I can even ask the computer?". There are clearly use cases that are better suited for this than others. Anything that follows a simple question/answer format is probably a great fit.

dmix 4y ago

Your analogy is building software though which is an extremely complicated, domain-filled specialization. I don't think people are suggesting user will be asking a chatbot to do crazy hard stuff like translate their complicated business problems into software interfaces (at least not yet). The usecases for AI/Chatbots will likely remain niche but there's still tons of niche areas a lanugage interface could fill, where the user has the appropriate specialization/skill to do it on their own. It is still ultimately an interesting design/UX question. It's too bad the OP blog post didn't provide some real life examples.

haswell 4y ago
The point was less to draw an analogy and more to reflect on how I've seen users behave when exploring software for the first time. When testing new concepts, observing users try things out reveals a spectrum of expectations about where things should be, and how to achieve a task. So we try to find the combination of things that surprises people the least, as much of the time as possible. And when a new user doesn't find the chosen approach perfectly intuitive, this is usually a temporary problem, because learning where something is takes care of this with a few repetitions. Product tours help. An equivalent chat interface might be able to adapt on the fly to a wide range of user types, but this still doesn't imply anything about the core usability of the product and whether or not someone prefers to interact with a chatbot. Put another way, some use cases just aren't a good fit for a chatbot, even a very very good one. I do agree that though niche, there are a lot of interesting opportunities with a sufficiently fluent conversational AI.
- dmix 4y ago
  I agree, I've done the whole UX/product dev long enough. But I also find most software people significantly discredit the ability of the average user. The default is lazy and surprisingly dumb, but if you also dig into why they say dumb stuff it's because they default to zero effort. In reality they are actually highly capable of learning, they just don't bother trying. Or have little incentive or time/afforded mental capacity to do so. The classic example is how everyone whines about redesigns and changes (even on HN). But if you just ignore them within a year the new UI is getting 2x the pageviews/time on site. That sort of thing. Just because they say dumb stuff and sound lazy doesn't mean they are not capable to adapt. I see the same thing with specialized people using [future chatgpt interface]. Even the sales/management/niche business users we despise but have to deal with are IRL highly specialized, educated people. They can learn when their jobs depends on it. Even if they aren't capable enough to be software devs. Their jobs/education/life experience has not depended on communicating well with software people. But they can learn and adapt to the tricks/quirks/specialization of communicating prompts to AI if needed.

layer8 4y ago

> like asking them what they want - every time they use the software. That reminds me of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Where_do_you_want_to_go_today%3F https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Where_do_you_want_to_go_today%..., which apparently wasn’t successful.

jgautsch 4y ago

Some users do, and they're right. Talk to those ones often, it's much faster than the full build/measure/learn ceremony.

haswell 4y ago
Oh absolutely. Those users are what made the job rewarding. Learning from them was invaluable. They’re also rare, at least in the specific domain I was focused on.

fragmede 4y ago

> users absolutely do not know what they want in the moment. People know what they want in a general sense. They need to be told they need your one though. I need new clothes, but I don't know that I specifically wanted a black Nike T-shirt made of special exercise polyester until I saw the model in the ad wearing one.

haswell 4y ago
I think this is a very different concept than the state of mind someone is in when trying to understand how a piece of software works. This obviously depends on the type of software, but users often struggle to articulate the actual problem they're trying to solve, and it's difficult to know what solution to look for when you haven't fully grasped the problem yet. If I don't know what the solution looks like, I don't know what to look for, and this is where good software steps in and shows the user what to do next without making that an onerous process in perpetuity.

garrickvanburen 4y ago

This ^ Also, discoverability in modern UIs (including & especially chat UIs) is so poor, how are we supposed to learn/remember what the system can do?

noobermin 4y ago

But let's again remind you all. Chatgpt and AI in general is a tool to replace developers and designers with weaker, more generic tools because management do not want to pay for labor costs (some would say they want a free ride). They absolutely do not care that it's a worse solution, they just want to eek out a savings so they can get promoted, then ditch when shtf. It just has to work convincingly until they can move onto greener pastures.

krisoft 4y ago

> This cognitive load would make me personally seek alternative tools. I would prefer a smart and resourcefull personal assistant taking care of me over any other interface ever conceived. The reason why people use the uber app, or airbnb interface, or the google searchbar instead of texting their personal assistant what they want is that they simply can’t afford one. The only question is if we can make a cost efficient version of that personal assistant.

haswell 4y ago
While I might agree with you for a certain class of use cases, the point is that not all use cases fit this kind of interface. For the ones that do, they’ll just keep getting better.

jillesvangurp 4y ago

True, and yet people employ other people to do things for them and get them to do things simply by talking to them. That works because a smart enough person doesn't need to be given a lot of detail and will understand things from some very high level instructions; or even do things proactively. AI is heading in a direction where it won't need a whole lot of micro managing to be useful. Things like Alexa, Google Assistant, and Siri are as of now completely obsolete. They were nice five years ago but it got stuck with use cases that are a combination of low value and unimaginative. I mainly use this stuff to do things like setting alarms and timers. Reason: it seems good enough to do that and I don't like messing with my phone when I'm cooking some food since I have to wipe my hands first. Doing better than that requires a deeper understanding of language (check) and context (no meaningful integrations yet, but seems doable). It's not really going to replace a normal UI but it would be more like managing somebody doing something on your behalf. You are not using, but directing and guiding. The AI does most of the work. It's not tedious because you get results more quickly than anything you would be able to do using any kind of UI. I'd love an AI secretary that can take simple prompts and prepare emails that reply to other emails, summarize what's in my unread messages, or figure out a good slot in my calendar to invite some people to. This is annoying if you have to go into each application and then type out what you want and then triple check what comes back before sending it off. But that's not how you would work with a human secretary either. You'd give high level prompts, "send them a reply that I'm not interested", "are there any messages that need my attention", "what's a good slot for meeting X to discuss Y ... can you set up the meeting". These are fairly simple things that well paid executives actually pay people to do. An AI would maybe not be able to do all of these things perfectly right now. But it could compose a message and then allow you to edit and send. Or it could summarize some information for you and give you the highlights. Etc. You could do that over a phone while on the move or just talking to a device. I don't think we're that far away from something usable in this space. I'd use it if something like that came along and worked well enough. And I have a hunch that this could become a lot better than just that fairly soon. So MS, the world's largest provider of tools used by secretaries, investing in and partnering with OpenAI. This stuff is so obvious that they must have more than a few people with half a brain that figured out something similar ages ago. I would not be surprised to see them launch something fairly concrete fairly soon. Maybe it will fail. Or maybe they get something half decent working.