3 ms·
The irony is that LLMs are actually the real solution that Ribbon took an awkward half step towards -- how to quickly get to what a user actually wants to do.
by ethbr0 3y ago
The irony is that LLMs are actually the real solution that Ribbon took an awkward half step towards -- how to quickly get to what a user actually wants to do.
Originally: Taxonomically organized nested menus, culminating at a specific function or option screen
Now: Usage-optimized Ribbon (aka Huffman coding for the set off all options), culminating at a specific function or option screen
Future: LLM powered semantic search across all options and actions, generating the exact change you want to implement
Why have an "email signature" options page at all, when an LLM can stitch together the calls required to change it, invoked directly from English text?
- mook 3y agoYou missed Office 2000: magically disappearing menu items. It was pretty confusing.
- ethbr0 3y agoOof. I did. Ribbon felt enough like magically disappearing menu items to me.
- TeMPOraL 3y ago> Why have an "email signature" options page at all, when an LLM can stitch together the calls required to change it, invoked directly from English text? 10-20 years from now? Maybe. It depends on whether or not the industry will cut corners in this part of the experience. I find it hard to predict which features get polished, and which are forever left barely-functioning. Might depend on which are on "critical path" to selling subscriptions. 0-10 years from now? We'll still need the options page. "Email signature" options page provides visibility, consistency, and predictability. That is, you can see what your e-mail signatures are, you are certain those are the ones that will be used for your message, under conditions defined in the UI pane, and if you change something, you know exactly how it will affect your future e-mails. LLMs are quite good at handling input, though not yet reliable enough. However, as GUI replacement, they are ill-suited for providing output - they would be describing what the result is, whereas the GUI of today display the result directly. As the writers' adage goes, "show, don't tell". (That said, the adage is way overused in actual storytelling.)
- ethbr0 3y agoIn this case, the LLM isn't generating the output. It's only generating the sequence of actions to implement the user input. Think less "make a signature for me" and more "here's the signature I want to use, make it my default." Then the model would map to either Outlook / Options / Signature / fields or directly to whateverSetSignature(). From that more modest routing requirement, it seems a slam dunk for even current models (retrained to generate options paths / function calls rather than English text).
- jjoonathan 3y agoGood local search gets you 80% of the way there. 20 years ago, this was an inspiring UX trend (Quicksilver / Subject Verb Object), but it fizzled. Apple kept the torch lit with menu search and it has been brilliant, but limited to their platform, although I am pleased to see that MS Office got menu search in Oct 2022. Hopefully they don't lose interest like they did for desktop search. LLMs could certainly help loosen the input requirements, not to mention aim some sorely needed hype back in this direction. I am afraid that they will murder the latency and compute requirements, but hey, progress is always two steps forward one step back.
- wing-_-nuts 3y agoI was never terribly impressed with local search on os x but maybe I didn't use it enough. For a while, ubuntu had a local search where you could hit a button (super?) start typing, and it would drill through menus at lightning speed