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Patrick Senti's avatar

I disagree. Conversational UIs are the most unproductive, unreliable and inconsistent way to use a computing device, and the most energy itensive too. We’ll see a revival of the push button, wizard-style guided dialogs and single command per task UI. UX should be about making things easy.

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Elizabeth Laraki's avatar

I agree and yet, it's also hard to argue against the open-endedness. Google was so much easier and efficient to use because of the lack of structure. You do raise a really good point about the energy use though too...especially as we fumble our way around and have to keep iterating.

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David Hoang's avatar

This 1,000%! Long live direct manipulation.

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Jonathan's avatar

The future of GenAI in things like drawing tools is going to be determined more by economics than anything else. The systems behind the UI currently cost vastly more than the revenues being made from them. Recent JLL data shows that up to 80% of data center development financing now comes from debt, for example.

https://futurism.com/data-centers-financial-bubble

https://ionanalytics.com/insights/infralogic/finding-profitability-in-the-ai-data-center-boom/

It seems that on the current trajectory, at some point either you're going to have to start paying (a lot), see these features plateau at a cost-rationalised point, or even lose them. Microsoft recently increased their 365 subscription prices by over 30% on the back of Copilot integration, for example. They didn't give customers a choice.

https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/19/bubblenomics/#pop

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Rustymetty's avatar

I’m still trying to find that balance where I can ingest enough to feel like I’m meeting the curve with Ai. Your insights are quite—insightful. I’ve shared your posts several times within my small UX circles. Thank you for slowing down the fire hose a bit. This one is bookmarked for a Sunday morning re-read.

It reminds me of an art opening I once attended titled “Will you push? Shall I pull?” We’ve shifted from a world where we pushed buttons to get what we wanted, to one that pulls us. I’m truly enjoying it.

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Nikhil Singh's avatar

To me Node based UI interfaces are next standard to interact with ai generated objects.

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Shakti Soni's avatar

Absolutely agree. Conversational UI will continue to be the fastest way to interact with wearables. However, on traditional workstations: even with expert knowledge, the experience still involves a lot of trial and error.

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