The last generation to speak "computer"

As AI begins to speak our language, the era of the human–computer interface is ending.

The roles of HCI and UI design are being upended. But it’s not because AI is taking over jobs.

It’s because we used to need an interface to translate between humans and computers. But now with AI + agents, computers are starting to speak human. So the idea of a human ⇄ computer interface is becoming obsolete.

In the mid-2000s, I spent hours in Google’s usability labs watching countless users flail trying to search. They’d type things like: “I’m looking for the best things to do with my family in Madrid this summer.” And they would be baffled when the results weren’t helpful.

Searching via keyword wasn’t natural. We learned to be brief and use keywords — to translate our intention into computer-speak. We twisted our thoughts into keywords, keystrokes, clicks, taps — all to help computers understand us.

This was the interface era. We needed a translation layer to help us input what we needed to get the output we expected. The job of HCI and UI design was to make these human ⇄ computer interfaces as human as possible. Over time, these interfaces became more usable and human (think DOS vs GUI or typing memorized phone numbers vs saying “Call Mom”).

But the burden was still on us to speak computer. Now, everything is shifting with conversational AI: The more human we speak, the better it works.

Instead of having to type “kids summer activities Madrid” and then sift through a bunch of results, we can now share all the context and get back tailored results: “I will be in Madrid for a long weekend in July. I have three children ages 8 and 6 and 4. The oldest is super into science and engineering, the middle needs to be active and have space to run around, and the youngest likes ice cream but doesn’t like to walk…”

We no longer have to think like a computer. We can just speak like a human.

This obliterates the idea of an interface as a translation layer between humans and computers. Interfaces aren’t totally going away, but the best ones now get out of the way and just let us be human.

We are no longer designing for users to learn computers — now we are designing for computers to understand us.

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