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Started by Chidi Eze (@pixelpushr) ·

is a chat box actually a good interface?

Started from an essay arguing chatbots aren't the future of interfaces. The main complaint: an empty text box tells you nothing about what it can do. Same discoverability problem command lines had, and GUIs won partly because menus show you your options.

6 sources · 38 min down the hole

How I got here

Started with
Is chat a good interface for AI tools or just the default we ended up with?
Ended at
Graphical user interface

The Trail

  1. “why chatbots are not the future of interfaces” (hn.algolia.com)
  2. Natural-language user interface (en.wikipedia.org)
  3. Discoverability (en.wikipedia.org)
  4. “gulf of execution don norman” (google.com)
  5. Command-line interface (en.wikipedia.org)

    a chat box is a command line that accepts typos

  6. Graphical user interface (en.wikipedia.org)

What I came away with

Norman's 'gulf of execution' is the gap between what you want and knowing how to get the system to do it. Chat shrinks it for vague requests and widens it for precise ones (try describing an exact layout change in prose). The better AI tools end up mixing chat with buttons, previews, and direct editing.

Keep going