Conversational Interfaces: the Good, the Ugly & the Billion-Dollar Opportunity

If I want to play with different titles for my game, for example, the obvious thing I’d want to do is select the title and start typing out my various ideas, or click on the raccoon character and swap out the image with different ones.

Typing instructions to my agent “Can you change the title from X to Y?” or “Can you change the raccoon to be cuter... See more

Gartner famously noted when it comes to data that “80% of the value is in asking the right questions.”

Where are the templates for key use cases? Where are “trending prompts” and highlighted examples so users can learn from the community? Where are suggestions to continue past conversations?

Nothing wonderful comes out fully formed. A good creator’s journey is one through the dark ravines and jungles of refinement. Conversational UIs are great at quickly getting to the first 70%, but suck at offering easy controls over narrower areas for iteration.

The problem with a blank chat box on a blank page is that it violates the first rule of a high-quality user experience: it isn’t obvious what I can do.

If AI services can understand the user’s intent, it becomes even more obvious what the ideal input and output modes should be.

Before we slap a conversational interface on everything, let’s ask ourselves: what are we trying to accomplish? And what is the most obvious method of input and output to achieve that goal?