Bookmarked: Chat Is the Future - Roger Wong

The Long Case Against Chat In January 2023, Austin Z. Henley wrote: Expecting users to primarily interact with software in natural language is lazy. Henley rightly argued that chat puts the onus on the user of figuring what to ask and how to ask it. Good interfaces guide people and help them discover what’s possible. He doubted that natural language should be the primary interface. That same year, Amelia Wattenberger wrote: Good tools make it clear how they should be used. And more importantly, how they should not be used. If we think about a good pair of gloves, it’s immediately obvious how we should use them. They’re hand-shaped! We put them on our hands. And the specific material tells us more: metal mesh gloves are for preventing physical harm, rubber gloves are for preventing chemical harm, and leather gloves are for looking cool on a motorcycle. A blank text field doesn’t give the user a lot to go on. Wattenberger suggests that a chatbox with some additional affordances could…

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