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by vosper 497 days ago
I learned about the idea of Generative UI from a Sharp Talk podcast, and it's stuck with me ever since.

Many SaaS (especially the complex ones, which are the also the most important ones) have a tonne of UI often imposing a huge amount of non-work work onto users - all the clicking you have to do as part of entering or retrieving data, especially if the UI flow doesn't fit exactly what you're trying to do at that moment. An example might be quicly creating an epic and a bunch of related tickets in Jira, and having them all share some common components.

A generative UI would be able to construct a custom UI for the particular thing the user is trying to do at any point in time. I think it's a really powerful idea, and it could probably be done today by smartly using eg Jira's APIs.

The ability to span applications would be even more powerful. Done well it might even kill the need to maintain complex integrations between related Saas (eg how some product development application might need to sync data to/from Jira or ADO) by having the AI just keep track of changes and move them from one system to another.

Once it gets to the point where the Gen UI is go-to system for interactions you have to wonder what all the designers and UI builders at the myriad SaaS will be doing...

2 comments

In a way that's what Claude Artifacts are. That said, I think there are many more ways to get gen UIs wrong then there are to get them right. Most users and use cases will be counterproductive with a dynamic UI. Debugging will be an absolute nightmare if not outright impossible, same with security.
> Most users and use cases will be counterproductive with a dynamic UI.

Pro: The GUI dynamically adjusts.

Con: There's no consistent mental model for you to learn, when you need to use something it's not there, and the stuff which is there might not do what you expect.

I was just commenting on something toward this end, but think I took it further than just UI to apply to the whole software: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42562289