[dmje]

On the face of it, this seems like a terrible idea. Interesting, but terrible. I’ve spent 30 years encouraging simple, repeatable, user-focused UI’s where hierarchies are explicit, pages are referenceable, search results are real URLs and so on. Randomness is generally bad - humans expect X module or block or whatever to be in the same place from visit to visit, not adapting based on some complex algorithm that “learns”.

UX and UI takes work, and it’s mostly work getting back to simplicity - things like “think more like a user and less like your organisation” in terms of naming conventions and structures, or making sure that content works harder than navigation in orienting users. I don’t think there’s any sort of quick fix here, it’s hard to get it right.

Simplicity is surprisingly complex :-)

[Closi]

There is a trade off with simplicity though - usually it requires being highly opinionated about which software features make the cut. Users or sales teams often want more features, but if you included every one the app would become a mess.

But there is a possible world where you can have both - every 'feature' your users would ever want without overwhelming complexity or steep learning curves, but with the possible downside/cost of reducing consistency.

[grouchy]

I don't disagree that simple and repeatable wins—but isn't there a tension between "simple" and "capable"?

Excel is neither simple nor explicit, yet it's the most successful end-user programming tool ever made.

Could generative UI be a path to creating powerful tools feel simple by hiding complexity until needed, rather than dumbing down the tool itself?