Will end-user development be the next flat design?

The early days of graphical user interfaces relied on theories of metaphor. UI designers strove to make realistic interfaces look as much as possible like the familiar physical world, expecting this to be more intuitive. Many of those theories were swept away with the flat design trend, which rejected the fallacy of “skeuomorphism".

In this talk, I will argue that ChatGPT and other LLM-based dialog interfaces have become a new skeuomorphism. I will suggest that we don’t really need computers to offer realistic simulations of familiar human conversation. A new wave of flat design could sweep this away, adopting theories of interaction that focused on explainability, controllability and transparency in preference to human-like language.

As with visual flat design, escaping the constraints of realism could again allow more usable abstractions, rather than promoting cumbersome imitations. This is the agenda proposed and advocated in my new book Moral Codes: Designing Alternatives to AI (MIT Press, 2024). 

This seminar is also available for remote participation through Zoom: https://ucl.zoom.us/j/98581580748