There's a pattern I keep coming back to that sits somewhere between "chat interface" and "traditional app UI," and I've been trying to figure out whether it's actually interesting or just a cool demo that falls apart in production. I wrote a longer whitepaper on this, but I wanted to share the rough edges of the thinking here and see what resonates — or where I'm wrong.
The problem I kept running into
I've worked on software for over 20 years, and what's surprising is how much we still get wrong: Pendo found that 80% of software features are rarely or never used (the Standish Group puts it at 64%). Either way, it's a lot of engineering effort going nowhere.
The frustrating thing is this isn't a "bad engineers" problem. I think it's a signal problem. Teams build the wrong things because they have no reliable feedback loop between what users actually need and what ends up on the roadmap. Roadmaps get driven by whoever is loudest — escalated tickets, squeaky customers, whoever had the best slide.
Wouldn't it be nice if the interface itself could tell you what to build next?
