June 17, 2026
UI for AI is a recent HCII independent study that focused on designing better user interfaces for the AI-native world.
There is a distinct tension when opening an artificial intelligence (AI) tool and facing that empty text box with its blinking cursor. What feels like a launchpad of pure possibility to some leaves other users frozen in place.The cursor blinks slowly. The user pauses.“What should I ask?,” is a question the students said they heard frequently during their user research. “How do I even start?”This paralyzing blank page effect is just one of many challenges students found while researching the problems with AI interfaces. They found that the basic blank text box doesn’t give users enough structure to get started, and instead slows them down by increasing their cognitive load.For the past two semesters, Carnegie Mellon University graduate students have explored this and other aspects of the user interfaces of AI tools during an independent study offering with Dan Saffer, assistant professor of the practice at the Human-Computer Interaction Institute. A user interface (UI) is the interactive space where humans and machines communicate – a place where users tell the machine what to do and machines provide feedback and information in response.Although the blank text box prompt is currently the status quo, Saffer wants companies to move beyond that and invest in their AI tool’s UI design to help users accomplish their goals.“User interfaces aren’t disappearing; they’re evolving,” said Saffer, who draws parallels to previous UI evolutions when technology shifts. “This isn’t my first rodeo. I was around during the transition from desktop to web and from web to mobile. When mobile became ascendant 20 years ago, we added new UI components to take advantage of what mobile could do. AI is the same. A great UI is more important than ever so that we can understand and use AI effectively, building better mental models of what this technology can and cannot do.”Saffer, the author of Microinteractions: Designing with Details, breaks down AI with his students as another new technology that needs new interactions and microinteractions.“AI is bringing four interactions to the foreground,” said Saffer. “Directing - giving the AI instructions; Monitoring - making sure the AI is doing what it said it was going to do; Iterating - seeing what the AI did and possibly modifying it; and Approving - signing off on the output.”
