CUI vs GUI

With the rise of chatbots and voice assistants, there has been a lot of talk about the rise of conversational user interfaces (CUI). CUIs allow users to interact with a system using natural language. The most common CUIs are chatbots and voice assistants.

CUIs are not new. They have been around for a long time. The first chatbot was created in 1966, and the first voice assistant was built in 1978.

Graphical user interfaces (GUI) allow users to interact with a system using graphic elements such as buttons, menus, and icons.

🔑 The First Principles of CUIs

  1. CUIs are a high-precision interface. This means that the user can be particular about what they want.
  2. CUIs require little to no training. The user can start using the interface immediately.
  3. CUIs require minimal cognitive load. The user can remember where things are and what to do.
  4. CUIs need little screen real estate.
  5. NLP has improved to the point where CUIs can be very precise and natural.

Man talking to data

📖 Use Cases

I think CUIs are great for:

  1. Getting work done on your mobile
  2. Getting information quickly

Scenario 1

You’re headed to back-to-back meetings and need to get some information from your CRM. You can’t use your laptop because you’re on the go. You can use your phone, but the mobile app usually is a condensed version of the desktop app, and you can’t get the information you need.

Scenario 2

You’re headed to a meeting and need to present information on the company’s health. You need to get sales information, budgets, expenses, etc., to show models and forecasts to the rest of the team.

With a CUI, you can get precisely the information you need without wrangling or even being familiar with the different applications that contain the data.

🎯 CUI Example APP

While there are many other use cases, I think these two are common enough that we’ve been tackling them head on with WeOS.

We’ve been working on an app that can help you get information from your different applications that is as simple as sending a message on your phone.

  • Need to know the average order total? Just ask!
  • Need to know what are the most important deals in your pipeline? Just ask!
  • Need to know how much you spent on marketing last month? Just ask!

🤔 Things to consider

While I’m very bullish on CUIs, GUIs are not going anywhere. There are some things that GUIs are better at.

  • It’s much faster to show a user dashboard with a lot of information than to have a user ask for each piece of information.
  • GUIs are also great at letting a user know what they CAN and CANNOT do. With a CUI the user can suffer from the blank page problem where they have to guess what they can do.
  • GUIs allows for more complex tasks with layered functionalities

Conclusion

CUIs are a natural progression from CLIs, to GUIs to CUIs. Work is becoming more mobile and distributed and CUIs are going to get more and more prevalent.

I enjoy being able to get the information whenever and wherever I am because inspiration doesn’t only strike when I’m at my desk. Getting work done using devices that have smaller and smaller form factors (your phone, your watch, your glasses) is going to be the norm.

AI has made it possible to build CUIs that are more precise and more natural. I’m excited to see what the future holds.