The Best Interface Is No Interface: The Simple Path to Brilliant Technology

18. Automatic: Automatic solutions are terrible. Look at Clippy!

Automatic solutions sound so wonderful.

Everything just magically gets done. And machines do it all on their own. They give us what we need, when we need it, and how we need it. The computer becomes a mind reader for our preferences. Science fiction becomes reality.

Robot vacuums. Autopilot. Self-driving cars. Back to the Future power laces.

A lot of NoUI thinking lends itself to making these kinds of automatic solutions. They aim to feel like pure delight. Like magic. Where technology should be in the twenty-first century.

But when it comes to actually implementing an automatic solution, a lot of people get scared. Some designers shiver. Some engineers run far, far away. Some project ...