What Is Generative UI?

> Users get personalized interfaces without custom code.

Personalized interfaces are bad. I don't want to configure anything, and I don't want anything automatically configured on my behalf. I want it to just work; that kind of design takes effort & there's no way around it.

Your UI should be clear and predictable. A chatbot should not be moving around the buttons. If I'm going to compare notes with my friend on how to use your software, all the buttons need to be in the same place. People hate UI redesigns for a reason: Once they've learned how to use your software, they don't want to re-learn. A product that constantly redesigns itself at the whims of an inscrutable chatbot which thinks it knows what you want is the worst of all possible products.

ALSO: Egregiously written article. I assume it's made by an LLM.

I think you are right in the 'current paradigm' of what software is at the moment, where users are using a fixed set of functionality in the way that the developer intended, but there is a new breed of software where the functionality set can't be defined in an exhaustive way.

Take Claude Code - after I've described my requirement it gives me a customised UI that asks me to make choices specific to what I have asked it to build (usually a series of dropdown lists of 3-4 options). How would a static UI do that in a way that was as seamless?

The example used in the article is a bit more specific but fair - if you want to calculate the financial implications of a house purchase in the 'old software paradigm' you probably have to start by learning excel and building a spreadsheet (or using a dodgy online calculator someone else built, which doesn't match your use case). The spreadsheet the average user writes might be a little simplified - are we positive that they included stamp duty and got the compounding interest right? Wouldn't it be great if Excel could just give you a perfectly personalised calculator, with toggle switches, without users needing to learn =P(1+(k/m))^(mn) but while still clearly showing how everything is calculated? Maybe Excel doesn't need to be a tool which is scary - it can be something everyone can use to help make better decisions regardless of skill level.

So yes, if you think of software only doing what it has done in the past, Gen UI does not make sense. If you think of software doing things it has never done before we need to think of new interaction modes (because hopefully we can do something better than just a text chat interface?).

Cute, but your whole premise relies on knowing the right questions to ask, which you don't. We just had an entire decade of good interfaces being ruined by poorly conceived anemic "user stories" we don't need to further destroy our HCI for the next century or so