Pachinko pachinko
Pachinko pachinko
Design Notes on Useful AI

attention / note 05

Its help gets in my way.

We shipped the most famous interruption in software history. The lesson: help turns hostile when refusing it costs more than it gives.

Every suggestion has a price.

Even a good suggestion is expensive at the wrong moment. It breaks focus and demands a decision. A bad one is worse: now you reject it, close it, and find your place again. You pay for the interruption whether or not the help was any good.

Cheap rejection is a design property.

Ghost text, underlines, command palettes, reviewable diffs. They work because ignoring them is free and dismissing them is one gesture. We learned the opposite version the hard way: when saying no takes a negotiation, users start resenting the assistant, and then the product.

What to build.

Wait to be invoked instead of guessing at the moment. If you must volunteer a suggestion, keep it peripheral, dismissible in one gesture, and gone for good once dismissed. Never make a user say no to the same idea twice. Then count the dismissals. Every one marks a spot where your product was rude.

design principle

Before adding assistance, make ignoring it free and rejecting it one gesture.

one implementation

Pachinko's version: nothing pops up. You bring material to it - drop notes on a Function, chat on a selection, schedule a Feed - and results land as notes that delete in a keystroke.