AI is reshaping UI — have you noticed the biggest change yet?
March 12, 2025
Goodbye commands, hello intent
The way we interact with software is anything but static. Sometimes it’s a gentle evolution, other times a jarring leap. Today, a growing wave of design pioneers, including Vitaly Friedman, Emily Campbell and Greg Nudelman are dissecting emerging patterns within AI applications, mapping out the landscape that refuses to stand still. At first glance, this might seem like yet another hype cycle, the kind of breathless enthusiasm that surrounds every new tech trend. But take a step back, and a deeper transformation becomes apparent: our interactions with digital systems are not just changing; they are shifting in their very essence.
Source: AI is reshaping UI — have you noticed the biggest change yet?
Developers call the style of programming where the code tells a computer how to do something ‘imperative’ programming, and where code tells a computer what needs to be done declarative programming.
Our UIs too have traditionally been imperative–from the command line where literally step by step we tell the computer what do, to WYSIWYG and WIMP interfaces where we select the object to be acted on, and apply the action (make this text bold, copy this file to this folder).
But Generative AI systems are much more declarative in nature–we tell the system the outcome we want, not the steps we take to get there. Prompts are a description of what we want done. Here Tetiana Sydorenko considers how AI is reshaping interactions as we know them, driving a new UI paradigm–more declarative than imperative.
