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This chatbot could have been a <form>
It has long been a tenet of good form design that "a form is a conversation", a productive to-and-fro between content designer and user. There's no need to take it literally
AI's latest party trick might have made chat interfaces the current hotness. That doesn't mean we want every form to take on the affordances of a chatbot
If the information you need from me follows a natural structure, don't make me think. Help me out by asking for it, and letting me enter it, in a structured way
Most egregious utterance from the interaction that triggered this thread:
"Great. Now enter the reference number to the right of the QR code you just scanned. PLEASE USE ALL CAPITAL LETTERS."
So...
Someone invested in a mailshot with a personalised printed reference, but didn't personalise the QR code
They invested in a faux chatbot UI but didn't normalise the input
@mattedgar i'm told a lot of forms are currently very intently replaced by chatbots, with the objective of not requiring people to put the right information in the right box.
Certainly terrible for people who can read instructions and like the predictability, but probably better for the large amount of people who apparently can't.
I guess we'll know how it goes depending on if the companies doing that keeps it or revert in a few months/years.
@mattedgar that's very generous
seen enough chatbots that could've just been a <!-- -->
@mattedgar a <form> could have been an FAQ page <3
FAQs used to be the go-to on websites, written specifically to answer frequent user questions received via contact/feedback forms.
Now FAQs are another marketing page(
@mattedgar hiding the guardrails doesn't give me agency. don't promise me conversational flexibility if you have no intention of delivering it.