Who needs an app?
ChatGPT is not just a generational shift in the applications we can create, but a shift in interface design. In an era where you can hit up limitless APIs through a single interface, who needs an app?
OpenAI launched ChatGPT plugins less than a month ago, and Ben Thompson of Stratchery was one of the first people to take these plugins for a spin.
Ben asked ChatGPT for an easy to make recipe that includes pork and cabbage. ChatGPT throws out a recipe, and at the very end, asks Ben if he’d like a shopping list for it.
Once Ben says yes, ChatGPT generates an Instacart shopping cart with all the ingredients.
This change in user experience is a generational shift. We’ve moved into a era that offers a frictionless yet limitless user interface.
UI improvements over the years have been about improving accessibility and reducing friction.
Early Human-Computer Interaction: DOS and the Language of Syntax
The first commercial versions of human-computer interaction, such as DOS, were text-based and required users to know the language and grammar (syntax). This made it an exclusive domain for geeks, as one had to be familiar with the C:\> prompt and know in advance what to ask for from the large yet limited menu of offerings at the prompt.
Apple and the Commercialization of GUI Point-and-Click Interfaces
Steve Jobs was so blown away when he first saw a graphical user interface (GUI) at Xerox PARC, that it was obvious to him that all computers would work like this. The GUI's success not only came from its ability to outperform the clunky syntax of UNIX but also from its intuitiveness, as users didn't need to learn a new language to operate it.
I was so blinded by the first thing they showed me, which was the graphical user interface. I thought it was the best thing I'd ever seen in my life. Now, remember, it was very flawed — what we saw was incomplete, they'd done a bunch of things wrong, but we didn't know that at the time. And within, you know, 10 minutes, it was obvious to me that all computers would work like this someday.
- Steve Jobs on the GUI experience at Xerox PARC
Apple famously commercialized the point-and-click interface with a mouse in the 80s. And we’ve used the same basic interface to interact with the internet through browsers since the 90s. This new interface provided a more accessible and easy-to-use way to interact with a machine, despite its limited menu of offerings to what was served on-screen.
The Touchscreen Revolution: iPhone and iPad
The iPhone and iPad introduced the touchscreen era, innovating away the friction of an external pointer by allowing users to point and select with their fingers. However, the menu of offerings still remained limited, as users could only point to whatever was actually displayed on the screen.
GUI on a computer or touchscreen obviously beat the clunky syntax of UNIX, but and more importantly, was more intuitive to use as you didn’t need to learn a new language or syntax. And Apple leaned in heavily on skeuomorphism all the way through iOS7 in 2013 to help us neanderthals make sense of the dazzling new technology before us, as in: "Oh, I get it. That looks like a button, so I'm meant to push it.”
The evolution of user interfaces has been a continuous journey towards providing a more frictionless and accessible experience, but none of these improvements managed to dramatically improve upon the menu of offerings served up to a User.
Until now. ChatGPT changes all this.
By allowing users to type in natural language, yet pull up one of thousands of plugins, you create a frictionless user interface (where you don’t need to be a specialist language speaker) and yet navigate a limitless menu by firing up one of thousands of integrated plugins.
ChatGPT changes who consumes an API
Another way to think about interfaces is in terms of a shift in who consumes an API. If you don’t know what an API is, Justin at Technically explains it nicely below.
We’ve grown up in an era where “users” consume the front-end, while developers consume APIs. But lo and behold …
ChatGPT, when integrated with plugins, allows every single internet user to directly consume APIs.
Who needs a frontend app any longer?
As Justin of Technically puts it:
Your favorite apps are just collections of APIs
The most empowering thing to understand about modern software is that your favorite apps are just a bunch of APIs with a pretty face on top of them called a frontend. Most apps you use are built on this frontend / backend paradigm.
If you want to deliver a product or service, just let ChatGPT trigger APIs in a sequence? Do you even need apps? How will this work:
You won’t need to pull up your banking app to query your last 10 transactions. Just ask ChatGPT.
Hey, you won’t even need to login to receive your latest bank statement in PDF format. Just ask ChatGPT to send it over email or WhatsApp.
All you will need is access to a fintech’s APIs via ChatGPT to query a back-end database just like a software engineer would when s/he’s troubleshooting!
Apple has led all the major UI shifts we’ve seen to date, and its next big OS shift will lead the charge in consumerisation of ChatGPT’s UI. I have some thoughts around this and will write about this soon.
All this is too complicated. #ELI5.
All right, kiddo, let me explain this in a simple way. In the past, using computers was a bit difficult because you needed to know special computer language. Then, Apple made it easier by letting us use a mouse to click on things. Later, touchscreens made it even better because we could use our fingers to choose what we wanted.
Now, we have something called ChatGPT that makes using computers super easy! You can just type what you want, like talking to a friend, and it'll help you find all sorts of cool stuff. It's like a magic helper that knows almost everything!
So, instead of having a bunch of separate apps, ChatGPT can connect to different parts of the internet and help you do all kinds of things. It's like having a huge toy box with all your favorite toys, and you just need to ask for them. And the best part? You don't need to be a computer expert to use it!
(generated using GPT-4)
Loved your plotting of interface evolution over the last 5 decades, ChatUX/ChatGPT could very well be our future to make the whole API plumbing invisible ✨🚀