Four ways the system can offer to do part of the work: predictions, stored values, generated content, or recommended actions. The actor accepts, edits, or dismisses.
All four share the same basic loop (system offers, actor decides) but they vary in scope, timing, and how much trust the actor has to place in them. More system initiative means a greater need for transparency, easy dismissal, and earned trust.
The spectrum
Autocomplete narrows a known list as the actor types. One field, partial value, from a known list or index.
Autofill inserts stored values when a form loads or a field gains focus. Multiple fields, complete values, from the actor’s own data.
AI completion generates content inline while the actor writes.
Next-best action recommends the next step when context changes. Whole actions or decisions, from contextual reasoning or rules.
Autocomplete and autofill are operational: skilled actors barely notice them. AI completion and next-best action stay in conscious attention and require deliberate evaluation.
Resources & references
- Horvitz (1999) Principles of mixed-initiative user interfaces. CHI ‘99
- Parasuraman, Sheridan, Wickens (2000) A model for types and levels of human interaction with automation. IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics
Consequences
- the loop is the system offering and the actor deciding, which makes dismissal the load-bearing half: an offer that can't be waved away cheaply stops being an offer
- the more of the work the system takes on, the more trust the actor has to extend before accepting anything — so how an offer accounts for itself stops being decoration
- the four sit at opposite ends of one spectrum and can't be tuned together: the offers a skilled actor barely notices and the offers that demand a deliberate judgement are the same move at incomparable stakes
Related patterns
Precedes
- Transparent reasoning — the more of the work the system takes on, the more trust the actor has to extend before accepting anything — so how an offer accounts for itself stops being decoration
Instantiates
- Suggestion — the broader pattern of system-generated recommendations; this spectrum focuses on the specific mechanisms
Enacts
- Agency — however much the system proposes, the actor keeps the final say
Complements
- AI completion — the spectrum this pattern belongs to
- Autocomplete — the spectrum autocomplete sits within
- Autofill — the spectrum this pattern belongs to
- Next-best action — the spectrum this pattern belongs to
Related
- Assistance
- Agent — powers AI completion and next-best action; the inline and ambient modes map directly to this group
Preceded by
- Good defaults — pre-population ends where the task needs the system to participate in the work itself — the assisted-completion spectrum picks up where a static guess stops sufficing