The AI helper – suggestions has gotten an update.
Both the category-helper and the tag-helper have been moved inline, to better integrate the functionality.
For the category chooser, which is a single option, the dropdown now gives the option Choose for me, which will select the best suggestion and auto-close the dropdown. This behaviour is different from before, as we want to offer the most frictionless experience when using this feature.
So instead of 1) ask > 2) wait for suggestions > 3) choose, it’s now one step.
For the tag chooser, which is multi option, it gives the option to Show AI suggestions and replaces the default tag list with the AI suggestions to choose from. So this behaviour is unchanged, only repositioned.
Background on design decisions (For those interested)
Why the differences in approach?
We can’t use the same mechanism for the tags because we would either get:
A) Auto-add only 1 tag (presumably the first/best option) but lose the ability to see the other suggestions
B) Auto-add all suggested tags, but with a fairly high risk some of them will be a bad fit.
There is also a good chance no tags match at all, since choosing zero tags is a valid option, whereas a category must always be chosen.
Hence, opting to “show the list” for tags and not for the category.
Why is it not applied to other category choosers?
It can be easily expanded to other instances, and it might be later, but for now it’s just a matter of scope and impact. Other instances, such as the move-post-to-new-topic modal are also differently laid out, and have less technical “need” of the fix.
What about the title?
As the title is pure text field, without a dropdown, so the sparkle icon must be kept there for now. The design has been updated a bit though:
Trade-offs
I’m aware of the main trade-off, namely: You can no longer “see” when the AI helper becomes available (after min character count is reached).
However, I hope that isn’t a limitation most people bump into with real usage, I considered two paths I find logical:
- You know which category you want right away => No need for the AI helper
- You don’t know yet, so you first write content and then choose => AI helper is available
The situation where you only write less than 40 characters, and then decide you want to pick category (but the AI helper wouldn’t be available yet), seems less prevalent.
So I believe this is an acceptable trade-off for the reduced noisiness, freeing up the outlet, and tighter coupled functionality.