I kind of hate UI that starts to get presumptuous. Like when Google Maps says "Welcome Home" after a trip - cheeky! Or when it wishes me "Bon Appetite" when I finish up a route to a restaurant (what if I was just going for drinks? Or using it as a landmark? What then smart guy?)
And it's worse when an app proposes taska, even when - or maybe especially when - it's based on my past behavior. While it might look good paper, saving steps, in practice "Are You Driving to Work?" can feel pushy and invasive.
But my friend Dylan had a worse situation. He lost his dear friend Kim the other year - a tragically young death. They were besties who lived on opposite sides of the country, and talked and messaged all the time.
A year later, and his Android phone was still featuring her on the "Would You Like to Call?" list. It was heartbreaking! And he actually had to remove her entry from his phone to get it to stop. I was reminded of that guy from the movie Amélie, tearfully erasing his deceased best friend from his address book:
And I know FB has been similarly triggering for folks, especially with it's "Memories" features. Many memories are painful! Maybe on average the feature is an emotional UX win, but it's really fraught.
(I asked Dylan for permission to tell this story of course... and he pointed out it almost feels like age discrimination, like perhaps someone who has experienced loss of friends or more heartbreak would have made a system that was a little more sensitive to folks.)
Maybe this is an example of AI just being a bit too primitive (a sorted list of "mostly frequently used contacts" is hardly AI at all - for that matter neither would putting in a recency weighting) and better AI could help out - but at the very least UX designers need to include ways to bail out and request certain people or events be excluded...
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