Hey, it’s Doug, and this microcast I want to talk about conversational configuration.

I’m going to use three examples for that, and essentially what I mean is the ability to either talk, as in speak, or type what it is that you want to happen and for the app to configure itself based on what it is that you’ve said.

So the first example that I want to give is from Google.

So apparently the Pixel 10 phones have had this feature for a while and they’re now rolling it out to other phones in North America.

In Google Photos now, you’re going to be able to type in what you want to happen to the photograph.

So for example, increase the brightness or remove this person or whatever it is that you want to change to the photo.

You’re not going to have to know what all of the different little tools do.

You can just say what it is that you want to happen and it will use those tools to be able to change the photograph.

So conversational configuration.

The second example was yesterday I was looking at hotels for a future holiday and I was on booking.com on the app and instead of using the faceted search, which is show me all of the accommodation which has a rating over eight, which is within half a mile of the city centre, which has a gym, all that kind of stuff.

You can just type in all of those things that you want and it will use the faceted search to be able to find the things that you are looking for.

And then the third one is something which I wished was the case.

So we’re working with a client at the moment using Discourse, which is an open source discussion platform.

And there’s lots of features within that, loads of things you can configure and you have to know where all of those different configuration options are in the right screens.

You need to know what they do, etc.

It can get a little bit complicated, very powerful, but also a little bit confusing at times.

So ideally what I wanted there was the ability to say, I want you to hide all of these categories so that users who are new to the platform can’t see them.

Now that means going in and saying, okay, user level this, they need to not be able to see this and that by ID and whatever.

The mental model behind that is quite a lot to get used to.

So what I think this conversational configuration kind of paradigm or approach is going to allow is the ability to take all of the different functionality from an app, from a program, from a site, from a service.

And because the AI knows all of those different, how all those things can be configured, it can take your desire, your wish, the thing that you need and translate that into make these changes to the faceted search, apply all of these different filters and crops and everything like that on the tool or turn on and off these different functionality on this platform.

And I think that is a game changer in the same way that so-called vibe coding is a game changer for being able to take an idea and put it into reality.

I’m going to put a link in the show notes to a dashboard that I’ve created for my daughter’s football.

She plays football at a high standard and I’ve been using a spreadsheet so far this season to keep up to date with when she played, who she played against, if she scored, like some notes, whatever.

And sharing a spreadsheet with friends and family is a bit suboptimal, shall we say.

And so I vibe coded a dashboard, which then puts this into a much easier to understand style.

So that’s kind of an example of this kind of configuration, but it’s just making life a lot easier for people if they can explain what they want in the right kind of terms.

And this natural language approach, I think, makes it so much easier for people to be able to access the things that they want in straightforward ways instead of having to learn a whole new system.

So I’m definitely up for this kind of approach to configuring all different kinds of apps and systems.

That’s all I was going to say.

Cheers for now.