Design principles · 1999

Principles of mixed-initiative user interfaces

Horvitz E

What it found

Sets out principles for combining automated help with the person staying in control, illustrated with an assistant that offers to schedule meetings from email: act when the expected value is high, ask when unsure, and make it cheap to dismiss or correct.

Where the evidence stops

Principles from experience with one system, not an experiment.

How it shapes Pursue

Pursue

Pursue offers; the person decides. A suggestion is always easy to ignore.

A design input, not evidence that Pursue works.

Cited in

  1. 01Why do I push back when an app tells me what to do?Because being pushed feels like losing a freedom, and people act to win it back; psychologists call this reactance. In an experiment with 394 people (Richards et al., 2022), simply reminding them the choice was theirs reduced the pushback against health messages, and the effect was still there a week later.Autonomy and wording

Tre-Up is built on this research.

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