Source: https://joinfinn.com/blog/the-interface-should-fit-the-job

# The interface should fit the job.

A conversation is a good way to ask. It is not always the best way to review, decide, or act.

By Finn · 3 min read

Ask someone to compare three catering proposals. They probably want a table. Ask them to correct a delivery address, and a small form might be enough. Ask them to explain an unexpected charge, and a conversation makes sense. The future of business software should make room for all three.

## Start with the decision, then choose the display.

We believe the useful question is what a person needs to understand or decide next. A chat window can make a complex request easy to express. But turning every answer into a long message can make the next step harder. People should not have to reconstruct a budget from paragraphs or scroll through a conversation to find the final version of a quote.

Consider a hotel manager planning staffing for a busy weekend. They might ask Finn to compare expected arrivals with the current roster. The result should make the gap visible. A table can show coverage by shift; a calculator can expose assumptions about arrival volume. The conversation explains the reasoning and lets the manager request changes.

## An artifact gives the work something to stand on.

A report, proposal, or small app can remain useful after the chat ends. It has a name, a purpose, and a place where colleagues can find it. People can examine the result without replaying every prompt that produced it.

This is the role we see for Finn’s Library alongside conversations. A generated output should be easy to inspect and return to. If the user changes an assumption, the revised result should be distinguishable from the version that was previously reviewed. A beautiful display is only useful when people know what they are looking at.

## Keep the action visible.

An interface that prepares a proposal should make that different from an interface that commits a change. Reviewing a staffing suggestion is not publishing the roster. Editing a quote is not sending it to the buyer. A clear action boundary gives people confidence to explore without accidentally changing the business.

Some work will still be faster in a familiar editor. People who review dozens of records need sorting, selection, and comparison. AI should reduce the effort around those tools, not remove them because conversation is fashionable.

## Let the work move between forms.

Our direction for Finn is a workspace where a request can become the most useful kind of result: a conversation, a document, a table, or a small interactive tool. People can ask for a change and inspect what changed before proceeding.

The best interface is not the one with the fewest buttons. It is the one that makes the next decision clear. Let conversation handle ambiguity, let structured views handle comparison, and let explicit controls handle consequential actions.

## Further reading

- [Sierra: Agents as a Service](https://sierra.ai/blog/agents-as-a-service)

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