SJ

Scott Jenson

Things Scott Says on Podcasts

Argues that adding a chatbot to every interface is becoming a shortcut for teams that haven't done the harder design work, since most real tasks depend on context too specific to fit into a prompt box. The perspective comes from decades spent on interface design across desktop, mobile, and now agentic systems. Worked on System 7 and Newton at Apple and helped write its original Human Interface guidelines, later led UX at Symbian, worked on mobile UX at Google, and ran its Physical Web project before leaving the company in 2024. Appeared on The InfoQ Podcast discussing agentic UX and local-first software.

Where to Find Them

Scott Jenson has been a guest on This is HCD: Human-Centred Design, UX & Service Design (2 times) , Ask Noah Show , Product Impact Podcast | Secrets to unlocking the value of AI and The InfoQ Podcast .

Recently: “Scott Jenson on Evolving Desktop OS, Local-First, & Agentic UX” on The InfoQ Podcast (August 2026); “Episode 467: Ask Noah Show 467” on Ask Noah Show (November 2025); “13. Unlocking AI product success: Coaching teams to navigate uncertainty & design risks [Scott Jenso” on Product Impact Podcast | Secrets to unlocking the value of AI (June 2024); “Scott Jenson ‘Part 2 of 2: Open Source Design Movement: How Designers can help change the game’” on This is HCD: Human-Centred Design, UX & Service Design (April 2023); “Scott Jenson 'From Apple, Symbian to Google - Exploring the World of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS)'” on This is HCD: Human-Centred Design, UX & Service Design (November 2022).

What They Said

“slapping a chatbot on everything is going to become the first resort of losers.” — Scott Jenson, The InfoQ Podcast

Asked whether every interface is heading toward a single chat window, the longtime Apple and Google UX designer opened with "the short answer is hell no." His case is that intelligence is a social construct rather than a mathematical one, and that most real work is too full of context to survive being flattened into a prompt box. The line separates bolting a chatbot onto a product from doing the harder work of building the model into the problem.

The InfoQ Podcast · 2026-08-31 Permalink → Listen →
The InfoQ Podcast Around 25:35 into the episode
Scott Jenson

…think that mark has been hit. They all have ethical issues right now. But the point is, if we get an open source model that we can run locally, that provides, I think, a fantastically interesting opportunity to switch power away from these big guys, too. So there's lots moving that's interesting.

Speaker 2

…everything a web page with Chrome OS. Well, that didn't take off. Now, the guys from OpenAI want to make a small box with just one button, and that's it. Is the discussion that we just had useful in the context that everything will be a A chat window and everything else would be just typing in.

Scott Jenson

…intelligent. And so much of what we do that is work is actually part of our cultural construct. It's not a mathematical concept of intelligence. It's something that we share as a society. And the same thing applies to LLMs and work. So much of the work is more nuanced. It's got context. And so I do believe that we're going to get more LLM-based support, but it will move towards the problem. And slapping a chatbot on everything is going to become the first resort of losers. I mean, it's just, it's, yes, you can do it. And there is some value to it. But I do believe that having the LLM built into your problem is more work, but it will allow you to do far more interesting work. So I've written about, I don't want to go into the details of the specifics, but I do believe that we will get past this chatbot phase as more and more apps are written. But to be clear, it's…

Speaker 2

Okay. In my evil moment when I was working for a company where Dollar was king or, well, Euro was king, I was trying to frame the offer of the company during the takeoff of the LLM. And what I was pushing for was augmented user experience, augmented interfaces. So at points, as you mentioned in our…

Speaker 1

the next

Speaker 2

day to another one and he doesn't know what to do, but he knows exactly what he should ask. So that, from my perspective, is a good way of looking at it. And it can be voice, it can be a couple of buttons, it can be a chat window. And that's a good way of interacting with an LLM that will provide…

Speaker names come from our own diarization. The position is estimated from where the line sits in the episode.

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