tl;dr
- Vibe-coded apps have a static user experience design. “Static” meaning that the way it was designed and implemented is the only way that it can be used (just as with traditionally coded apps).
- We will see “apps” where the UI is generated by AI on-the-fly. This allows people to use “traditional” style UIs, but which are dynamic; tailored to their preferences and situation.
- Code is the middle-man between “vibe” and the “app” and can eventually be cut out.
- Rather than “AI: write code for me that powers an app that accomplishes <x>,” it’ll be “Deploy an AI-powered app that accomplishes <x>.”
Vibe coding is democratizing app development
If you want to provide people with a tech-based service — a way to access information or accomplish digital tasks — you typically need an app (web app, mobile app, or whatever). The app is the user-friendly interface to the underlying service (data/information and actions).
To create an app, it needs to be coded, which has historically been difficult and expensive, and thus out of the reach of most people.
Vibe coding is changing that. You can use AI tools to do that coding for you with little to no know-how yourself, and at relatively minimal cost. Better yet, vibe coding-as-a-service are popping up, which make it even easier for just about anybody to “code” an app.
Vibe-coded apps still have a static UI/UX
From a user-perspective, vibe-coded apps are fundamentally the same as traditionally-coded apps. They’re still running compiled code and thus only work in the way that they were designed and implemented be (even if the design and implementation process was different).
AI is changing interaction models
One such change is that people are often bypassing apps altogether, such as using conversational AI (“chatbots”) to get information much more quickly and easily than searching and perusing through pages and pages of information (possibly dozens or even hundreds) to find what they’re looking for. But we don’t always want a summary or to learn about books, refrigerators, or stores conversationally.
Sometimes we do want a UI: a screen with laid-out information, buttons, links, etc. However, the UI of apps — often designed by Product Manager and User Experience designers, then implemented by software engineers (or/with AI) — can be too limiting (and sometimes frustrating or onerous to use).
👉 Apps are “merely” the thing we create as the friendly interface to underlying services that provide information and actions — the frontend. The designers and implementers (PM, UX, software engineers, etc), are the middlemen who decide how we get to interact with those services.
Dynamic UI/UX
Rather than having apps implemented with UI/UX (usually one UX all users use, or “one size fits all”), apps can have dynamic UX where UI is created on the fly based on what it thinks or what you told it is most important to you — AI-powered, of course.
☝ More on this in AI is Revolutionizing Interaction Models.
Code-free Dynamic UI/UX
AI-generated UI/UX means that we don’t need code to power that UI/UX. In other words, instead of using the power of AI to implement a static-UX app (“AI: write code for me that powers an app that accomplishes X“), we use it to power dynamic user experiences (“Deploy an AI-powered app that accomplishes X“).
Code doesn’t need to be between “vibe” and the “app” and can eventually be cut out¹. So..
👉 Vibe coding is a temporary technology/solution.
This just scratches the surface of how things will change and where things will go…
☝ Next, read more about AI is Revolutionizing Interaction Models, if you haven’t already.
Footnotes
- This isn’t to say there will be zero code powering the apps that we use, but that the code will be more limited to the framework (like scaffolding). It’s the “business logic” that will be replaced (to varying extents).
Leave a Reply