What if AI didn't replace the interface?
Exploring how conversational AI and familiar search patterns can work together.
This started while exploring a digital experience in luxury travel. The question was never 'how can we add a chatbot?'. It was how people could express ambiguous, emotional or inspiration-led intent conversationally, while keeping conventional interface patterns for the things that are already structured and known - destination, dates, number of guests.
Rather than replacing search with a chatbot, I prototyped a hybrid experience that lets people express fuzzy human intent while retaining familiar controls for the things people already know how to specify.
It wasn't intended to be a finished product. I used it to explore where conversational interaction genuinely helped, where conventional UI remained better, and how the two could progressively hand over to one another.
What I learned
AI is useful when the need is ambiguous, emotional or hard to express through filters. Traditional UI remains extremely effective when the answer is known and structured.
The interesting design space isn't chat versus interface. It's deciding which mode should do what, and when.
- v0
- Next.js
- Conversational UI patterns
- Prototype research
Prototype: conversational intent alongside conventional controls.