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My grandma's landline voicemail still guides my AI prompts
Last month I was building a chatbot for my uncle's hardware store in Columbus and got totally stuck on how it should handle returns. Then I remembered my grandma's old answering machine message from 2003, the one that said 'if you're calling about the shed, it's sold, and no I won't take a check.' That blunt, context-first way of saying things actually solved my problem. I reworked the prompts to lead with the most important limit right away instead of burying it in polite filler. Has anyone else found weird inspiration from old tech or family habits when designing AI interactions?
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the_sandra17d ago
Read some article about how old phone trees teach clarity, same vibe as grandma's tape.
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stone.troy17d ago
That "blunt, context-first" thing is exactly what I read about in a UX blog last week. They were talking about how old phone menus with their "press 1 for billing" setup actually trained us to expect the important info upfront, not buried in small talk. Funny how grandma's answering machine and a dusty 90s IVR system both figured out the same rule before we did.
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