The Calculator
I often think about the Calculator Construction Set story written by Andy Hertzfeld of how Chris Espinosa was building the original desktop calculator app in February 1982.
Chris was iterating on the user interface, and showed Steve Jobs each iteration. Steve would have some visual feedback, and Chris would iterate again, repeat.
We all gathered around as Chris showed the calculator to Steve and then held his breath, waiting for Steve's reaction. "Well, it's a start", Steve said, "but basically, it stinks. The background color is too dark, some lines are the wrong thickness, and the buttons are too big." Chris told Steve he'll keep changing it, until Steve thought he got it right.
Chris had an idea. Instead of trying to implement Steve's feedback and wait to show him the next day, he built controls to tweak each visual parameter of the calculator for Steve to play with until he got it just right.
The next afternoon, instead of a new iteration of the calculator, Chris unveiled his new approach, which he called "the Steve Jobs Roll Your Own Calculator Construction Set". Every decision regarding graphical attributes of the calculator were parameterized by pull-down menus. You could select line thicknesses, button sizes, background patterns, etc.
It makes me think about future user interfaces. Today, we're presented with the same fixed cookie cutter UI views that are one size fits all.
Particularly with AI, I believe that interfaces will start to adapt and become more dynamic, even to the point of allowing people to customize the visual layer almost entirely, where the interface adapts to fit the underlying data model. This idea is often referred to as dynamic/malleable/adaptive interfaces, and I think we're going to see more of it soon.
A "Steve Jobs Roll Your Own Calculator Construction Set" for any interface, if you will.