Understanding and influencing decisions

Complete a task

A spreadsheet where a user has partially calculated age from date of birth for some rows. There is a suggestion to auto-fill the remaining answers.

Description

Autocomplete is a common pattern in browsers, documents, web forms and spreadsheets where the user is given assistive, greyed out text to click on or tab to accept. Increasingly, autocomplete is a feature powered by AI systems, not only data stored locally on a user’s machine.

For example, some spreadsheets offer an AI enabled autocomplete where someone can choose to delegate to the AI system to fill in the formatting for the sheet.

Advantages

  • Fast way to automate certain administrative tasks.
  • Easy to dismiss or reverse.

Limitations

  • Autocompleted information can be read via JavaScript even before the user submits the form, potentially revealing personal information without explicit consent.
  • It can be easy for someone to accidentally choose to autocomplete a field.

Examples

  • Google Sheets →

    An AI enabled autocomplete is made available once enough context is provided within the sheet.

Related patterns