Also known as “zero-UIs,” our modern interfaces are becoming more and more like ambient music—able to do more for us with fewer direct actions, yet still able to captivate our attention.

Rather than relying on a single input screen, or even a series of screens, we’ll instead interact with computers with less friction. In our modern age of information, the average adult now makes more than 20,000 decisions a day—some big, such as whether or not to invest in the stock market, and some small, such as whether to glance at your mobile phone when you see the screen light up. Ambient computing systems promise to prioritize those decisions, delegate them on our behalf, and even to autonomously answer for us, depending on the circumstance.

Much of this invisible decision-making will happen without your direct supervision or input. What makes ambient design so tantalizing is that it should require us to make fewer and fewer decisions in the near-future. Think of it as a sort of autocomplete for intention.