PN.26.023. Product. Studio project, 2026.
Understudy
An assistant designed like a stage manager's desk. It prepares every action and stands by, and nothing happens until you call Go.
The brief
Design an AI productivity assistant.
The idea
The hard design question for assistants is who presses the button. Theatre solved this long ago. Stage managers call standby, wait, then call go. Understudy borrows that exact protocol: cue lights, a running order, and a script.
Decisions
- Standby and Go lights make the state of every action impossible to miss.
- Drafts appear in script format, so a proposal reads as a proposal.
- Held cues can be taken back, and every action is logged with a time.
- A banner says on every screen that the prototype is scripted.
How it came together
- Started from the question of who presses the button.
- Mapped assistant states onto theatre cue-light protocol.
- Wrote four cues, with alternate drafts for each.
How it works
One HTML file. Each cue has several pre-written versions, and choosing one swaps the text. Go changes the state and writes to a log.
Want something like this?
Tell us what you are making. A few lines is enough to start.
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