Lu: AI Apps Should Display Execution States, Not Generic Spinners
Rio Lu · Cursor Head of Design Roasts Startup Websites · Y Combinator · Nov 20, 2025 · at 31:37
Rio Lu, Head of Design at Cursor, discusses effective UX design for managing user attention during long LLM generation and waiting periods.
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“But you do want to control, like you don't want to show too many things at once where, Like it just becomes like a wall of text. You want to control like, ah, the things that are running, you show them in the more like focusable spot. And as it progresses, it kind of shows you like, ah, these are the things that are running. These maybe are the actions I need to confirm. This is my input. You kind of shift people's focus. And I don't want these like random empty states with spinners everywhere or like, ah, In the preview you saw, like, it was like looping some random messages, but they weren't really helpful.”
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