Large language models (LLMs) are shaping a new user interface (UI) paradigm
in writing tools by enabling users to generate text through prompts. This
paradigm shifts some creative control from the user to the system, thereby
diminishing the user's authorship and autonomy in the writing process. To
restore autonomy, we introduce Textfocals, a UI prototype designed to
investigate a human-centered approach that emphasizes the user's role in
writing. Textfocals supports the writing process by providing LLM-generated
summaries, questions, and advice (i.e., LLM views) in a sidebar of a text
editor, encouraging reflection and self-driven revision in writing without
direct text generation. Textfocals' UI affordances, including contextually
adaptive views and scaffolding for prompt selection and customization, offer a
novel way to interact with LLMs where users maintain full authorship of their
writing. A formative user study with Textfocals showed promising evidence that
this approach might help users develop underdeveloped ideas, cater to the
rhetorical audience, and clarify their writing. However, the study also showed
interaction design challenges related to document navigation and scoping,
prompt engineering, and context management. Our work highlights the breadth of
the design space of writing support interfaces powered by generative AI that
maintain authorship integrity.

通过提供 LLM 生成的摘要、问题和建议，Textfocals 支持写作过程，鼓励用户反思和自主修订，以维护其写作的完全创作权。与 Textfocals 的一个初步用户研究表明，这种方法可能有助于用户发展不成熟的想法，迎合修辞听众，并澄清他们的写作。但研究也发现了与文档导航和范围界定、提示工程和上下文管理相关的交互设计挑战。我们的研究突出了由生成 AI 支持的写作支持界面的设计空间的广度。