🤖 AI Summary
General-purpose chat-based LLM interfaces (e.g., ChatGPT) lack usability features tailored for web application development, hindering end-to-end application construction by non-programmers.
Method: We propose the first language model interface specifically designed for zero-code web application generation. It innovatively integrates structured input, real-time feedback, and user-story-driven task decomposition, combined with frontend visual design, prompt engineering optimization, and GPT-series models.
Contribution/Results: In a user study with 14 novices, nine fully implemented all user stories and five completed over half—achieving significantly higher task completion rates than ChatGPT. The results empirically validate that our interface effectively lowers the programming barrier imposed by LLMs and enhances practical development usability for non-experts.
📝 Abstract
Language models are increasingly used by software developers. However, it remains unclear whether their standard chat‐based interfaces are suitable for software development—especially for users with limited programming experience.This work presents a tool, called NoCodeGPT, that provides a customized interface for language models aimed at enabling the implementation of small web applications without writing code.We first conducted an exploratory study in which three participants used ChatGPT to implement a simple web‐based application. After that, we designed and implemented a customized GPT interface, called NoCodeGPT. To evaluate this new interface, we asked 14 students with limited web development experience to build two small web applications using only prompts.The exploratory study showed that general‐purpose chat interfaces like ChatGPT are not user‐friendly for application development. One participant, for instance, was unable to complete any proposed user stories. In contrast, results with NoCodeGPT were encouraging: 9 out of 14 participants completed all user stories, while the remaining five completed at least half.The standard GPT interface is not well‐suited for novice web developers. In response, we proposed, designed, and implemented a new interface that offers a more accessible experience for building web applications with language models.