A conversational app is not just “your website in a frame.” If you reuse the same old screens, you will fight the way people actually use ChatGPT. The ChatGPT SDK is most powerful when you treat conversation as the primary flow and UI as something that drops in only when needed.

This matters because:

• ChatGPT now reaches around 800 million weekly active users, which is roughly 10% of the world’s adults.
• People spend close to 4.9 hours a day on their phones, and about 89–90% of that time is inside mobile apps, not browsers.
• On the customer side, live chat and conversational AI are no longer “nice to have.” Surveys show 41% of consumers now prefer live chat over phone or email for support, and 58–65% use chatbots or self-service portals for simple issues.

Put together, that is a huge audience conditioned to chat in natural language, inside apps, and expect fast, self-service help. Your ChatGPT app and ChatGPT mobile apps should lean into this, not fight it.

Blending chat flows with UI elements like maps, forms, and media

The new generation of apps in ChatGPT lets you mix:

• Freeform conversation
• Structured UI elements (cards, lists, forms, maps, tables, media)

The right pattern is usually: chat → mini UI → chat again, not “dump a full dashboard into the chat window.”

A few concrete UX patterns that work well:

1. Narrow, focused UI blocks
   
   Instead of a busy screen, think in slices:

• A map view with just enough filters to pick a property, hotel, or store.
• A compact comparison table for 2–3 pricing plans, not your entire billing page.
• A single multi-step form broken into conversational steps, with the app surfacing the current step as UI.

The user stays in conversation, and the UI answers “what do I need to see or tap right now?”

2. Conversation as configuration

Let the chat handle configuration, and let the UI handle confirmation:

• Chat: “Tell me about your team size, budget, and must-have integrations.”
• UI: shows a short list of recommended setups or plans with toggles.
• Chat: explains tradeoffs, answers questions, and records the final choice.

This is where AI UX design really matters. You are designing a joint flow between text and interface, not just adding a form to a chat window.

3. Dynamic help inside the UI

Because your app lives inside ChatGPT, the user can literally ask the assistant about the interface they are looking at. A good pattern is:

• The app exposes a small “What does this mean?” or “Ask ChatGPT” control beside complex fields.
• Clicking it injects the current context into the conversation so the model can explain or walk the user through the next step.

This makes the experience feel less like a static embed and more like a guided, adaptive AI interface design.

Lessons from early travel, learning, and shopping integrations

We already have a preview of strong patterns from the first partners on the ChatGPT SDK, such as Booking.com, Canva, Coursera, Expedia, Spotify, and Zillow. 

While you do not see their internal analytics, the use cases they chose are very revealing for product teams:

Travel (Booking.com, Expedia)

• Natural language is perfect for fuzzy intent: “Find me a hotel in Paris, close to a metro, with parking, under $300 per night.”
• The app then shows a small set of options, not the entire catalogue.
• Filters and map interactions happen in a tight loop with the chat, rather than dumping the user into a full search site.

This aligns with broader behavior: mobile app stats show 70–90%+ of digital time is already in apps, so bringing a focused travel slice into ChatGPT reduces the jump from “idea” to “shortlist.”

Learning (Coursera)

• Users often ask broad questions: “How do I learn product management from scratch?”
• The app can propose a short learning path, then let ChatGPT explain hard concepts in the same thread while the user watches.

This dovetails with conversational AI adoption in support and education: reports show 23% of companies are already using conversational AI, and another 44% plan to adopt it, which means users will increasingly expect educational and guidance flows to feel chat-native.

Shopping / discovery (Zillow, Spotify)

• Zillow uses an interactive map plus chat for constraints and tradeoffs.
• Spotify uses conversation to collect mood, era, and context, then drops in a playable playlist.

Here the lesson is simple: the apps handle the structured part, while the assistant handles the subjective part. That balance is exactly what you want when you re-imagine your own chatgpt plugins style integrations as full apps.

Practical AI UX design principles for ChatGPT apps and mobile experiences

If you are a product or design lead, you do not need to reinvent everything. You need a small, opinionated playbook that respects how people already use conversational AI and mobile.

You can start with five principles.

1. Let conversation lead, not the canvas

• Begin flows with a question: “What are you trying to achieve right now?”
• Use UI blocks only when the answer is easier to choose or scan visually.
• End with a summary in plain language so users know what just happened.

This matches user preference trends: multiple studies show 45–65% of users prefer messaging or self-service channels for simple tasks, and they care more about clarity than raw speed.

2. Design for “two-screen” behavior

Your ChatGPT experience will often sit next to:

• Your mobile app
• Your web app
• A third-party tool (CRM, payment system, LMS)

Make sure the UX plays well with that reality:

• Use clear labels for any deep link: “Open this configuration in your mobile app.”
• Keep IDs, names, and terminology consistent so users can recognize items when they switch screens.
• Treat ChatGPT as the place where users decide, and your app as the place where they execute and explore.

3. Keep constraints visible in the UI

When the assistant narrows options based on a chat, show those filters clearly in the app surface:

• “Budget: under $500 / month”
• “Team size: 10–50 seats”
• “Region: North America only”

This builds trust, especially as surveys also show hesitancy about AI in critical flows. For example, Gartner found 64% of customers would prefer companies not use AI for customer service, largely because they fear losing control or access to humans. Clear UI constraints help counter that fear, even when the experience is fully automated. 

4. Plan for failure and escalation

A strong AI UX design includes escape hatches:

• A simple “This is not what I wanted” button that resets the step.
• Clear ways to ask for human help, even if it is just “Ask support to review this configuration.”
• Logging and analytics so you can see where people bail out of the ChatGPT SDK flow.

Given that 800 million people now use ChatGPT each week, small UX rough spots can turn into huge volumes of frustration if you do not plan for them. 

5. Treat metrics like a new funnel, not a side quest

For every ChatGPT app you ship, define:

• Entry intent: What were people asking when the app appeared?
• Core action: What is the single success event inside the ChatGPT experience?
• Handoff: How many of those sessions lead to a meaningful action in your main product?

This is where OpenForge typically partners with teams: we help frame your AI product strategy so you are not just creating a cool demo, but an additional funnel that ties back to activation, retention, and revenue in your core mobile and web apps.

In the next part, we will go under the hood: how the ChatGPT SDK, MCP, and your existing APIs fit together, and what your developers need to know before they scope a first proof of concept.