Use recommended next action for one context-sensitive workflow action, recommendations for ranked discovery suggestions, task list for known required tasks, and review queue for triaging many actionable items.
Use recommended next action for one context-sensitive workflow action, recommendations for ranked discovery suggestions, task list for known required tasks, and review queue for triaging many actionable items.
Practice the judgment: Imagine this situation: A stale recommendation sends an email, closes a case, or applies an offer after the underlying status changed. Write the person's goal, choose one of these patterns, and show the state that helps the person continue. Use the decision rules and source trail below to explain your choice.
Review the underlying principle →| Dimension | Recommended next action | Recommendations | Task list | Review queue |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| UI or UX | UI + UX - Context-sensitive workflow action suggested for the user's current record, case, conversation, or task | UI + UX - Ranked suggestions generated from context, behavior, item similarity, popularity, editorial rules, or recommendation models | UI + UX - Component-level list of linked task rows with names, hints, and statuses | UI + UX - Actionable queue for triaging many items that need human review |
| UI guidance | Render the recommended next action as a bounded suggestion card or action slot that names the action, trigger context, expected outcome, owner, due time or urgency, eligibility status, and why the system is suggesting it now. | Render recommendations as a labelled set of suggested items with clear item identity, recommendation reason, source or basis, availability, and a visible way to dismiss or tune at least the current item. | Give each control a clear label and visible state. | Render review queue as an actionable worklist with queue scope, counts, filters, sort order, row reason, owner, priority, age or SLA, status, preview context, selection, and row actions. |
| UX guidance | Keep recommended next action separate from broad recommendations, task lists, primary buttons, assignments, approvals, and review queues because it is optional, contextual, explainable, and directly tied to the current work state. | Use recommendations to reduce discovery effort when the system has evidence that a small set of items, products, services, content, or next actions may be useful in the user's current context. | Use task list when users need to scan a known set of service tasks, understand what each task is, choose a task to start or resume, and see each task's current status. | Use review queue when a team repeatedly processes a changing set of tickets, comments, pull requests, content items, cases, requests, or records that require human inspection and action. |
| Good UI | A support case sidebar recommends Send refund-policy article because the customer asked about a refund twice, shows confidence, source snippets, and opens a draft for review. | A commerce product page shows Pairs well with this camera, hides out-of-stock accessories, limits the rail to three visible items, and marks manually selected merchant recommendations separately from generated recommendations. | A task list row for Upload evidence shows the task name, a short hint, a linked row, and a Needs attention status with the unavailable reason in the row text. | A moderation queue has Held, Likely spam, Reported, and Escalated tabs, row evidence, policy reason, reviewer claim state, approve/remove/escalate actions, and bulk-action preview. |
| Bad UI | Required onboarding tasks and optional suggestions are mixed in one list labelled Next best actions. | A recommendation list keeps showing unavailable, out-of-stock, permission-restricted, or already dismissed items because the UI only validates card shape. | A task list uses uppercase button-like status pills and users click the status instead of the row. | The most urgent or oldest item is buried by default sort. |
| Good UX | A representative reviews the suggested reply, sees that it was triggered by customer intent and a matching knowledge article, edits the draft, and sends it. | A signed-out shopper sees Popular in backpacks rather than fake personalized copy, then gets personalized reasons only after activity exists and consent settings allow it. | A user scans five task rows, sees that Financial history is incomplete, selects anywhere on that row, completes the section, and returns to find the row status changed to Completed. | A reviewer claims the oldest SLA-at-risk ticket, opens a preview, assigns it to Billing, returns to the queue with the row removed, and lands on the next oldest item. |
| Bad UX | A user accepts a suggested discount and only afterward learns it changed contract terms. | Users assume recommendations are mandatory next steps because the UI mixes them with required workflow tasks. | A completed row has the strongest colour treatment, so users repeatedly revisit it instead of incomplete rows. | A reviewer marks a pull request reviewed from an old queue row after the author pushed new commits and re-requested review. |
| Best fit | Users are working in a record, case, conversation, or workflow where choosing the next action is costly or error-prone. | Users need discovery help in a large item, product, content, service, or action space. | A page needs to display a known set of tasks with status and links to start or resume them. | A team or individual repeatedly reviews many independently queued items. |
| Avoid when | The action is always required and should be a task, validation, or workflow gate. | The product has too few items for ranking to reduce effort. | Users are browsing arbitrary records rather than completing a fixed set of service tasks. | The task is a single request moving through a governed approval route. |
| Required state | Recommended action state with action title, reason, evidence, trigger, consequence, and accept or review path. | Default recommended state with labelled section, item identity, reason, source, and action controls. | Linked startable task row. | Queue loading and count state |
| Accessibility burden | Use a labelled region or card heading that identifies the suggestion as recommended, optional, and scoped to the current work object. | Make recommendation reasons, sponsored labels, availability, and item type available as text. | Use list semantics for the collection of task rows and clear heading structure for grouped task lists. | Use labelled queue name, count, filters, sort, group, row status, selection, preview, and action controls. |
| Common misuse | Hiding why the action was suggested, what evidence was used, or what will change. | Pretending generated suggestions are recently viewed, saved, or required steps. | Using task list as an answer summary. | Treating review queue as approval workflow and hiding many-item workload controls. |