Where Does Your Algorithm Stop?

Think of a service, product, or process in your work or life — then map where automation ends and human judgment should begin.

Name the two axes

For your chosen service or process, define what sits on each axis of the quadrant below: the horizontal axis is frequency (rare ↔ common requests), the vertical axis is complexity (simple ↔ complex to resolve). Write your axis labels in the spaces provided.

Rare ← → Common

→

Simple ↑ ↓ Complex

List six real situations

Write six specific customer or user situations from your chosen service — real ones you have experienced or can easily imagine. Be concrete: not 'billing query' but 'customer charged twice in error on the same day'.

Place every situation

Plot each of your six situations in the quadrant. Where do most of them land? Mark each with its number.

Simple

Complex

Rare

Common

Interrogate the quadrants

Which quadrant is fullest — and does that reveal where your system is over-automating? Which quadrant is emptiest — and does that reveal where you are under-serving? Look back at step 2: does the situation you labelled 'simple' still feel simple once it's sitting in the grid?

The quadrant you avoid

Which single quadrant do you — or does your organisation — most instinctively avoid dealing with, and why? Write one word that names the reason for that avoidance, then explain in one sentence why that avoidance is costing something real.

Why that word?

Discuss Share your avoided quadrant with a partner — do you share the same blind spot, or does yours reveal something theirs does not?

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