When Google Assistant arrived a couple of years ago, chatbots were all the rage in products like Facebook Messenger and Microsoft’s Skype. Simulating a back-and-forth conversation was supposed to be more efficient than poking around in traditional apps, and chatbot proponents hyped this model as the future of software design. Google Assistant itself debuted as a feature within Google’s Allo messaging app, so you could exchange text messages with the search giant just like you would with a friend.

Google has since soured on this approach and has “paused” development on Allo. The new version of Google Assistant–available now on Android, and coming to the iPhone in a few weeks–emphasizes visual response cards that you can interact with, and that stay on the screen even as you ask follow-up questions. Meanwhile, the actual transcript has moved from the bottom to the top of the screen, so in most cases you’ll only see the most recent topic of conversation. The overall experience is less like texting and more like, well, using an app.

“When we built the Assistant, you can clearly see inspiration from Allo in what we did, in this chatty back-and-forth model where you’re talking with an intelligent assistant,” says Chris Perry, the Google product manager who leads Assistant on Android. “And we found that was somewhat restrictive of a model for us. It ended up constraining us in a number of different ways.”

“Everyone’s kind of trying to figure out how you should do things”

One major problem with the chatbot approach was that it was too linear, says Ye-Jeong Kim, Google’s user experience manager for Search and Assistant. You might get a visual card when asking about the weather, but if you asked a follow-up about wind chill or a future forecast, the resulting chat transcript would push the original weather card off the screen. This can be disorienting, so now Google will simply update the original card with new information as you ask for it.

“If you think about visual–unlike spoken or written conversation–visual doesn’t have to be so ephemeral,” Kim says. “It’s lingering, and helping to aid a conversation.”

Besides, not every Google Assistant device is conducive to dialog bubbles. When Assistant arrived in 2016, Google was mainly pushing it through Allo and on its new Google Home smart speaker. Now, Google Assistant is available in cars through Android Auto, on kitchen counters with devices like the Lenovo Smart Display, and on televisions through Chromecast and Android TV. A chat-like interface doesn’t make as much sense on those devices.