Business users dedicate significant amounts of time to repetitive tasks within enterprise digital platforms, highlighting a critical need for automation. Despite advancements in low-code tools for UI automation, their complexity remains a significant barrier to adoption among non-technical business users. However, recent advancements in large language models (LLMs) have created new opportunities to overcome this barrier by offering more powerful, yet simpler and more human-centric programming environments. This paper presents IDA (Intelligent Digital Apprentice), a novel no-code Web UI automation tool designed specifically to empower business users with no technical background. IDA incorporates human-centric design principles, including guided programming by demonstration, semantic programming model, and teacher-student learning metaphor which is tailored to the skill set of business users. By leveraging LLMs, IDA overcomes some of the key technical barriers that have traditionally limited the possibility of no-code solutions. We have developed a prototype of IDA and conducted a user study involving real world business users and enterprise applications. The promising results indicate that users could effectively utilize IDA to create automation. The qualitative feedback indicates that IDA is perceived as user-friendly and trustworthy. This study contributes to unlocking the potential of AI assistants to enhance the productivity of business users through no-code user interface automation.

翻译：企业用户在数字化平台中投入大量时间处理重复性任务，这凸显了对自动化的迫切需求。尽管用于用户界面自动化的低代码工具已取得进展，但其复杂性仍然是阻碍非技术背景业务用户采用的主要障碍。然而，大型语言模型（LLMs）的最新进展为克服这一障碍创造了新的机遇，提供了更强大、更简单且更以人为中心的编程环境。本文提出IDA（智能数字助手），这是一种专为赋能无技术背景的业务用户而设计的新型无代码Web用户界面自动化工具。IDA融入了以人为中心的设计原则，包括演示引导编程、语义编程模型以及针对业务用户技能集定制的师生学习隐喻。通过利用大型语言模型，IDA克服了传统上限制无代码解决方案可行性的关键技术障碍。我们开发了IDA的原型，并开展了一项涉及真实业务用户和企业应用程序的用户研究。积极的研究结果表明，用户能够有效利用IDA创建自动化流程。定性反馈表明，IDA被认为易于使用且值得信赖。本研究有助于释放人工智能助手通过无代码用户界面自动化提升业务用户生产力的潜力。