More often than I can believe, it's skilled and experienced usability professionals.
It is, in many ways, a holy grail to produce 'intuitive' interfaces and experiences - that is, interfaces that require no reasoning or learning through observation. Whether there is, or ever can be, an 'intuitive' interface is a point for discussion.
This is not merely semantics though - it is not merely that the word is used without proper reference to its meaning that I object to. It is that it gives the impression that interfaces, and interaction in general, can be designed in such a way as not to require:
- Learning
- Reasoning
This is problematic in that it leads designers to overlook the need to understand people's mental models - the things they've already learnt during their lives, the way they make sense of the world.
It is through understanding how people's minds work that we can best work towards 'intuitive' interfaces. And people's minds work differently across education groups, skill sets, cultures, experience, and so on. By using the word intuitive, we overlook the need to understand our users, and mistakenly assume that an interface is, or is not, intuitive.
I therefore suggest that the word is hereby banned from use in a user experience context, and that, instead, professionals describe what they actually mean.
Who's with me?
A couple of interesting links on this:
http://www.uie.com/articles/design_intuitive/
http://www.usabilityfirst.com/glossary/term_444.txl
http://www.asktog.com/papers/raskinintuit.html
2 comments:
I don't think we need to ban it. Our clients like using it, even though they use it incorrectly.
I think we need to redefine it. When we say an interface is 'intuitive', we really mean that the interface is easy for a person to intuit.
It is possible to build interfaces that meet this definition of intuitive. It's hard, but possible.
I vote we keep the word and make sure we're clear when we use it about what we really mean and the effort that will be required to make it happen.
For me, the problem is that the word 'intuitive' is used in such a way as to suggest that it's a property that something does or does not have.
If you say 'intuitive' to me, I have faith that you understand what is meant by that. But because intuition will vary from user to user, depending on their knowledge and experience, we need a homogenous(ish) group of users to make an intuitive interface.
I feel it's more useful to focus on understanding users' knowledge and experience, which is something the word 'intuitive' can mask.
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