User: Do make us think sometimes.
“This might not be ‘intuitive’ for the user”.
“UI should be intuitive”
We as designers can’t pass a single day without listening to this word, INTUITIVE, from our stakeholders or clients. Sometimes this becomes a limitation to the scope of the design.
Mr Loren Brichter couldn’t have invented the gesture — Pull- to Refresh, if he thought too much about the normal user gestures and patterns. He could have found a spot and just stuck a cliched ‘refresh’ button somewhere on the top as usual.
A few people consider that, if it’s new or unfamiliar, then it’s not intuitive. But where does that lead us? Isn’t that boring sometimes? I would say, it’s okay to teach the users something new. Human beings like surprises. Surprises happen once in a while that’s why it’s interesting.
Designs don’t have to be always flat and follow everything according to the GUIDELINES. Most of the time we use all the general patterns and on top of it, a few create ‘HELP’ which clutters the design. That also means our solution is not intuitive.
I would like to propose this not only in the visual language but also in the ‘content’ because the way we use language is also evolving.
Observe the groundbreaking apps like Tinder, Facebook, CRED etc. They come up with new interaction styles in UI designs and surprise the users. That’s one of the reasons for their success.
Don’t take me wrong. I am not against Intuitiveness. My perspective is “Past Intuitiveness” shouldn’t be the only benchmark for designs. Our life, situations and technologies are growing every single day. Let us not get biased on what’s intuitive, which is more reliant upon the past experiences we have in common. We should design for the ‘users’, not just for the solution. Please don’t underestimate their intelligence and adaptability to technology
“Good design is actually a lot harder to notice than poor design, in part because good designs fit our needs so well that the design is invisible, serving us without drawing attention to itself. Bad design, on the other hand, screams out its inadequacies, making itself very noticeable.”
― Donald A. Norman, The Design of Everyday Things
