Thought For The Day

[kerravonsen]

The phrase "intuitive interface" is misleading. What it really should be is "predictable interface" two terms: "customary interface" and "discoverable interface".

Comments

I think I disagree

[the_magician]

but I'm not sure ... all of the following is IMHO and my interpretation, YMMV!

... I know that I didn't find the iPod/iTunes interface intuitive, though I now know it to be predictable. And not being intuitive, I got things wrong (including losing the first 20Gb of music I uploaded to the iPod)

An "intuitive" interface is one you should be able to use with specific training. Where you know what you want to do and it is obvious how you do it.

A "predictable" interface is one where you have a good idea of what will happen when you do a particular action. However you may not be able to find how to do a particular item.

E.g. I use SharePoint at work. On the front page is a list of latest uploads of documents. If I go to the "shared documents" folder, then clicking on a file lets me open it for editing, and closing the editing application puts the updated file back into Sharepoint and releases the edit lock. That's nice and intuitive and predictable.
However on the front screen, when I click on a file and it opens it in the editing application, it does it "read only" so any changes made can't be saved back and the file is not locked from other people editing it ... the opening into an application is intuitive, but the fact that it is read only from the front screen is not predictable.

Er, I think!

Re: I think I disagree

[kerravonsen]

The reasons I think that "intuitive" is a misleading term is that:
* it muddies the difference between "intuition" and "computer literacy"; most of the time people figure out unknown computer interfaces because they are similar to other computer interfaces they have already used - that's what I meant by "predictable", though perhaps I should have used the term "customary", as in "following the customs or conventions or traditions already known of".
* it is a fuzzy term; one can argue until the cows come home whether a particular interface is "intuitive", and I've seen people arguing this way, and most of the time it turns out that their points of disagreement are based on the fact that they are used to different conventions, and each party claims that their own convention is more "intuitive".
* As a corollary to that, it is much easier to point to something and ask "does it follow the conventions?" than it is to determine whether it is "intuitive".

Thinking further on this, perhaps it is better to replace "intuitive" into two terms: "customary" and "discoverable".

customary: follows the conventions laid down by previous software, thus building on the computer literacy of the users. For example, iconifying a window by clicking on the "_" button in the top right corner, I would argue that that is a convention; it isn't necessarily obvious what action that button would cause if you've never used a computer before.
discoverable: it is easy to discover what the interface can do, without having to read the manual first. Menus are an example of a discoverable interface, I think.

Re: I think I disagree

[the_magician]

Those sound sensible changes ...

... I know Windows really well, and Microsoft applications pretty well, so when I'm sat down in front of a previously unknown application, I have a pretty good idea of what to do and what can be done ...

... but I've sat down in front of a Mac and only some of it made sense to me and only some of it was guessable (one button mouse? Apple key? Cloverleaf key?) ... even finding the power switch was on the keyboard ... not "customary" to me.

Locking and unlocking mobile phone keypads. Some are top left bottom left, some are top left top right, some are something else ... nothing customary, or intuitive, but probably discoverable.

Finding out how to put a phone into and out of silent ... on my Nokias you can do it by *briefly* pressing the power button and getting a menu up of things that including silent/general.

[cheyinka]

Hm, how is it misleading? The two phrases seem equivalent to me. When I think "intuitive interface", I think "if I don't know how to do something, and I guess, I'm likely to be right" - and for me guesses fall under "intuition" as much as they do "prediction".

[kerravonsen]

See my comment above. I should have used the term "customary" instead of "predictable". My argument is that people confuse "intuition" with "computer literacy"; that the guesses people make are educated guesses, based on their experience with other software.