I've recently been reading up on the science of learning, and I realized I never considered what intuition meant to me. Merriam-Webster lists it as:
> a: the power or faculty of attaining to direct knowledge or cognition without evident rational thought and inference
> b: immediate apprehension or cognition
> c: knowledge or conviction gained by intuition
If I could frame the thought of my original comment in terms of intuition, it would be:
All software should be intuitive, at what point that intuition is built differs.
For widest adoption, that software should be immediately intuitive to the widest group of people.
For maximum efficiency in a given (usually professional) domain, that software should allow a user who has built up their intuition to effectively merge with the machine.
I don't think one precludes the other, and a lot of the best software is immediately understood by a common user while having features for power-users. I do think there's a tradeoff to some degree though. If you're building a very specific technical tool, perhaps you can assume the user is a drunk programmer, but not a drunk grandmother. As in, the expected level of intuition need not be at the lowest common denominator.
I've recently been reading up on the science of learning, and I realized I never considered what intuition meant to me. Merriam-Webster lists it as:
> a: the power or faculty of attaining to direct knowledge or cognition without evident rational thought and inference
> b: immediate apprehension or cognition
> c: knowledge or conviction gained by intuition
If I could frame the thought of my original comment in terms of intuition, it would be:
All software should be intuitive, at what point that intuition is built differs.
For widest adoption, that software should be immediately intuitive to the widest group of people.
For maximum efficiency in a given (usually professional) domain, that software should allow a user who has built up their intuition to effectively merge with the machine.
I don't think one precludes the other, and a lot of the best software is immediately understood by a common user while having features for power-users. I do think there's a tradeoff to some degree though. If you're building a very specific technical tool, perhaps you can assume the user is a drunk programmer, but not a drunk grandmother. As in, the expected level of intuition need not be at the lowest common denominator.