Intuitive UX design an approach beyond usability

What is Intuitive Design?

Intuition is a type of cognitive processing that involves utilizing knowledge gained through other products or experiences.

When a user is able to understand and use a design immediately that is, without consciously thinking about how to do it we describe the design as “intuitive.” Solving a task requires an understanding of the psychology behind human interaction, specifically how humans come to understand the physical and cultural environment.

Intuition and Experience

When we experience design as intuitive, it’s because we have encountered something like it before.

We interact with the physical environment and learn the fundamentals of how physical objects behave. We confront and learn from physical reality every day.

Humans also grow up in a cultural environment consisting of language, metaphors, and symbols that are more localized and unstable than the physical environment. Bots the environment plays a fundamental role in our expectations and understanding of the world.

Is achieving intuitiveness is easy?

Use Knowledge

Connectionists see the brain as consisting of networks of relatively simple processing units connected by links. Links are made by using and applying knowledge and linking it to other things.

It was obvious when observing less experienced users that they were not building a mental model of the product, the more time they spent the more confused they seemed to get and they seemed unable to learn the structure of the device through using it. Although mental models may have some part to play in intuitive use in some cases, trying to apply them to interface design is too complex.

Innovation

Some people have been concerned that always using familiar features would lead to a loss of innovation in design. Some people disagree as there are innovative ways in which users’ current knowledge can be applied or transferred.

Features or icons do not make a whole product, the way it looks feels, and/or functions can still be innovative. Outside of the digital world, there are many new devices appearing, many of which are borrowing features and functions from other things. Transferring features from other products and experiences can allow both innovative and intuitive interfaces.

Location & Appearance

Intuitive use is enabled more by appearance than the location of features. This has implications for the design of interfaces as it seems more important to concentrate on getting the appearance right than the location.

Appearance is also more multi-faceted comprising shape, size, color, and labeling, whereas location comprises the only location within local components and (for complex products) within global systems.

The appearance will likely remain the most important factor in intuitive interaction. The location should not be neglected altogether as there was some qualitative evidence that the correct location could help to decrease search times for individual features.

Age Factor

Well known factors of aging such as the speed of reaction times and cognitive processing could be responsible for the slower times of older people.

There does seem to be some difference in the way that people of different ages can utilize their prior experience to intuitively use a new product. This could come about because an older person who may be familiar with the same technology as a younger one.

An older adult may still have their mental models based around the interaction techniques they learned in their youth, which are now obsolete, and it is known that older people need to make more effort in order to learn new things. This issue needs further work to determine the exact cause.

Principles for Intuitive Interaction

The following principles were extended from those used as part of the design process.

Principle 1:

Involves inserting existing features or labels or icons that users have seen before in similar products that perform the same function. (A strong analytical component for capturing user interactions)

Principle 2:

Requires the use of metaphor to make something completely new familiar by relating it to something already existing. (Customer value at every stage of user interactivity)

Principle 3:

The designer needs to understand what the current and the target knowledge point of the future user. (In-depth domain knowledge — Lifecycle of users in the domain)

Principle 4:

Think about color, size, positioning, and grouping. (UI principles like best UI Components, device form factors)

Principle 5:

Minimize memory load on the user. (Research on users’ interactivity or behavior)

Applying familiarity

Making design decisions about familiarity is not always simple.” Familiar terms can have multiple meanings, and familiarity with one user is not familiar to others. Many designers believe icons have more universal familiarity as users live in the same visual world, but even then items can look different. Designers need to understand who users are and what they know. They need to identify the target market for each product and get information about what users will be familiar with.

Managing Change

As well as fitting users’ existing stereotypes and expectations, designers may have to think about whether these should/will change and if so how these changes should be brought about. Technology may evolve which makes them problematic because of the directionality they show. It is possible to gradually develop people’s understanding through incremental changes and the use of metaphor to explain the unfamiliar.

Perception of Aesthetics and Intuitive Use

What is usable is beautiful or the other way around?

Does it help to add an additional vague and ambiguous construct to our concept of intuitive use?

Is aesthetic quality even a necessary precondition for intuitive use?

The aesthetic experience is conceptualized in an information processing stage model perception, implicit memory integration, explicit classification, cognitive mastering, and evaluation.

The first two stages are subconscious in nature and highlight the potential of previous knowledge in the appreciation of art and design. Therefore, taking innate perceptual preferences and familiar patterns, thus the basis of intuitive use, into consideration can result in a positive aesthetic evaluation. In contrast, hindered cognitive fluency disturbs the process and will likely lead to a less favorable evaluation.

Benefits of Intuitive UX

• Efficacy in workflows
• Efficient use of customer time
• The user can focus more on using than figuring out the software

Conclusion

Intuitive design is not simple to achieve. You must always base your designs on a good understanding of users’ prior experiences and the expectations they form based on these. You can use the activity theoretical framework and the research on intuitive use to identify how to take advantage of different types of prior experience to design more intuitive user experiences.

Divide the users’ experience into the experience with the physical and cultural environment. You should take advantage of both types of experience to create intuitive interfaces.

Thanks for reading. 🙏