Web Directions North » Blog Archive » What Makes a Design Seem Intuitive with Jared Spool

• Synopsis:
  • How people think about/use design.
  • What does “intuitive” mean?

• Avis Rental website:
  • Uses asterisks to indicate optional fields.
  • Their explanation was that the majority of the form fields on their website were required, so they inverted the common convention of using asterisks to indicate required fields.
  • When did the asterisk inherit the meaning of required?

• “Designs can’t be intuitive” – grammatically incorrect. People intuit what to do with the design. However, he uses designs are “intuitive” as a shortcut.
• When is a design not intuitive?
  • When the user can’t figure out what to do.
  • If it takes too long for the user to accomplish a task, or to figure out what to do to accomplish the task.

• Intuitive is personal – it depends on the user’s previous experiences and what they already know.
• Design is evolutionary:
  • Designers build the technology.
  • Then add features.
  • Then reduce complexity to increase usability and lower the current knowledge requirement of users.

• Instant messenger setup wizard comparison:
  • External help (taking users to another website, etc.) vs. inline/contextual help.
  • Mr. Spool goes into detail about levels of user knowledge – current knowledge and target knowledge.

• When is a design intuitive? When current knowledge = target knowledge or when the knowledge gap is so small it is negligible.
• Real life testing examples are the only way to find out if a design is intuitive.
• Techniques for creating intuitive designs:
  • Field studies.
  • Usability studies.
  • Personas.
  • Patterns.

Posted by Jeff on 30/01/08 at 3:45 pm