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Been writing up some super basic notes on using “intuitive” tech for an octogenarian who has never used a touchscreen before and let me tell you, so many things people consider “intuitive” are absolutely not when you try to explain them from first principles. I think we’ve got worse at building truly intuitive interfaces in the last 20 years because no-one involved has known a time before many of these assumed behaviours existed
Old intuitive interface design was rooted in the concept of “affordance”, in that things did what they looked like they did, or felt they did when you touched them. Buttons were raised and went down, knobs turned, sliders only went back and forth. Now, nothing looks or feels like what it does; everything assumes a meta knowledge, something that is completely the opposite of intuition
Take this post. How do I know the flat icons underneath the post are buttons I can press, and yet this icon:
is not? Only because I already know the context rules. I have to know them to know what’s interactive and what’s not. The amount of pre-knowledge UIs expect these days would make UI designers of old spin in their graves
@sinbad not really, some things come naturally for humans.
If the icon is inside a user-written text, it's very likely to not be interactive.
Otherwise I could apply this to pretty much anything:
How do I know this is not a real person flipping a real table?
(° □°） ╯︵ ╯︵ ┻━┻
The context rules this universe requires would make the gods of old spin in their graves.
@dormouse759 I agree with @sinbad. Sure, all icons are digital abstractions based. The original abstractions were built upon real objects, so there was a physical ground truth representation.
Then we built a new abstraction upon that, which tidied up the rough edges.
20 years on we’re ~15 abstractions down, and the reference ground truth is probably somewhere around iteration ~10. Unless you know what that is, it’s like trying to understand French when all you know is Latin.
@bbbscarter @dormouse759 @sinbad yet little kids use phones without a problem, so surely there is some affordance? Actionable buttons are usually colored. List views with a chevron clickable. Back button obviously goes back. The picture isn’t as bad as it is painted here.
@wolfr @bbbscarter @dormouse759 kids just bash everything until something happens, learning by massive amounts of trial and error. It’s nothing to do with intuitiveness
@sinbad @wolfr @dormouse759 Agreed. Also:
“Next week on ‘Old Men Shouting At Clouds’ - why DVDs are actually better than streaming”
@sinbad @wolfr @dormouse759 just realised that might have sounded rude. Just in case; I’m the old man, and I do believe DVDs are better.
@bbbscarter don’t worry, I self-identify as an old man these days (although I prefer BluRays 
)
@bbbscarter @sinbad @wolfr I am no old man, but I do shout at clouds believing that DVDs are better.