A Practical, Operational Definition of “Intuitive” Industrial Design

Abstract

Within the practice of Industrial Design, it is common for designers to put significant effort into making product interfaces ‘intuitive’; created in a way that a user may simply look at the interface and know how to use the product. To accomplish this, many designers adopt an intuitive approach: since both parties are human beings, if it makes sense to the designer, it will make sense to the user. While the notion of intuitive design is valuable, its implementation often runs into stumbling blocks that prevent it, leading to products with poor usability and avoidable user frustration.Often, these so-called ‘intuitive’ approaches are built upon an incomplete understanding of what the concept of ‘intuition’ entails. In addition, designers often hold a distorted view of what users will understand, in no small part because of their own immersion in the product development process.This paper will provide a brief overview of how cognitive processes, inputs, and constructs comprise human ‘intuition’ as it relates to interface design through the lens of Information Processing theory, and will highlight some of the most common problems that designers face as they attempt to design ’intuitive’ product interfaces.

Keywords: Intuitive Design, Industrial Design, Information Processing

DOI: 10.54941/ahfe1007761