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Comment by diN0bot | Hacker News Reader

hm... i came away with the opposite opinion. how do i know that the example icons he showed hit the "sweet spot" between too much and too little information...rather than everyone being trained to recognize those icons.

i'd rather see a user study with a control before i jumped to any conclusions.

often times people call a UI "intuitive" when what they really mean is "familiar."

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You don’t. And he doesn’t claim that, does he?

The author of the article has previously often advocated user testing, not trusting your gut.

Research, with 'unusual' icons, shows that some icons are more confusing than others. Specifically, icons that have too few or too many details. Now you could argue that a certain amount of detail has become the culturally entrenched norm and that such research still doesn't prove a thing, but then the burden of proof shifts to you, to back that statement up with an experiment. After all, it also simply makes sense: with too few details, you need to choose from all possible details you could add to make sense out of the symbol. On the other hand, with too many details, you need to choose from all possible details you could remove, before the main point stands out. You're just trying to minimize the amount people have to think.

The only "intuitive" interface is the nipple. After that it's all learned. -- Bruce Ediger

With that said, we all know an intuitive interface when we see one. It's just too difficult to separate an enormously complex and highly context-sensitive technical process that we've learned from some kind of ideal optimum. Saying a design is "intuitive" is analogous to saying one Turing complete language is "better" than another.

Ever since I've had a kid, I've felt that the nipple quote is bullshit. Infants have to learn how it works at first when starting breastfeeding. They don't just know how it works fresh out of the womb. The instinctive part of the process is that the baby happens to have a natural desire to suckle stuff - nipple-shaped or not.

As I understand it, most babies seem to just know. My oldest took a month to figure out the whole breastfeeding thing. I have teased him that he was a "stupid baby". The reality is that he seems to have less instinct than most folks. This has its good points and bad points. But I did not see a lot of the "normal, expected" baby behaviors until I had my second child.

In short: A sample of one does not disprove a generality.

There's no such thing as 'intuitive.' An intuitive design just means that it fits the user's mental model well, which is just a broader way of saying 'familiar.'

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