Design something to be used without conscious reasoning

Computer keyboards use QWERTY because typewriters used QWERTY. I won’t get into the backstory, but debate to change the layout blew up in the 80s. People argued for more efficient layouts but consumers were too familiar with typewriters.

Americans use the English system of measurement along with two other countries, Myanmar and Liberia. Adopting the Metric System would increase efficiency in trading and communication, but it’s unfamiliar and not intuitive. It takes real urgency for that sort of change to happen. We like things to be familiar.

When a design is intuitive, you know how to use it without ever having experienced something quite like it before. They rely on form and other signifiers to be easy to understand. No one is taught what to do with a chair before we sit on it for the first time. And we just know how to use a doorknob. The form of an ergonomic handle is clearly meant for your hand to grab. Intuition is not better than familiarity, neither is the other way around true. Instead, they interact with each other.

Familiar designs rely on what a user has experienced. To design for intuition means utilizing familiarity to make something that can be understood without conscious reasoning. Use familiar signifiers to build an intuitive, unique product. Most of the time we are designing for familiarity. It’s not an “intuitive design” when it’s just like the other thing.