What is Intuitive Design and Why is It Important?

_This was originally posted on my personal blog

Think of the last time you used an app or a website. Were you able to right away do what you want without anyone teaching you how to do it? Were you able to find what you need without anyone pointing you in the right direction? If your answers are yes, then you probably experienced an app with a good, intuitive design.

People tend to get used to doing things a certain way. As they use all kinds of apps and websites throughout their day, they get familiar with how something is supposed to be done.

If I want to download this file, I should click the download button. If I want to open my cart in an online store, I know I'll find an icon at the top right (or left, depending on the language direction) that either looks like a bag or a shopping cart. If I want to go to my profile, I should click on my avatar image. This uniform experience between different platforms makes it easier for people to navigate the web efficiently and stress-free.

This familiar experience that users look for in different platforms relies on the platform's intuitive design. An intuitive design is a design that makes sure when people use this platform, they can instantly figure out how to perform certain actions.

In this article, you'll learn more about what intuitive design is, why it's important for your websites and apps.

What is Intuitive Design

Technically speaking, there's no official definition of Intuitive Design. Just like what it means, it's a concept that has been realized with experience and time.

If you create an app, your primary goal is that people would want to use it. Developers or even business people tend to think that this means adding more features or having a pretty design.

Although the features you provide and the design of your website are important, if people find it hard to use then they're not going to use it. This is especially true in this time of age where almost every app out there has an alternative. Don't like Facebook? You can go for Twitter. Don't like Whatsapp? You can go for Telegram. Although these apps might not be similar in all the features they provide, from a user's perspective they all allow the user to do the same thing, but one allows them to do it better than the other.

But what makes a website or an app hard to use? Simply put, if I, as a user, have to take a long time to figure out how to do or find something, then this app is hard to use.

Ok, but how do I expect users to just know how to do something? The simplest way to do that is to provide them with a familiar design. The familiarity in question can either be from their experience on the web or their experience in real life.

Users spend most of their day surfing the web. Whether they're shopping online, messaging their friends, watching videos, or attending an online meeting. The longer they use an app, the more they become experts at it. They start understanding where to find what they need in that app.

One aspect of intuitive design is taking advantage of that and providing a design that makes the user right at home. The design in question can be a lot of different elements. It can be colors. For example, if a user sees a message with green color, then their operation went successfully. If it's red, then something went wrong. Similarly, if they see a button with more vibrant or apparent color, then they're going to assume this is the "Yes" button. Messing up these colors can cause a misunderstanding and can lead to wrong actions.

But that's not just it. Intuitive design is also bringing elements from the real world into your user's experience when fitting. A simple example of this would be the cart icon in online stores. Why don't we just use a TV icon for a shopping cart? The answer to this is, "duh, it's a shopping cart!"

Being able to recognize what to do because you're familiar with it in your real-life experiences is also what contributes to an intuitive design. This is especially essential when you're creating an app or a feature that isn't necessarily widely available or used. Figuring out how to make the user's experience of this app as easy as possible isn't easy in itself.

You should, then, take a good time to try and bring this feature into life. Try to relate it to our everyday life and how it would make users understand right off the bat that "oh since this is a shopping cart it must be where all my items are".

Why is Intuitive Design Important?

By providing an experience your user is used to, your user will generally be able to do the things they wanted to do with your website and app successfully and quickly. Not only does this save them time and allow them to be more efficient, but this makes them feel like they've been using your platform all along even if it's their first time.

This sense of familiarity creates a connection between your product and your user. It'll make them come back to or keep using your platform more and more.

If you look online, there are countless design statistics that prove how bad design can lead to a bad user experience, and ultimately to users not using the platform at all. Although the bad design and bad user experience aren't necessarily only caused by no intuitive design, it's definitely a contributor to it.

To ensure that your users love what you're offering them, and to ensure that they come back time and again to use your platform, you should take the time to build and rebuild your design to how they're familiar with using it.

Conclusion

As technical people, we tend to forget that most people aren't tech-savvy. Most people are confused by how they're supposed to do the simplest of actions that may seem easy to us.

So, it's important that when you create a design you ensure that it incorporates the user's daily experiences into it. The includes real and virtual experiences.

By creating an intuitive design that is born from people's everyday life, you'll be creating a great experience for your users who will return to your website or app again and again.