Some people object to the use of the term intuitive because they think it has a lot to do with marketing and very little to do with reality. Is that so?

If we look strictly at the meaning of the word, no piece of software is or can ever be intuitive. There is no universal logic behind it that makes anyone approaching the program for the first time able to use it “as is.” What makes sense to me doesn’t necessarily make sense to somebody else. After all, an application is the product of a developer (or a team of developers), and everybody knows that developers think in rather strange ways

The term intuitive can certainly be misleading (as most marketing parlance is), because it conveys the idea that no learning is involved, that everything becomes immediately obvious. As a matter of fact, nothing could be further from the truth. All software needs to be learned. There is a learning curve. This curve will be steeper for digital immigrants, but it’s always going to be there, even for digital natives.

Ideally, software should be easy to use and, consequently, consistent. It should make sense after the logic behind it has been learned (the rationale, if you will). But the aha! moment can only follow some sort of learning process on the part of the user. It’s not a revelation that comes out of the blue. Unfortunately, this loose understanding of “intuitive” is not what transpires in much of the marketing hype and not a few software reviews.

I am always amazed at people who have never read a single line of the user manual or watched any video tutorial and complain about the software not being intuitive. Okay, companies have their share of guilt, but users should not naively expect that all that will be required from them is clicking a button (or two). No pain, no gain.