Towards Intuitive Interaction Theory
Alethea L. Blackler, Vesna Popović · Interacting with Computers · 2015
Intuitive interaction, or intuitive use, or even ‘intuitivity’, have long been buzzwords used by designers and marketers but until recently there was no research about what this might entail and how designers could encourage it. This century, work on intuitive interaction has been gaining pace and this special issue showcases the state of the art in intuitive interaction research worldwide. This editorial is intended to introduce readers to the concept and definitions of intuitive interaction, briefly discuss the short history of work in this field and highlight and discuss some of the main issues raised by the papers in the issue. A question commonly asked by researchers in related fields is why study intuitive interaction? Why not look at usability or learnability or familiarity instead? Our main motivation for starting work in this field at the start of the century was curiosity—the need to discover what intuitive interaction actually is. No authors had previously established empirically how people can use things intuitively, and exactly how designers can make an interface intuitive. Until we had done that, we could not be certain about how closely related to other concepts it might be. Our reason for sticking with it is that people are still using the term. We could have abandoned the use of the word intuitive or intuition and instead talked only about prior knowledge or transfer of experience. However, the phrases ‘intuitive use’ and ‘intuitive interaction’ would have continued to be used and mis-understood. Designers and marketers and users talk about it everyday. If researchers are using different terms from the rest of the world, how can we hope to have any impact and to improve the design of everyday interfaces? Also, intuitive interaction adds a further dimension than simple knowledge transfer or prior experience—that of non-conscious or implicit knowledge. This dimension is important when designing for intuitive use as it is not always simple to elicit users’ implicit knowledge about interface features.