Clients often ask for an interface that is "intuitive." It sounds like a simple request. They want it to be easy to use. But "intuitive" is a loaded word.
In UX terms, "intuitive" simply means "familiar." A steering wheel is intuitive because you've used one before. A joystick is intuitive to a gamer but alien to a pilot.
When we design something truly novel—something that solves a problem in a new way—it cannot be intuitive by definition, because the user has no prior mental model for it.
"If you're building the future, don't expect it to feel like the past. Clarity is more important than familiarity."
The "Uncanny Valley" of UI
The most dangerous interfaces are the ones that look familiar but behave differently. This creates cognitive dissonance.
If you use a standard "hamburger menu" icon but it opens a search bar instead of a navigation drawer, you have broken trust. You have violated the user's intuition. It is better to use a completely new icon than to misuse an existing pattern.
Learnability > Intuitiveness
For complex enterprise software, we shouldn't aim for "intuitive" (which implies zero learning curve). We should aim for "learnable."
A learnable interface provides feedback. When a user makes a mistake, the system explains *why* and how to fix it. It uses consistent patterns so that once a user learns how to filter a table on one page, they know how to filter a table on every page.
The Power of Constraints
Often, an interface feels confusing not because it lacks features, but because it offers too many.
Good design is about removing options. If a user can only perform valid actions, they can't make mistakes. A well-designed wizard that guides a user step-by-step is less "flexible" than a dashboard with 50 inputs, but it is infinitely more usable.