While at STLUX06 last week Nathan Verrill gave a thought provoking presentation on intuitive vs. learned behavior. Intuitive behavior is the natural ability to accomplish tasks without any training or prior experience, while learned behavior is the ability to accomplish tasks with training or prior experience.

Most folks think for something to have a high degree of usability, it must be intuitive. Cars that operate similarly and application interface menus that all begin with File, Edit, View… are easiliy understood, but can they be called intuitive? They're learned. Simple, but still learned. The practice of providing a predictable user experience is considered intuitive, perhaps wrongly, and is suited for certain situations where practicality is desired, but it’s boring.

Some web design projects call for good usability plus something extra that provides a memorable user experience - some excitement. In order to provide this type of experience standards must be pushed. This is fine as long as what is designed is easily learned. Whether it’s navigation menus, forms or rich media interaction, people are intrigued by a challenge -- as long as it isn’t too difficult. Once the “secret” is grasped, the user is off and running -- again, a learned behavior.

Not relying on user intuition and counting on learned behavior expands boundaries and keeps web sites interesting and evolving. If we did just the same ol’ thing all the time, sites would surely be usable, but the web wouldn’t be nearly as interesting.