Intuitive Design Isn’t the Problem — My Perspective Was

A few months ago, I wrote an article questioning whether intuitive design was making users “less capable”.

At the time, I was speaking from the perspective of someone who grew up around computers — someone who had been poking around menus, learning by breaking things, and generally comfortable exploring software without hand-holding.

What I didn’t fully grasp then was how biased that perspective was.

Now, building products for real users from different backgrounds, different levels of digital literacy, different expectations, I’m starting to see the reality more clearly: intuitive design isn’t dumbing people down.

It’s simply leveling the playing field.

The Advantage I Didn’t Know I Had

When I argued that modern apps were “too frictionless,” what I was really describing was the experience of someone who never needed the friction in the first place.

People like me were trained early. We explored. We experimented. We built mental models by clicking around until things made sense. But that’s not everyone’s story. In fact, for most people, software is still something they use, not something they study.

What I once viewed as “mindlessness” is, for many people, accessibility.

Intuition is Learned

The mistake in my earlier thinking was assuming that intuition is a fixed trait. It isn’t. It’s contextual. It’s shaped by exposure, environment, confidence, and familiarity.

What’s intuitive to someone who has lived in IDEs and file systems for years is absolutely not intuitive to someone whose first real interaction with digital tools started with a smartphone.

And when you’re building for a large user base as I am now, diversity becomes a design constraint.

You can’t expect everyone to climb the same learning curve you did. You have to meet them where they are.

What Changed?

When you’re actually shipping products, you start to see the trade-offs differently:

Complexity isn’t empowering if it scares users away.
Friction isn’t educational if it stops someone from completing a task.
Elegance isn’t the goal — comprehension is.

Intuitive design becomes the baseline because your audience isn’t a monolith. Some users will explore and learn; others just want to get things done.

You’re not designing for the version of yourself that likes tinkering.

You’re designing for everyone else too.

So even if it risks oversimplifying, accessibility wins.

Intuitive Design as Infrastructure

Good design isn’t about removing thinking — it’s about removing unnecessary thinking. Thoughtfulness, not thoughtlessness.

The more people an app wants to serve, the more it needs:

clarity,
predictability,
consistency,
discoverability.

Simplicity is the starting point of mastery, not it’s enemy. If someone chooses to go deeper, they’ll find their way.

But the product shouldn’t force a struggle just to justify its existence.

The Real Purpose of Intuition

Intuitive design isn’t about making users smarter or dumber. It’s about making technology usable. It’s a recognition that people come with different histories, different fluency levels, and different goals.

My earlier argument came from a very specific experience — and a very narrow one.

But the broader reality is this:

Intuition is not a moral high ground.

It’s a design responsibility.

And when you’re building for the real world, the job isn’t to challenge users for the sake of challenge; it’s to give them the confidence to participate.

So, to the earlier version of me who wrote that first article…

No, intuitive design isn’t making us dumber.

It’s making more of us capable.