---
title: "What “intuitive” really means"
description: "What's intuitive to me might not be intuitive to my father. Age, background, and past experiences all shape what feels natural."
date: "2019-05-13T00:00:00.000Z"
canonical: "https://www.antonsten.com/articles/what-intuitive-really-means/"
---

> No one writes the i-word down because they are naive, or because they don’t mean good. They write it as a reminder of how important it is that, throughout the design process, the simplicity of the experience gets prioritized over less important things.
>
> The problem with the word “intuitive” is that it means different things for different people: a product that is intuitive to me, might not be intuitive to my father.
>
> Finding something intuitive depends on too many factors for designers to be able to standardize what the term really means: the user’s age, sex and gender, cultural background, technology savviness, past experiences with similar products — and the list goes on.
>
> — [What “intuitive” really means](https://uxdesign.cc/what-intuitive-really-means-12e474722ce8)

One of the key ingredients to the iPhone's enormous success is the fact that it's intuitive to such a large amount of people. That said, it's naive to expect it to be intuitive to everyone.