Remember this button you never used on your camera? What about the feature you never discovered on your phone until someone shared it with you?

We live in the time of user-friendly interfaces. It’s a time of expectations. The expectation that a user interface has to be designed in such a way that users know how to use it at first sight.

But there are two things such a user interface isn’t designed for. It doesn’t tell us what features we can discover nor what features serve us.

A clean user interface naturally needs to take some features out of sight. It also has to deal with habits people developed in the past.

Simply imagine what would happen if a designer changed the way people can use the swipe gesture. If they add a new gesture, they still will have to leave the one people are accustomed to. Removing it will take away something essential and people will complain that the tool doesn’t work.

So this button on the camera, could it be, that it isn’t for you? Could it be that it is a feature people had to keep for a specific group of users? And this new gesture you never found, did you need it? Or was it one that would have made using the tool more convenient?

An easy to use interface is there to help you use the tool on a daily basis.

An intuitive user interface is there to help you get started using the tool.

None of both take away the pleasure and need to discover how that tool works.

The effort to learn which features are relevant to you and how to use them will stay.