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To be fair, isn't one of the things that sets apart a UI as "good" that it is, in fact, intuitive?


I agree. But sometimes, you just can't make it easy enough for everybody. iPhoto for iPad is probably the nicest iPad app I've ever seen, and it has a tooltipy help system because it's humanely impossible to create something as powerful as iPhoto for iPad that's also intuitive.

Sometimes you need a gentle nudge in the right direction. Now, I personally dislike Metro very, very much. But the "charms" idea seems nice. How you tell the user (that's just started using Win8) how to activate a charm without a tooltip (or something similar)? Tell the user once (or twice), and only after that it becomes intuitive.


It's not quite that simple. A good interface for a power user is not a good interface for a first time user. Many developers think VIM has a good interface for what they want to do but I wouldn't call it intuitive for a first time user with no prior knowledge of its interface paradigm.

Tools to bridge the gap between first use and power use are worth using.




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