I've always felt that calling a computer system "intuitive" is, at best, misleading. My understanding of the word "intuition", is that it's some vague and abstract understanding of something. The use of a computer system should be based on a clear and precise understanding of what's going on.
>From http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=intuitive: «(adj) intuitive, nonrational, visceral (obtained through intuition rather than from reasoning or observation)» This does not at all resemble any computer system in the world of fact, such as I know it. I propose that we stop saying that Ubuntu is intuitive and leave that kind of sillyness to others. Instead, we should say that Ubuntu is a _didactive_ system. The user isn't expected to rely on intuition to be able to use the software -- that's not user friendly. Instead, the system _teaches_ the user to use itself. If you want to launch an application, for instance, we have a menu that's always available that holds launchers for all the applications. The menu is properly named "Applications" to _teach_ the user where to click in order to find the available applications. The applications are categorised into sections, teaching the user where to look for a certain program. Furthermore, the applications are properly labeled using a didactive name; we don't simply call it "Transmission", for instance. We call it "Transmission BitTorrent Client". This _teaches_ the user to launch that program if they wish to use a bit torrent client. The list of examples could be made endless, but I think this should suffice. Now, there might be arguments against using the phrase "didactive" and an argument for using "instructive" instead. I think both are better than "intuitive", but I think "didactive" is better because it's more unique, giving us a buzzword to combat the usage of "intuitive". The way to a lucid computing experience, is a didactive environment. Just a thought, thanks for reading, Jo-Erlend Schinstad -- ubuntu-desktop mailing list ubuntu-desktop@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-desktop
