So what is intuitivity anyway? There’s a lot of talking about intuitive interfaces, menus, etc. Mac users are always bragging about it anyway. When you think about it, intuitivity is a vague concept that we often use in the IT world. You know it has become a buzz word when it is used in the same sentence as Windows… Mobile or otherwise.

Microsoft demonstrated the “Touch Windows” this week and buzz words were flying all over the place: multi-touch, changing dramatically how you will interact with the system, touch-enabled, blah, bleh, blah. On this matter, I completely agree with James Kendrick who offered his thoughts on JKontherun. My laptop “Vista-Enabled” which I bought with tablet PC, sorry, “ink and pen gestures enabled with sideshow features, blah, blah, buzz, buzz” has not seen the outside of my bag in months. I wasted so much time trying to get friendly with Vista and the relationship failed so miserably that I swore to change platform. I just need more time and money (don’t we all, huh?).

Don’t get me wrong, I am (was) a PC guy… Ok it’s not true anymore. There is no need to lie to myself. Windows has sucked the life right out of me and I’m through nursing my laptops AND my phones. Like Marc Orchant used to say maybe I have become a “platform agnostic” but I have come to realize that I loath wasting time with bugs, drivers, weird interface designs. I am more and more drawn to what just works in a clear, simple and easy way. The one thing I am always using on a daily basis is still my iPod Touch and Google Apps.

Last night, I had an “intuitive moment” that really made me stop and admire what was happening. My son had seen me use my iPod Touch so many times that it seemed normal enough for him to pick it up and get what he wanted out of it by himself. He just took it, sat on the couch and touched the little flower to get to the photo library and started to browse the pictures with his finger until he found a picture of his mum and him. He then showed it to me saying “Mummy and me!”. I quickly grabbed the camera to capture this. My son is barely two years old! The screen is so scratch resistant that I don’t mind him playing with it. Intuitivity you see, is in the little things. Like Simone Manganelli wrote a few years back: intuitive things are easy to learn and understand, they are consistent and they are simple to use.

The experience with my Tablet PC made me think about intuitivity but not in a positive way. I was longing for it. The features looked interesting at first and I was convinced they would help tremendously in my work. I gave up after a year of seriously trying to like it. I admit the writing recognition part is surprisingly advanced. However, navigating menus with a pen as if it was a mouse doesn’t work well. Sure, Vista had some nice addons for tablet use but it feels like steering an overloaded canoe: it doesn’t always do what you expect. Its in the little things. I admit that there are interesting and useful features buried in the whole mess. However, Tablet PC’s have been in development for years now and the interfaces and software, except writing recognition maybe, are still immature and the Tablet features are evolving in the same way Windows is: bugs, unreliable driver updates, etc. So what is intuitivity? Not my Tablet “Vista-Enabled” obviously but I would say that my iPod Touch is so close that when I hear the word “intuitive”, I see it in my mind.