IME, “intuitively obvious” is a red herring for any halfway interesting interface. This was best captured by a coworker of mine decades ago about a feature: “It does what you expect, but you have to expect the right things.”
What I strive for in an interface is consistency (both internal and with existing conventions) which maximize the chances that someone will already have learned the relevant interface conventions (or trained their intuitions, if you like).
IME, “intuitively obvious” is a red herring for any halfway interesting interface. This was best captured by a coworker of mine decades ago about a feature: “It does what you expect, but you have to expect the right things.”
What I strive for in an interface is consistency (both internal and with existing conventions) which maximize the chances that someone will already have learned the relevant interface conventions (or trained their intuitions, if you like).