Part of the problem here is that, of course, intuitive is a subjective experience. For my part, when I moved from OH2 to OH3, I had little javascript experience, knew less about Vue, had never even heard of Framework-7, and was at least 10 years out-of-date on my css. The moment I went through the posts Yannick was producing about the new OH3 custom widget system, something about the way it was put together made nearly perfect sense to me from the start which, in turn, made it much easier for me to pick up those pieces I was missing.
Now, I’m probably a bad example here (OK, I’m probably a bad example for most things), but the fact is that ‘intuitive’ is not universal. Just a little way up this thread @Pedro_Liberal (no slouch in the technical expertise department) admitted that blockly, an interface specifically developed to be as intuitive as possible to as wide an audience as possible, doesn’t work for him. I’ve got my own series of things everyone else thinks are “intuitive” that I just cannot wrap my head around.
I know that many people do not see the widget system as intuitive the same way I do and that’s certainly one of the reasons I try to put detailed explanations into my forum answers whenever I can. But that kind of support has to be there for everything because, there’s no way to achieve something that’s intuitive for everyone. Note that I am definitely not saying “this is an impossible goal so we shouldn’t try”. I agree completely that there is always room for improvement. But I think you’re closer to the mark with this:
With a complex (and individual system) like home automation, “intuition” is only ever going to get you so far. Understanding is a much better goal. So how do we speed up getting a new user from 0 to understanding? How do we make it easier for new users to learn? How do we make it easier for experienced users to translate their experience from old version to new? There’s obviously RTFM (and the docs for every software platform everywhere can always use some love), but I agree with you that there’s a definite place for learning from the UI as well.
This is a great example. I added that help feature after the last one of these wish list topics and when I did there was some discussion of how intrusive to make it. Because one of the things to remember is that UX is a very complex optimization problem. There is not just the Intuitive ↔ Arcane axis to consider. How about the Helpful to novice ↔ Not irritating to experienced users axis? I don’t know about you, but I despise those startup windows so many programs have with “helpful” tips when I just want to get to my main window, thank you very much. I angrily click the “Never waste my time with this useless nonsense again” option as soon as I have the opportunity (I frequently also later curse the stupid program when I can’t figure out how to do something that “should be obvious”). You just recently noticed the help system because it doesn’t get in the way of an advanced user but that also makes it a little harder for a novice to find. There’s a lot of talk about how OH won’t thrive in the long term if it can’t attract new users, well, alienating your current experienced user-base can be just as problematic (just ask SONOS…).
In the end, I think one of the reasons that a lot of people with technical experience in general and OH experience specifically find MainUI “less intuitive” is that there is a higher expectation of what “just works out of the box” really means. When you have a better idea of what’s possible, what “should be easy” is not always the same thing as “should be easy” for someone just starting out. I do this all the time. “What do you mean I can’t just sum three time series, take the integral over arbitrary periods and graph the histogram with the click of a button?! That’s just basic stuff!” And I have to remind myself that just because it’s my requirement doesn’t mean it’s everyone’s requirement.