Design engineering a collaborate popover
I've designed and built many UIs over the years, so intuition plays a big role in recognizing when an interface can be improved. When something feels off about an interaction, that feeling is experience compressed into a signal. The noticing comes first. Theory and vocabulary come after, to validate and communicate what you noticed.
Still, validated intuition makes for stronger design decisions, and validation doesn't require a formal study. Lightweight methods like heuristic evaluation and discount usability testing[^1] surface most issues.
Take the example above, a share and collaborate popover. My intuition says it makes users work harder than they need to. Let's break it down.
The "Add people" input looks like you should be able to click it, type, and search for users to add. Instead, clicking it navigates to a second screen. It resembles the standard input field found everywhere on the web, so it should behave like one. The false affordance goes against Jakob's Law[^2][^3] and makes users stop and think about something that should be automatic.