[iBercovich]

I am no expert, but I have been working for a few months in a user experience team for enterprise collaboration software. In the enterprise sector we need to assure that our applications can be used as intended by a teenager as well as a 65 year old CEO. There are ways to make user interfaces intuitive. One is to copy things from the material world: folders, archives, tabs, etc. The other is to follow abstract paradigms that have been popularized by a few big applications: microblogging, my profile, my wall, etc. In my opinion, the use of paradigms that were created just a few years back, such as most of the interactions in social networks, cannot be assumed to be understood by everyone (stupid or smart) and should be made as intuitive as possible.

[epochwolf]

In the enterprise sector we need to assure that our applications can be used as intended by a teenager as well as a 65 year old CEO.

Seriously? I mean seriously?

Enterprise applications are the worse offenders for UIs I've ever seen in my life. I've had to use a number of these programs throughout high school and 2 colleges. I've used enterprise level bug trackers and I have to say most linux GUIs manage to be easier than these products.

The product you are working on may not be a sin against humanity but there is a reason "enterprise" has a bad rap.

[iBercovich]

I completely agree. I didn't mean to say that enterprise products do a good job at this. I was just trying to point a case where it is really important to adapt to all user groups.