[seanwilson]

> If every product in your space does something the same way, there’s probably a good reason. If one company does something different, ask yourself: Is this intentional, or just a mistake?

To add to this, often you can come up with a lower friction UI idea for your specific use case (e.g. that requires less clicks) if you think hard about it, but if you stray too far from what people are used to seeing and interacting with it creates its own kind of friction, and you'll get feedback like "I found this unintuitive" or "it took me a moment to figure out how to use it". So you need to balance using familiar patterns vs new ideas.

E.g. maybe you think you can improve on the Amazon checkout experience for your own site, but by doing something different, you're tossing out the familiarity bonus you get for free. Similarly, by preferring checkboxes, radio buttons, dropdowns and text fields, over custom widgets, you get so much for free like user familiarity in reading the current state, and knowing how to change the state.

"Unintuitive" can often mean "I'm not used to this pattern" even if it might be a good pattern once people get used to it.