“Is ‘TAP HERE’ Really Intuitive?”

A quiet reflection on how a small icon changed everything.

We thought we understood clarity. A delicate ripple pattern paired with the letters “NFC”—elegantly embossed into the surface of the Silicollar.

No phone icon. No guiding text. Just a design language we believed was clear enough.

Filled with anticipation, we gathered friends and testers. The first trial began.

Days went by. Not a single person tapped the collar. Most people knew what an NFC chip was—like the kind embedded in credit cards—but no one looked at that ripple-and-text combination and instinctively reached for their phone.

We were exhausted. And in a quiet moment, we had to admit: that beautiful engraving was a design mistake. We had designed it for ourselves—not for the real habits and instincts of our users.

—

What followed was a wave of design anxiety. We reimagined the icon. Rebuilt the mold. Recruited new testers. Each revision felt like asking the same question:

“Is this clear enough now?”

“Will they understand this time?”

We lost track of how many hours we spent, how many versions we tried. Until one day, we tested a simpler version:

A phone icon paired with bold text that read “TAP HERE". No extra instructions. No lengthy explanations.

No instructions. No confusion.

And then, it happened. One by one, people pulled out their phones and tapped the collar. Someone even turned to us and said, “Smart design.”

And then, they tapped.

In that moment, I caught a glimpse of our product designer’s eyes—maybe a little misty. (Though he later denied it, of course.)

—

This isn’t a story about success.

It’s a quiet lesson in misunderstanding “intuition.”

Real design isn’t about what feels obvious to us—it’s about what instinctively makes sense to someone else.

Sometimes, clarity isn’t designed.

It’s discovered.