Dri­ving home just now I noticed some­thing. When I’m straight­en­ing out of a turn, I’ll loosen my grip on the steer­ing wheel and let the wheel spin freely just enough to bring the tires back to straight, then tighten my grip again. It seems like an obvi­ous and effi­cient way to allow the laws of physics to straighten out the vehi­cle, but I have no mem­ory of ever actu­ally being taught to do this, either by my par­ents or my Driver’s Ed teacher.

So here’s my ques­tion. Does every­one do this? And if so, were you taught to do this, or does every dri­ver fig­ure this out inde­pen­dently through the daily act of dri­ving a car?

I’m fas­ci­nated by the idea that user inter­faces can be self-​teaching, rather than “intu­itive.” Not some­thing that you can pick up and instantly feel a nat­ural mas­ter of, which is what intu­itive usu­ally implies, but rather some­thing that teaches you how to use it by using it.