ScienceVSIntuition

As UX continues to establish itself as an integral player in business, there is an unquestionable need for methods, frameworks, and other repeatable/scientific processes. But what do you do when the science isn’t working? Or when the rules run out, and there’s no clear next step?

Too Much Science in Business?

In a recent interview, Roger Martin, Dean of the Rotman School of Management, argues that “corporations are pushing analytical thinking so far that it’s become unproductive.” An over-reliance on science puts businesses in a position where they try and prove ideas through reasoning. This approach leaves very little room for intuition and leaps of faith, which is why, according to Martin, American innovation has become increasingly sluggish.

The Role of Intuition

It’s good news for design when intuition is recognized as the important and effective skill that it is — a skill that takes years of experience and practice to develop. Designers have always relied, to some degree, on intuition and personal style. There are times when a designer is right just because he/she is right. Years of experience and observation create a rich tacit knowledge that allows a designer to judge the rightness of design solutions, often times at a glance. The inability to articulate this judgement analytically doesn’t nullify its value or correctness.

In his book Shop Class as Soulcraft, Matthew Crawford calls it “knowing that” as opposed to “knowing how.” As an, example he cites the way experienced firefighters know when to flee a burning building moments before it collapses. They clearly aren’t analytically arriving at the decision that it’s time to run. Their minds are instantaneously (subconsciously) piecing together a pattern from thousands of inputs and then rushing an action to the front of their conscious minds:

“Our ability to make good judgments is holistic in character, and arises from repeated confrontations with real things: comprehensive entities that are grasped all at once, in a manner that may be incapable of explicit articulation.”

The End of Bullshit

As I mentioned above, intuition has always played a role in design. The analytical bias of the business world, however, has forced designers to build imaginative backstories and rationales around their work in an effort to imbue them with some kind of quantifiable value. Or, as Michael Beirut, a partner at the design firm Pentagram, would call it: bullshit:

“In discussing design work with their clients, designers are direct about the functional parts of their solutions and obfuscate like mad about the intuitive parts, having learned early on that telling the simple truth — ‘I don’t know, I just like it that way’ — simply won’t do.

So into this vacuum rushes the bullshit: theories about the symbolic qualities of colors or typefaces; unprovable claims about the historical inevitability of certain shapes, fanciful forced marriages of arbitrary design elements to hard-headed business goals.”

Wouldn’t it be great if the business world developed an appreciation of the intuitive, and even irrational, decisions that are so important to the design process?

The Designer’s Next Move

Back to reality: We can’t just expect the rest of the world to accept what we say just because it feels right to us. Leaning too heavily on intuition because science has “failed” would be an overcorrection. The answer, as usual, lies in the balance.

Regardless of whether or not the more mystical parts of the design process are ever really accepted as credible, the good (i.e. successful) designer must become fluent in the language and practices of the world of business. When this happens, designers will be able to make intuitive, yet informed decisions that yield tremendous results. As Martin puts it:

In a knowledge-intensive world, design thinking is critical to overcoming the biggest block: overcoming analytical thinking and fear of intuitive thinking. The design thinker enables the organization to balance exploration and exploitation, invention of business and administration of business, originality and mastery.