measured intuition
Today a coworker of mine asked me to put aside my years of experience in UX design, and everything I have learned from years of conferences, reading and research and look at a design problem logically. Sounds odd doesn’t it. Set aside everything I know so I can become one with some Vulcanesque ideal of pure engineering logic.
That is when it hit me. If design were about pure logic then mathematicians would make the perfect designers. Engineers could do it all. Why have these pesky user experience designers when the answer is so clear and logical. That got me to thinking of the internal debate we have had in the IA community - is IA a science, art, or craft.
The one thing I have learned from 11 years of experience web craft is that the folks that use the systems we design often act in ways we did not expect or predict. That is what makes user experience design such a challenge - we deal with people and all of their idiosyncratic behaviors. In other words - the first victim of the user experience design process is logic.
However, user experience design is not purely an art. Intuition, emotion, and perception are all key components to user experience design but they do not operate unbridled. User experience design also requires a bit of cognitive science, a dash of ethnographic methodology, and a solid dose of objective experimentation.
I believe our main tool of trade is intuitive design coupled with validation testing. User experience design requires us to use both lobes, or to work with people that can compliment our own left or right lobe bias. Over time we begin to build a strong sense of what will and will not work. But we must always test our work. Our intuition must be a measured intuition because, ultimately, the designs we create will be used by the least logical of operators - the human being.