On Being Data-Driven to the Exclusion of Intuition

4 (illustrated) minutes to better collaboration with designers

I was inspired to write this article after reading a great opinion piece by Kerry Clark on justifying design decisions. Before I get into it, here's a quick overview of 'Design Rationale' that I've largely plagiarized from Wikipedia:

In 1970 W.R. Kunz and Horst Rittel's work on the Issue-Based Information System (IBIS) led to a formal approach to justifying designs. That approach involves documenting:

  • the reasons behind a design decision,
  • the justification for it,
  • the other alternatives considered,
  • the trade-offs evaluated, and
  • the argumentation that led to the decision.

TL;DR — Design rationale is a formal method of "showing your work"

As I see it there are three real problems with this methodology:

  1. (In my experience) A handful of notes discussed verbally is significantly more effective for communicating reasoning and sharing ideas;
  2. It's incredibly time-intensive for designers to compose this type of documentation; and
  3. This brings me to what I appreciate most about Clark's perspective: Requiring designers to justify every decision squanders their most valuable asset — their intuition.
A designer finishes presenting a complex decision-tree by concluding 'and that's how I decided to wear the yellow barrette.'

Clark concludes his piece by suggesting that stakeholders shouldn't expect justifications from designers, and this is the main point on which I disagree. From my perspective, each stakeholder represents a set of needs or pain-points, and it's their job to ensure those concerns are addressed.

The unique challenge in design is that -unlike programming or accounting which need a special skill-set to even begin to understand- design is accessible to everyone. As a result, "everyone's a critic"; It's like what Yelp did to restaurant reviews–you might have more perspectives to consider, but they're not necessarily better-informed.

One of the Wright brothers flies a prototype-airplane kite while an onlooker tells him a horse would be faster.

Let's take a quick diversion: Years ago I had a great boss who regularly shared his wisdom. One gem that I've repeatedly come back to was his perspective on design seniority.

"The difference between junior and senior designers is not their ability to reason through a problem; it's how many answers they already have in their back pocket."

In our data-driven-everything world, it's easy to forget that it takes groundbreaking work to do something revolutionary. When you look at an incredible product like the 1998 'bondi blue' iMac, it wasn't incredible because it incrementally moved the needle, nor because it introduced some magical new technology; it was incredible because it was a new way of thinking about something we'd all taken for granted.

In releasing the first iMac, Apple took a risk on a designer's "educated guess" and in doing so, they changed an industry.

A manager and a worker stand next to a hotdog-shaped bus. The manager says 'I love it! …But maybe we should try a hamburger?'

The first thing to know about engaging with design is that there are two kinds of feedback that stakeholders provide: Strategic feedback and Opinion-based feedback.

Strategic feedback is grounded in data, market research, functional requirements, and technical limitations; it guides a product by defining the framework for measuring success.

Opinion-based feedback is just that — an opinion. The best brands and products account for diverse perspectives, but -not unlike a Jenga tower- some pieces you can shift or rearrange, whereas others may cause the whole thing to come crashing down.

A designer is sketching on paper as her two managers stand over her, watching. One of the managers asks 'Can you zoom in?'

The key to providing useful feedback is in providing the right kind of feedback at the right time. When starting a new project or major-version, challenging rationale with strategic feedback (aka "poking holes in a design") almost always leads to a better, simpler product. By the end of the 'design phase', that same feedback can result in months or even years of wasted effort.

By approaching Design with 'goals' instead of 'instructions', designers are empowered to find the opportunities for improvement while preserving the integrity of the system.

In the end, it takes time and patience to understand design's role and the ways that design methodologies deliver results. There's no better way to start that journey than by listening to designers and giving their intuition the chance to be right.

Thanks for reading. For more design honesty and maybe some wisdom, visit my portfolio, drop me a line, or offer me a job.

See ya' later, Cowpoke.