My intentions are good, I use my intuition It takes me for a ride But I never understood other people's superstition...John Lennon "Intuition"

Being a wannabe artist, Renaissance Man Hey?! , and info junkie I inherently understand that sometimes things are done when "I" say they are done. I am the artist, the inquisitor, the mime. It's not right or wrong: it is personal. I'm reminded of a painting I did for a friend. She wanted this patchwork quilt she saw in a newspaper to be painted. So I reluctantly decided to paint this for her. There came a point when I deemed the painting done. It looked somewhat similar to the picture in the paper, but not really. To her folly and fun-poking, it's not exactly what she commissioned me to paint. Well, no real money ever was exchanged, so I was ok with this decision to stop. But in my artistic eyes, the painting had reached its stopping point. Only I can really know in my heart when something I have created is done.

User experience isn’t quite the same. It isn’t art. It’s not easy, it’s never done, and while it’s good if the users are delighted at the end, and if the business wins too- it still not complete. I like to say that UX is 50% science and 50% art, but it’s probably more 75/25. We user experience designers rarely experience artistic freedom because we are not serving ourselves.

At the same time, it is the UX person’s job to become as expert in the field as possible, so that they can make split-second decisions. Companies, especially those who haven’t had a UX person before, are very critical of a UX person who isn’t consistently spot-on with these quick decisions.

Malcom Gladwell’s Blink talks about the difference between conscious deliberation – the gathering of data, weighing and analyzing, and then choosing a course of action – and instinctive judgement. Gladwell explains that instinctive judgement can be much, much more powerful in the right circumstances and coming from the right person.

As UX designers, when we’re called on to quickly decide whether a form field should be a dropdown or radio buttons (both valid choices for most circumstances) our subconscious processes a million pieces of experience stored in our supercomputer noggins, and spits out an answer. Gladwell says this is a great use of instinct – it’s that primal reflex built into us since the dawn of time. We look like we’re pulling it out of thin air, but in reality we have processed this and our split judgement has an answer at the ready. This is “thinking without thinking” in Gladwell’s world.

However, the business world has taught us not to trust ourselves. We second-guess, we think everything needs deep analysis, and we don’t know how to explain our instincts. So we back up and question our experience, and this leads us to either 1) go with a snap judgement, which they trust more than we trust ourselves or 2) wind up in analysis paralysis, working on a project for 3 months that should take 2 weeks.

Careers are won or lost on the ability to trust snap judgements. Industries are built around the snap judgements of experts.

In Blink, we are shown through anecdotes and real-world examples just how amazing the instincts of experts can be. There’s a strong distinction there: Gladwell is clear that you must be an expert in your field before your instincts are to be trusted. No one would ever ask me to make an intuitive diagnosis of a car problem, and I would never ask a mechanic to choose the best interface for a search problem.

Gladwell also goes into the need for deeper analysis and examination of data. He says that instinctive judgement should not be the only thing relied on. It should be a data point. His contention is that, unlike what we have all been trained to believe, instinct is as strong a data point as data is.

That said, it’s ok to put that problem down, walk away, and do something else while you let the snaps [synapse, too] in your head work out the solution for you.