Instinctive design: Design by instinct!

“Great”, “Amazing”, “The Best”: this is the kind of experience we wish for our users when using our services and interfaces.

Great experiences mean unique moments, therefore imply strong emotions, and if possible positive!

We want our users to feel a lot of emotions during these moments. But what I’m going to talk about is the possibility to design with our emotions, instinctively.

Let’s go back and try to define the instinctive design process, understand how it works, and see how we can advocate for it.

What’s instinctive design?

Have you ever asked yourself whether or not you design with emotion? How can it influence your design? And was it noticeable on your interface?
Or how does it affect it?

As I’m multi-faceted, I’m gonna try to give some answers from a personal point of view as it stems from my creative process as a Designer and as a scriptwriter and director.

While designing a screen, have you ever thought to yourself: ‘I feel it’ or else ‘I don’t feel it, I don’t have the trick yet’.

I wonder what that means to you as a designer. I don’t mean just “cracking” the problem, rather feeling that you have gone beyond the problem while resolving it. There is a nuance.

Over the screens and journeys that I have designed, there was always a turning point, when I realized inside: “That’s it, that’s the thing that is going to solve the problem”.

At first glance, we can think that this way of conceiving is not rational, moreover, very egotism, and therefore goes against one of a designer’s principles: not assuming that his/her idea is the absolute best. Nevertheless… It’s like when you write a script, first, you come up with a theme you want to talk about, then you develop your story. Still, you have to have a thread from the get-go.

The transcription of the intuition is iterative, therefore, it is necessary to know how to steer away from it while keeping it in focus. As we said, we iterate, we refine, we enrich. Intuition is often transformed into a conviction, so there is a process of emphasis around the emerging idea. You bear it, feed it, and then you transport it. Step by step.

It should be distanced from an egotism process: one idea = one person. “My idea is the best as I’m the best”. A mindset often found among some “starred” designers (especially in advertising agencies).

It’s not the case at all here, rather the opposite.

How does instinctive design work?

If you look at the process, it’s based on that other fundamental principle, which is “empathy”.

And that’s one of my points of attention. Empathy has become so “mainstream” that you don’t even see it in the resumes anymore.

Besides, how to value one’s soft skills, so invisible and yet so precious?

For instance, did you know that in Denmark, since 1993, empathy classes are compulsory in schools for children from 6 to 16 years old? In fact, Denmark was elected “happiest country” on the planet in 2016 according to the World Report of Happiness in 2017.

Without making unfounded connections, we can however challenge the link between empathy and happiness.
Do you think Danes are all empathetic by nature? No, I don’t think so.

So let me ask you: are all designers empathetic?

Being empathetic is a “nature” above all, however, let’s not believe that because we are designers SO we are empathetic. Also, if we ask our designers to be empathic let’s give them the tools to be so.

If we can teach it, meaning we can give keys to develop it, can we also test it? How about submitting an emotional case?

Idea:
Assess the degree of empathy of an interviewee by using a role play. For example, a dive into a crisis situation within a team, or within a focus group. The situation would be “played out” by the participants, over a shorter period of time of course.

Let us draw our inspiration from the drama’s universe, which focuses above on Humans. The core of our profession is the Human.

Other questions arise:
How does this empathy apply to you as a designer?
How does your empathy help you for your research, your analysis, and thus your conception?

Let’s go back to our starting point.

We said it before, empathy is primarily a “nature” and cannot be activated on demand. It is not voluntary or active, but it can be sharpened and refined. Therefore it can be worked on.

Still, you need material to create.

As Albert Einstein said: “The only thing that has value is intuition”.

The following use case implies “a clear and well-defined problem”.

Let’s imagine that the initial brief given by your client is a seed that will be watered daily by a flood of information.

You are a satellite with a specific frequency channel where this useful information would water the seed. Not necessarily voluntarily, rather passively as I was telling you.

You collect data at any time. The infusion occurs naturally. If you are in the research phase of the project, the second level of data collection takes place. Thus, there are two levels: passive and active.

At some point, the seed comes out, and there is your idea, born. This is what is akin to instinctive design.

There is a conviction there. Clearly, a personal one, since you are the one formulating it, but it is the result of a long process of digestion of information.

How to justify instinctive design?

The benchmark does not just open your blinders as it is its primary utility, but it serves to support your conviction. And yes, sometimes, while benchmarking, I told myself “There must be something that looks like my idea.”

Should an idea be considered invalid or not relatable to an issue because you do not have a benchmark to justify it?

Granted, the benchmark reassures the client, but a reasoned conviction to address a problem is just as valuable.

Another thing, how can we justify intuition to other designers for example? It is a matter of explaining, streamlining, and making tangible a conviction that results from a multi-step process. Sometimes I have been afraid to express that belief, and have felt that impostor syndrome as if my proposal had less value. How come?

On one hand, it’s because it is an often forgotten soft skill that is an integral part of the creative process. And on the other hand, because this way of designing could be perceived as too “artistic” and not concrete enough much less scientific.

Steve Jobs said, “Creativity is just about connecting things together. If you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something that seemed obvious to them after a while.”

So, here’s my reflex: when I feel the trigger and sense like I hold THE THING, I conceive first and then I figure out how I can justify my choices.

And if my idea is being discussed over, it’s even better.

If we relate it to the writing process, it’s exactly the same. First, you establish the theme, the concept, and then comes the structure of the script according to the “script ergonomy”. After that, you develop your story, create your dialogues and iterate on your story.
Do you see the similarities with the creative process in design? You can iterate on your script by confronting it to experts. Only self proclaimed geniuses wrote masterpieces alone in their room.

So I am talking about it today because, on several projects, I have had this conviction, driven by my intuition telling me “This is it!”. And even if that’s not “it” right from the MVP phase, that’s where we need to go. This also ensures that your convictions stay strong, despite the uncertainties of the project and the requirements of the client, the one which paid you to design.

I think we should not neglect this instinct, which is also proof that you know how to use empathy, which is said to be an essential component for a designer knowing how to listen around and translating that into the experience.

I would never tell you to just do whatever you want with your eyes closed. But listen to yourself, because as Victor Hugo said: “There is nothing in the world more powerful than an idea whose time has come.”

I come from a writing background and my love for designing declared itself like a flame to the understanding of this process of creation, clearly similar.
Through design, we address needs that are external to us, those of the users. Unlike art, where we respond to an internal and visceral need to express ourselves. The stakes are different.
The viewer of a piece of art, in this case, a movie, doesn’t have to go through reading the script nor the iterations since their purpose is to refine the director’s idea. They just see the final cut. Contrary to Design where we need to confront our users very soon so that we can make sure that we are indeed answering their needs.

We’ll address UX writing next time, which is another parallel that offers a different angle on how to approach your screens.