More Swimming on Mondays

Before going there, let us acknowledge the present. This is a time of accustomisation to etiquette and rituals of leading a digital life. Because of the webcam, we now observe each other’s head, shoulders, speech and expression more keenly than before. We have rushed, then ambled into a settling, a kind of sinking into, of what are accepted behaviours, driven by our own nature to develop what can be the most efficient, most streamlined way of getting our tasks done. There is a tacit understanding, amidst explicit stay-home instructions, of coping and thriving when living alone together.

This acceptance is apparent in new product innovation, and some results are hilarious (see above); others are a wonderful blend of design and function.

Intuition can play a part in how we make sense of new challenges. So how does our intuition guide our decisions, and when might it be good to examine where this guidance leads us? This is an important consideration, especially when dealing with the user experience.

This means deploying simple tools to find the truth about the context we are in, such as interviewing users. With some guidelines, interviews are great because it leverages on conversations to uncover goals, frustrations and desires.

Because it is apparent in deployment, SAP’s global head of Customer Innovation, Anja Schneider, cautions against the brushing aside of such tools, ‘running the risk of being shrugged of as ‘already known’, and not being used seriously’.

To challenge the intuition of dismissing simple processes, we can immerse and be mindful of the process, discovering details that were missed or glossed over, turning it into a valuable piece of understanding and insight.

Our intuition is guided primarily by our initial reactions and stories we tell ourselves, when presented with information.

Therefore, another intuition to challenge is in accepting the information that is presented to us as the complete, and the way to approach this is to diversify our relevant sources and our thinking. One such way can be involving a diversity of professions in a project on decision making.

As counter-intuitive as it might sound, there is nothing intuitive about designing an intuitive experience. Instead, the often-unseen work in deliberate strategy and effort is tantamount to creating new conditions for very human desires. As Dieter Rams says, ‘Good design is invisible’.

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