This is my process.
A Design Observer article by Michael Bierut highlighted a discrepancy that many designers quietly acknowledge but rarely discuss openly. Bierut "pitched activity-based design and then most often wound up practicing genius-based design" in traditional print work. I suspect interaction designers face similar contradictions.
There's a critical tension in design: while intuition and genius-based design work, they create significant limitations. Companies like Apple and 37signals demonstrate that genius-based approaches produce beautiful products but lack scalability, consistency, and integration capabilities.
The key insight from a roundtable discussion I participated in states: "method-based design does not do a good job of acknowledging the intuitive parts of the process, and it must."
We should be transparent about when intuition drives decisions rather than hiding behind false claims of systematic methodology. The profession risks discredit if designers claim systematic approaches while actually improvising.
Instead, practitioners should develop "established patterns and processes that inform a more agile and iterative approach to contextual inquiry."
The uncomfortable truth is this: great design often emerges from a messy combination of intuition, experience, happy accidents, and systematic thinking. Pretending otherwise does a disservice to our clients, our colleagues, and ourselves.
The best designers I know have learned to embrace this tension—building rigorous processes that leave room for inspiration, and trusting their intuition while remaining accountable to evidence and outcomes.