I can’t decide if this is actually true in real life, though.

What do you think? Is there a counterexample?

Unfortunately I’ve seen many otherwise talented usability analysts say “we need more data.” Increasingly I say “feh.”

“I make all my decisions on intuition. I throw a spear into the darkness. That is intuition. Then I must send an army into the darkness to find the spear. That is intellect.” – Ingmar Bergman

I like how he heroically articulates a common and perfectly normal (and in the right hands quite successful) creative process of coming up with the idea first, possibly even implementing it, and conjuring up the rationale after the fact.

theanthroguys.com

For the sake of the rough provisional model I include here, I might say that the overlap of “Talent” and “Experience” might be called “Expertise.” That is, one might be considered an expert because of a combination of having a knack for a particular kind of work, and enough experience to make that knack perform at a high level. (In Glass’ video, he makes that distinction — you might have a knack, and be able to recognize great work when you see it, but lack the experience to do the same thing or surpass it yet.)

Add to that the element of understanding — doing the work necessary to get where your users are coming from, how they behave, what their expectations are, and how you might meet or exceed them. Then you gain new insights for how to design something. If you rely completely on your expertise, it seems to me you’re shutting yourself off from the possibility of much insight. Insight, to me, implies you’ve discovered or learned something new (or validated or improved upon an existing idea). Taking one’s expertise into the unknown and allowing for discovery and new understanding opens up the possibility for more insight.
I think I avoided putting “data” or “taste” in the model specifically because they’re red herrings, of a sort. Data is just a set of inert facts. And “taste” is a vague, subjective term that folks bandy about the way alchemists used the word “aether” — a stand-in for something they hadn’t really nailed down yet. It’s fraught with cultural baggage and attitude, and in my experience only complicates any design conversation. (If one person thinks the design should be X because of ‘taste’ it implies the other person is lacking in ‘taste’ which is a pretty big insult, and probably wrong.)
So, “taste” isn’t really definable. Expertise, while somewhat subjective, is a more useful term. And if a designer holds a particular position on a given design based on the designer’s expertise, it’s up to that designer to make the case for it, based on prior experience, logical argument, or charismatic flourish — whatever works ;-)

I think the separation from other disciplines comes from the insights we seek: they’re usually about the lives of people and how our solutions — as experiences — fit in with their lives.

But the most interesting relationship you’ve outlined is the relationship of data, insight, and taste. Do you think of ‘taste’ as being insight developed without data?