Often, when a design problem arises, I already have some method or trick in mind for how to deal with it. This is nothing amazing and all designers do it. These pre-determined solutions can be handy when deadlines are tight and speed is important, but it’s usually wise to stop and ask yourself, “Why?”

Why is a powerful question because it undermines our basic assumptions about the design solutions we choose.

Ryan Singer posted a helpful brief on design patterns and decision making. In it he identifies patterns as snippets of ui/design conventions that we mentally stockpile and reuse in later scenarios. Essentially, our mental library of design patterns is where our design decision come from.

Singer wisely takes time to look not just at the patterns but at the user-conventions and forces that caused them to be created in the first place. I think this is a helpful observation:

When you are aware of the forces that motivate your decisions, you can be conscious of whether you are designing by habit (“this is what I always do here…”) or whether you are actually applying the most fitting solution to the problem at hand.

Many designers neglect this practice. We just go with our gut because it’s convenient. But everyone has a gut reaction and they’re generally unreliable. It’s the designer’s job to be discerning amongst all the possible solutions. An art director or PM is proves valuable when they ask designers why they made the decision they did. If you as designer have no answer other than, “it felt right” you should rethink your decision making process.