INDUSTRIAL DESIGN: data should inform judgment, not replace it

One of the more damaging shifts in product development was turning “data driven” into an unquestioned virtue.

The phrase sounds smart, but it quietly tells everyone that experience, intuition, and professional judgment matter less than whatever got measured last. That is not how good design decisions get made. It is how teams start hiding behind charts.

Data matters, of course it does. But design is not accounting. Most of the decisions that shape a product happen in messy territory where the signal is incomplete, the tradeoffs are human, and the consequences only show up later.

The goal should be “data informed” decision-making, not “data driven”. Use the data. Learn from it. Pressure test your assumptions with it. But do not pretend it can think for you.

Design work still requires judgment.