From the Editor in Chief : Intuitions in Human-Technology Integration Design

Abstract

While science is interested in how things are, design concerns more how things should be in the world. While both focus on the common the pursuit of improving the quality of human life, they are different in many respects. One of the differences is the way intuition is applied. Here, the word intuition has a specific meaning: It refers to subconscious foundations of thinking and thoughts. In science, grounds and arguments are key. Empirical observations are made in a controlled and methodical manner to give as much certainty as possible to the facts. Nevertheless, full certainty can never be reached (Nagel, 1961; Saariluoma, 1997). Moreover, it is easy take something as it is without even paying attention to it (Saariluoma, 1997; Wittgenstein 1969). These tacit and barely explicated foundations of scientific thinking are called intuitions. Intuition is not only about empirical work, but also is involved in mathematical thinking. Euclid, for example, assumed that one line, at most, can be drawn through any point not on a given line parallel to the given line in a plane. However, by giving up this assumption, mathematicians are able to create nonEuclidian geometries. This means that Euclid’s idea, apparently very true under given assumptions, was just an intuition. In other situations, another intuition could be used. Similarly, hundreds of years later, behaviorists used to think that mental concepts were not relevant in psychology (Watson, 1919), but this proved to be too strong an assumption during the rise of cognitive psychology. Logically, scientific truths make assumptions concerning reality, and therefore they rely on intuitions. We can look for grounds but, because we cannot have endless chains of arguments, at some stage we have to establish our knowledge on intuitions. This rather abstract truth has practical consequences. For example, human attention used to be described in terms of capacity, but this no longer is believed to be the only way (Broadbent, 1958; Covan, 2000). Clinical attention research leads scholars to suggest that certain mental contents may affect attentional information processing so that, for instance, agoraphobics process threatening words differently than neutral words (McNally & Foa, 1987). It was just an intuitive assumption that capacity is the only important perspective to attention. Intuitions are problematic in science. It is not that they necessarily would be incorrect; no doubt some intuitions are correct. The problem is that, in the absence of argumentative backing, one cannot be sure whether or not they are true (Saariluoma, 1997). It may be that they are valid in some contexts but invalid in others. The scientific community just cannot know