It’s not gut feeling, it’s experience
And experience matters.
Designers are often asked to explain what makes a design “good.” It's a fair question on the surface, but answering it isn’t always easy—or even possible in the way people expect. Some look for a set of rules, a checklist, or a formula. But good design doesn’t always work that way. Sometimes, you just know. And that can sound suspicious, especially if you can’t explain it clearly. But that kind of judgment isn’t empty. It’s not just a gut feeling. It’s something more, and I believe the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein’s idea can help us understand why:
Consider, for example, the activities that we call "games". I mean board-games, card-games, ball-games, athletic games, and so on. What is common to them all? - Don't say: "They must have something in common, or they would not be called 'games'" — but look and see whether there is anything common to all. — For if you look at them, you won't see something that is common to all, but similarities, affinities, and a whole series of them at that. To repeat: don't think, but look! - Look, for example, at board-games, with their various affinities. Now pass to card-games; here you find many correspondences with the first group, but many common features drop out, and others appear. When we pass next to ball-games, much that is common is retained, but much is lost. — Are they all 'entertaining'? Compare chess with noughts and crosses. Or is there always winning and losing, or competition between players? Think of patience. In ball-games, there is winning and losing; but when a child throws his ball at the wall and catches it again, this feature has disappeared. Look at the parts played by skill and luck, and at the difference between skill in chess and skill in tennis. Think now of singing and dancing games; here we have the element of entertainment, but how many other characteristic features have disappeared! And we can go through the many, many other groups of games in the same way, can see how similarities crop up and disappear.
And the upshot of these considerations is: we see a complicated network of similarities overlapping and criss-crossing: similarities in the large and in the small.
— Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, §66
Forgive me for quoting the entire paragraph from Wittgenstein’s book, but I believe it’s important and deserves to be read carefully, perhaps even more than once. Some concepts, like “rectangle,” have clear definitions that apply to all instances. But as Wittgenstein points out, many other things may share the same name without sharing a single, essential feature. Their meanings are held together by overlapping similarities rather than a fixed essence.
That’s why Wittgenstein introduced the idea of family resemblance (Familienähnlichkeit): members of a family may share overlapping features, such as eye color, voice, or mannerisms, without all having the same exact trait. For concepts like “game,” asking “What is a game?” can be misleading, since there’s no strict definition that applies to every case. A better question is, “What do we call a game?” That shift helps us understand the concept by looking at the overlapping similarities among things we use the same word for.
“Good Design” is similar to the concept of “game.” Despite advances in neuroscience and psychology, there is still no strict, single definition of “good design”—even though many people try to create one or claim ownership over it. But that doesn’t mean we can’t recognize a good design when we see one. Good designs share overlapping similarities. The more good designs you’ve seen, the better you can judge a new one.
That’s why experienced designers usually have better judgment, even if they struggle to explain exactly why. I’m not saying experienced designers never make mistakes, but it’s still more reasonable to trust their judgment than to rely on someone without design experience, or on rigid rules that are bound to fall short sooner or later.
Still, the question “What is good design?” is so pervasive that designers are often expected to answer it. And if they can’t, people may assume they lack principles and are just following their “gut feeling.” “It’s only your feeling” can be a serious insult to experienced designers. It’s almost impossible to defend against, especially given the lack of a strict definition, as mentioned earlier.
And if it’s all just gut feeling—something everyone has—then why should your gut be any better than mine? As a result, more and more design decisions are made either by the most powerful person in the room or blindly driven by data, rather than by experienced designers.
It may sound arrogant, but in many cases, designers should feel comfortable saying, “I know it’s a good design because I’ve seen many other good designs,” without needing to give a further explanation. That’s not gut feeling; it’s experience. And experience matters. We trust seasoned professionals in other fields—chefs, musicians, surgeons—without always demanding a step-by-step justification. Design should be no different.
If we don’t recognize the value of experience, we risk replacing thoughtful judgment with data-driven defaults or hierarchical decisions. That may seem safer, but in the long run, it erodes what makes design meaningful in the first place.