Anyone that has read Andy Rutledge in the past knows that his style is intended to immediately get your attention. The articles begin with a strong opinion that is usually backed up with good thought. Nonetheless, I was a little taken aback when I read a recent article of his, Objectivity Be Damned, where he seems to pit designers against analytical statisticians – “Objective data is helpful in this arena, but it’s the designer’s intuitive ‘feel’ that must prevail else design is the realm of statisticians.” My argument is that designers for the web need to take a lesson from their fellow statistician. Most of the work on the internet that designers do is directed towards leading users to definable and definitive actions. Therefore, I suggest that designers ultimately cannot rely solely on “feel” or subjective solutions to solve these objective problems.
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