Ink Thinking Improves UX-Decision Making

UX professionals make a lot of decisions. Some decisions are easy to make when there's lots of time or information. But occasionally we're forced to make a difficult choice with what's available due to resource or time constraints. That means drawing upon past experiences, expertise, and intuition. (And no, it's usually not a solution to defer the decision until more data is available, because that itself is a decision to continue with the status quo.)

No one has perfect intuition (and be cautious when relying solely on intuition when addressing high-impact design decisions). We all make mistakes, and we need regular feedback to calibrate our judgment. Research by Marcie Zaharee and colleagues suggests that many early-career professionals desire frequent feedback on their performance. But UX professionals often don't receive this feedback from their managers — giving negative feedback to others is unpleasant, and many managers would rather avoid doing it. A recent Gallup poll of workers found that, even when feedback was delivered, only 26% of respondents strongly agreed that it helped them perform better at work.

So how can you obtain the feedback you need to develop good judgment? Consider this unlikely source — your own observations and advice from an activity called ink thinking.

What Is Ink Thinking

Ink thinking is a style of journaling where you regularly chronicle events and thoughts to create a record for reflection over time. Journaling is hardly new; people have written their thoughts down on various materials for thousands of years. While there are many popular approaches to personal journaling, ink thinking aims to generate insightful advice and improve intuition as UX practitioners.

Management consultant Peter Drucker recommended frequent journaling exercises to increase awareness of personal strengths and weaknesses. Ink thinking is similar: we capture our decisions and predictions on paper, let reality unfold, and then review these notes regularly to advise our future self on what to continue or change in our decision-making process.

Why Ink Thinking Matters

Several experiments by Giada Di Stefano and colleagues found that participants who invested time journaling and reflecting on their actions outperformed participants who simply spent their time practicing these actions. In one study, participants were tested with math puzzles and rewarded for correct answers. The researchers gave participants the option to choose between reflection and additional practice to improve. 82% of participants decided to gain more experience with the puzzles, whereas 18% decided to journal and reflect. Surprisingly, the reflection group — not those who practiced more — answered 23% more puzzles correctly in subsequent tests. Researchers theorized that investing time studying and integrating the lessons learned from an experience is just as important as the experience itself.

We're also affected by what's called hindsight bias. People tend to overestimate their ability to accurately predict a situation's outcome once they know how the problem resolved. (This is a curse of usability, because when we create an easy design, others often think that the solution is obvious and shouldn't have required that much work.) When confronted with surprising or disappointing results, we attempt to rationalize the situation by selectively recalling details that fit the available facts because we desire to view the world as predictable and ourselves as competent. Unfortunately, these behaviors prevent us from learning from experience by overlooking contributing factors or breeding overconfidence.

Reflective exercises such as ink thinking effectively refine our decision-making skills and counteract hindsight bias.

What You Need to Start Ink Thinking

First, purchase a journal. An excellent journal for ink thinking has these attributes:

• Small. Choose a pocket-sized journal about 3.5×5.5 inches (9×14 cm) in size. Small pages force you to write briefly and make ink thinking an easier task. This advice echoes our tips on making sketching more approachable by using tiny spaces.
• Thin. Aim for as few pages as possible. Research by Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer showed that even minor signs of progress can motivate people to complete a goal. Thick journals can feel heavy and daunting. Instead, set a personal goal to fill your thin journal over the next 6 months.
• Ruled. Pick a journal with lines instead of blank pages or dot grids. This activity works best using short declarative statements for easy evaluation later.
• Unformatted. Avoid journals with preprinted sections or questions.
• Focused. Use this journal exclusively for ink thinking and your professional development. Don't include your grocery lists, appointments, or other distractions.
• Accessible. Remove barriers that would hinder your opportunity to write. Keep this journal easily reachable in your work area.

Then schedule a 5–10-minute recurring session on your work calendar. Be sure to mark this session as busy to ensure that your colleagues arrange meetings around it. Schedule these sessions at a time when you're typically less engaged with work tasks or when you need a quick break. (Don't underestimate the productivity benefits of short breaks. Research by Amelia Rees and colleagues showed that taking short breaks can replenish depleted focus when working on cognitively challenging work tasks — such as the vast majority of things we do in UX.)

How to Ink-Think

Follow these steps during each of your ink-thinking sessions:

Decide & Predict

1. Write today's date on a blank left-hand page.
2. Describe a significant decision you made recently at work in 2–3 sentences.
3. Predict what you expect will happen next because of your decision in 2–3 sentences.
4. Review your past predictions and skim your advice to reinforce the lessons learned.

If you know the outcome of one of your predictions, continue to these steps:

Reflect & Advise

1. Write today's date on the blank right-hand page of the past entry corresponding to the decision whose outcome you now know.
2. Describe the outcome of your decision as honestly and objectively as you can in 2–3 sentences.
3. Compare and contrast your prediction and the outcome. Was your prediction accurate? Well done! Or perhaps something unexpected happened? Maybe you missed an essential contributing factor to the problem.
4. In 2–3 sentences, write some advice to yourself next time you experience a similar situation.
5. Draw something visually distinctive around your advice, such as boxes, circles, clouds, or stars. Use different markings for encouraging or constructive advice to draw your attention.

Over time, ink thinking will fill your journal with helpful feedback. You'll identify situations where you can trust your intuition and others where you need to take it slow, change your preferred approach, or ask others for help. With just a bit of persistence, ink thinking will reveal your behavior patterns and guide you on how to improve.

An Example Ink-Thinking Journal Entry

Here's an example illustrating an ink-thinking journal entry from a UX designer:

Conclusion

Adopting new self-improvement habits is a challenge. Contemplating disappointing professional outcomes, such as a disastrous major redesign you predicted would be successful, is even more challenging. What may be most challenging, though, is recognizing and breaking free of unproductive decision-making patterns.

But you can do it. Feedback and iteration aren't just beneficial to your design process; they can benefit your intuition, too. Cultivate what Carol Dweck from Stanford University describes as a "growth mindset." Instead of success or failure, reframe your decisions as learning opportunities to improve your decision making slowly over time. Believe in your capacity to adapt and change. Stop relying on the notion that you just need more practice or that you can accurately recall your rationale after the fact. Start reflecting on the decisions you're making today and use ink thinking to make your experiences count.

Improve your UX decision making by taking our full-day course on Design Tradeoffs.

References

[1] Peter Ferdinand Drucker. 2015. Managing oneself. Harvard Business Review Press, Boston, MA.

[2] Marcie Zaharee, Tristan Lipkie, Stewart K. Mehlman, and Susan K. Neylon. 2018. Recruitment and retention of early-career technical talent. Research-Technology Management 61, 5 (2018), 51–61. DOI:http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08956308.2018.1495966 

[3] Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer. 2012. The progress principle using small wins to ignite joy, engagement, and creativity at work. Brilliance Audio, Grand Haven, MI.

[4] Giada Di Stefano, Francesca Gino, Gary P. Pisano, and Bradley R. Staats. 2014. Learning by thinking: How reflection aids performance. SSRN Electronic Journal (2014). DOI:http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2414478 

[5] Amelia Rees, Mark W. Wiggins, William S. Helton, Thomas Loveday, and David O'Hare. 2017. The impact of breaks on sustained attention in a simulated, semi‐Automated Train Control Task. Applied Cognitive Psychology 31, 3 (2017), 351–359. DOI:http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/acp.3334 

[6] Carol S. Dweck. 2006. Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. Random House, New York, NY.

[7] Ben Wigert and Nate Dvorak. 2019. Feedback Is Not Enough. (May 2019). Retrieved February 1, 2022 from https://www.gallup.com/workplace/257582/feedback-not-enough.aspx