The second thing is that I kinda like Danny’s term “hunch”. If I did something based on previous experience, I will always admit that - and am happy to describe that expperience and how it did, or I thought it would, relate. “Hunch”, to me, communicates that I honestly *don’t* know where the idea or feeling came from specifically, without also communicating that I don’t have a clue what I’m doing. I can articulate a hunch (in so far as it goes). For example, I can say, “Based on some conversations I had with the developers, when I got to this feature, I didn’t feel confident, but I wasn’t sure why. Thinking about that feeling, I had a hunch that testing X would be valuable.” This is all about feeling rather than knowing. I don’t really know *why* I felt the way that I did, but I *do* know how I felt and can point to at least some of the triggers for that feeling.

I just blogged on this topic in response, at http://www.developsense.com/blog.html#115626152848996140

I try to make it clear when I’m guessing/using intuition, so that we can decide to gather more information for a better opinion when appropriate.

BTW, it turned out that the first hunch above was wrong, and the second one was right.

[James’ Reply: I don’t consider that inflicting, but rather offering. You’d be inflicting if you pugnaciously insisted on your right to be supported in an action solely on the merits of your intuition. I don’t see anything generally wrong with offering someone the fruit of your unconscious thought processes. Sounds to me like you’re behaving responsibly.]

Can you tell me about what you do in situations that, while discussiing a topic, someone pulls the intuition and/or common sense card on you? What are some ways you work through this situation to get the conversation back in the direction you want?

Here are some ways I’ve thought of

One Could:
- Give up - not very useful if you are trying to get somewhere with a conversation

- Acknowledge that they dont want to talk about the subject and leave it alone.

- Ask them to explain what they mean by common sense and totally derail the discussion into a defintion war.

- Bluntly ask them if they think you are crazy/stupid for disagreeing/not undertanding/not knowing what they are talking about

- Ask a few others if they knew the topic under discussion - if they did - then maybe the topic is more “common”. But perhaps only more to those people.

- Restate the problem again in an attempt to get the conversation back on track

AKW

[James’ Reply: It depends on the context in which the gambit is tried.

The behavior I’m worried about is when the I-word and the C-S-word are used to hide or avoid something that should be out in the open and not avoided.

If it’s a student of mine, then the answer is unnacceptable, so I help him clarify what he’s talking about. For instance, I might say “Intuition is not an explanation. If you really don’t have an explanation then just say you don’t know why you tried that test. It’s better not to know than to pretend to know. But think about it. Maybe you have some idea… {wait}… How about this {I make suggestion}?”

If it’s a colleague talking about methodology, then I treat their statement as either a meaningless utterance (much like “um”) or else as a way of sweeping under the rhetorical rug the magical ingredient that makes their kooky process idea actually work. (”My V-model, in combination with people who know how to succeed whether or not they have a V-model, will make all our lives better”) This magic ingredient I prefer to call “skill” rather than intuition. Skill is an improvable ability. Skill implies something that can be taught. If I think that’s what is going on, then I want to de-mystify the skill elements involved. I try to shift the conversation to talk about those.

You know, this isn’t just about words, there is a great deal of easily available information about how people learn complex cognitive tasks. Over in the world of education theory, you don’t see people shrugging and saying a complex subject can’t be taught because “it’s just intuition and common sense.”

In yet another context, if my wife tells me she operates on intuition, I say “yes, dear.”]

[James’ Reply: Yes, excellent point. Credibility is a key issue, here. If your credibility is high enough, I will “intuitively” accept whatever you do. Building credibility gives you the opportunity to indulge your intuition without having to defend your decisions. Nevertheless, when you are explaining or defending something, I think invoking intuition or, worse, common sense, can be like closing a curtain and hiding behind it. I suppose it is possible to talk about those things in constructive way… If so, I’m not sure how to do it.] 

Roland, I suggest you take a look at http://gumptionology.blogspot.com/2006/01/scrumptiousology-and-flow.html . This fellow has an amusing and somewhat thought-provoking list of layers of “flow” — the bottom kind being “fragile flow”.

I’m sure he’d welcome comments.

MMB

The context that I hear “it’s just common sense”, is often when a developer is justifying why a user (or tester) complaint is baseless.

As in “Well, clearly the widget-thing has to be triple-clicked to show it’s menu, it’s common sense!”

Yeah.

The other popular place this shows up is when customers are unhappy about the development team not reading their minds.

As in “What! You didn’t keep a history of every change to the Patient record?? I know I didn’t TELL you to, but that’s just common sense! Do I have to tell you not to trip over your shoes when you walk??”

Ahem.

Maybe what we all mean when we say “common sense” is more like “Only an idiot would fail to come to the same conclusion that I did”.

That makes sense to me. What I like to use instead intuition is that something “feels right” or “feels wrong.” Many times I’ve been in a situation where someone wanted to do something in a way that I “knew” wasn’t the right way but I couldn’t explain why and all I could say is that it just didn’t feel right and I would say that I couldn’t explain why.