We have all encountered it: that gut feeling we get about certain things telling us what we should do. Do we always follow it? No. Is it because we have been trained to ignore it? To find facts rather than listen to our intuition? While the decision to follow the gut feeling might be easier for personal dilemmas, it is a whole other issue for business people trying to explain to their clients why they should go for a certain campaign.

Showing potential clients consumer research findings, hard facts and figures is slightly more convincing than explaining to them that your gut is telling you to go with this campaign even though research suggests a different approach might be more effective.

Laurel Hechanova is a freelance designer based in Chicago, who does design and illustration work as Apocalypse OK and works as an interactive designer at mStoner and Weightshift. Getting started in the design industry, Laurel did poster and merchandise design for various bands, which ultimately led to interface design for startups and commercial illustrations.

I was curious to learn how designers use their gut feelings early on in their career, when they cannot yet show a proven track record that these feelings were right. Not always believing in her own gut feeling, Laurel explains her recipe when dealing with new clients. “I’ve always based my work on what I’ve gotten to know about my clients and their audiences and made sure those clients understood and were comfortable with whatever design approaches I proposed because, ultimately, they’re the ones that have to live with them.”

This panel brings together a wide variety of people to explore the gut feeling phenomenon. Besides Laurel, there are Naz Hamid, who works alongside her at Weightshift, William Couch, software engineer at Twitter, Phil Coffman, creative director of Element and founder of the design blog Method & Craft, and Jane Leibrock, User Experience Researcher at Facebook. People thinking about attending Design from the Gut, can expect a great discussion. “We’re going to lay bare what our responsibilities to our clients are with regards to how much our professional “guts” know versus how much we need to find out each time we take on a new project.”