Critical thinking helps us to evaluate the information we come across, but it may not be enough in a digital world that contains more information than the world’s libraries combined.
Thinking with your hands is about ignoring your gut, at least at first. It’s about pausing and unpacking your initial instincts. We all know UX requires research and exploratory prototyping: we pride ourselves on never accepting a problem at face value. Why can’t we apply our craft to ourselves? (OK, this is a little meta, hang in there) Isn’t it odd that it rarely occurs to designers that our precious UX process could apply to US?