Quantum Intuition: What Designers Know That Science Is Just Catching Up To

A meditation on why intuition may be less woo and more subatomic—less magic, more recall. Designers are already working with principles that physicists are still learning how to describe. Here's why.

Author’s Note

There’s a moment just before knowing.
Before the idea becomes language. Before the solution reveals itself.
It’s not logical. It’s not evidence-based. It’s just—there.

Designers and creative entrepreneurs know this place well (I’m here now). We call it intuition. But what if what we call intuition is actually a kind of quantum sensitivity? A form of tapping-in, not guessing. A way of receiving information that logic hasn’t caught up to yet.

Superposition and the Designer’s Eye

In quantum physics, particles exist in multiple states until observed.

Designers are uniquely comfortable with letting things be more than one thing at once—sometimes forever.

We bring in objects without requiring immediate purpose. A marble bowl doesn’t need to justify itself. It will integrate. It will find its role. Or it won’t. That’s not the point.

In design, objects have multitudes:
A light is a sculpture until it’s turned on.
A table is both altar and workspace until someone claims it.
A space is gallery and sanctuary until someone enters.

In Anastasio Home’s retail showroom, people often ask: What would I use this for?
As if function must come first (lol, silly)
But design doesn’t always serve need—it responds to resonance.
And sometimes, beauty is the function.

Intuition allows us to recognize potential without collapsing it into certainty.