Critical Path Newsletter

But I AM the User!

One of the truisms of user experience design is that if you want to design something usable, you need to know how the user thinks and behaves. 

So, let’s say you’re creating a very technical product, like a network management system or an IDE, where the user is very technical, just like you. Or let’s say you are the product manager for a healthcare product, and it so happens you are a doctor by trade, so the user is just like you.  You should have a pretty good idea of how to design the product, right? In fact, it should be a piece of cake to design a usable product.

Wrong.