No. 28 “We are not the user.”

their needs beat our taste.

We know the product by heart & see it on big, bright screens.

Real people are busy, distracted & squinting at a phone in the sun. Design for them.

Check it on a cheap phone, outside.

In 1993, Jakob Nielsen listed “Designers are not users” among the slogans in his book Usability Engineering.

The trap has a name: the false-consensus effect. We assume other people think like us.

• Jakob Nielsen, Usability Engineering (1993)
• Ross, Greene & House, “The false consensus effect” (1977)
• Raluca Budiu, “You Are Not the User,” NN/g (2017)

Save this for the next time someone says “Well, I’d never use it like that.”