Treat Your Users Like Children by Jamal Jackson.
From the post:
Do you have kids of your own? How about young nieces, nephews, or nephews? Do you spend time around your friends’ children? Is there that one neighbor who has youngsters who makes it a point to disturb you any chance they get? If you’ve answered yes to any of these questions, then you understand that caring for kids is difficult! Many people would argue that my use of the word “difficult” is a strong understatement. They’d be right!
Young minds are almost impossible to predict and equally hard to control. A parent, or any other adult, can plan out an assortment of ideal procedures for a kid to follow to accomplish something, but it will likely feel like wasted time. This is because kids have no intention of following any form of procedures, no matter how beneficial to them.
Speaking of people with no intention of following any form of procedures, no matter how beneficial those procedures may be, I can’t help but wonder why dealing with children reminds me of the life of a UX professional.
How many hours have you spent toiling away in front of your monitor and notepad, hoping the end result will be to the user’s benefit? If they even bother to proceed as you predicted, that is. In the end, the majority of users end up navigating your site in a way that leaves head-scratching as the only suitable reaction. This is why web users should be treated like kids.
The post is worth reading if only for the images!
But having said that, it gives good advice on changing your perspective on design, to that of a user.
Designing for ourselves is a lot easier, at least for us.
Unfortunately, that isn’t the same a designing an interface users will find helpful or intuitive.
I “prefer” an interface that most users find intuitive.
An audience/market of < 10 can be pretty lonely, not to mention unprofitable.