Product design: Expectations vs reality

For me, the beauty of designing a product is that usually, your first idea doesn’t end up as the final product.

Often, the process looks like a complete mess, and you pass through multiple iterations until you get to the ideal state. But along the way, we make some mistakes that we are not aware of.

So, I decided to illustrate some of the mistakes we make and the expectations we have when designing digital products.

We muddle through things

There is a scene at the end of The Prince and the Pauper where the real prince discovers that in his absence, the lookalike pauper has been using the Great Seal of England as a nutcracker.

Why? Because it makes perfect sense to him. It is a big and heavy chunk of metal with which you can smash things.

So why do we use some things in a different way than the designers intended? It’s not essential to most of us. As long as we can use it, we don’t care how you expected it to be used.

Human beings are not logical creatures

The reasons for the deficiencies in human-machine interaction are numerous. Some come from limitations in resources, while others come from self-imposed limitations. But most of them come from the lie we tell ourselves that people are logical animals.

We have to accept human behavior the way it is, not the way we want it to be. We have to design products that mirror our thinking model.

When dealing with people, let us remember we are not dealing with creatures of logic. We are dealing with creatures of emotion, creatures bustling with prejudices and motivated by pride and vanity.  — Dale Carnegie

We overwhelm our users with useless information

Not everyone cares about innovation

Why do we change the basics?

Ask the right questions

Can we start writing for human beings?

Our products are easy to use…

Stop asking users what they want