In the world of user experience, the user is always right. If they don’t understand something it’s because you screwed up. If they intend to achieve a certain goal, but end up clicking something that doesn’t contribute to that goal, you screwed up. If they think a concept on your application means one thing, but it actually means another, that’s also on you.
It’s always better to make your product overly-user-friendly, rather than not user friendly enough. Some designers are big on creating personas. A persona being oftentimes a made up character with a stock photo of someone smiling, their fake hobbies, favorite fake books and how they sustain themselves financially in their made up world. The point of this are to create empathy with your end users, supposedly your end users being these fictional characters. I never liked User Personas, maybe because I typically had the privilege of meeting real users through interviews or user tests, or creating that empathy by talking to industry experts. But that’s not always a luxury that’s available. My real issue with user personas is that there are a couple of things that are absolutely critical to creating user friendly design about your users, and they’re typically not included in traditional user personas.
The first extremely important way to think about your end user is: exactly how tech savvy are these end users? Are they software engineers? Do they use video editing applications on their MacBook? Do they use third party photo editing on their phone? Do they only surf Instagram and not actually understand the difference between a Story and a Post (looking at you Mom)?
Finding this out as a fact can be difficult, especially in an early stage when there are no users to talk to, you’re essentially guessing. But someone whose a software engineer, can definitely use a tool that’s designed for your Mom, whereas your Mom can’t use a tool that’s designed for someone who even uses third party photo editing on their phone. Always be conservative on this estimate and keep it in mind when designing.
The second most important way to think about your end user is: what are their perceptions and knowledge of certain concepts you’re using in your product? This becomes especially important in B2B applications, especially when it’s for a specialized industry. When designing for such an industry, speak their language, but be sure that you’re speaking the correct dialect. That’s why it’s especially important to work with an industry expert who has a very clear sense of what concepts people lower down in the industry chain, who are typically the end users of such a software product, perceive and grasp. In such an industry a certain word or phrase can be perceived differently when compared to a different industry or segment within it. In cases where they do know a lot of specialized knowledge, you can take advantage of that. Just because you don’t understand what a “Split Phase Breaker” is, doesn’t mean your electrician users will need educating on it. But these electricians might not be using Instagram correctly. Who cares what books they read or what their favorite color is. Focus on what matters in those personas.
Good UX is great communication with the users, and to do that you need to speak the same dialect, both in terms of language used and in terms of user interactions.