“We all feel like idiots now, Feynman. Nice work.”
“We all feel like idiots now, Feynman. Nice work.”
Today, Postlight Product Designer Neil Renicker writes about the role of empathy in product design. Inspired by the work of Alan Cooper (if you don’t know his work, Cooper is one of the foundational humans in the field of modern, GUI-based software design), Neil breaks down the different kinds of models that we use to manage information—and explains how empathy is a critical skill when it comes to translating complex engineering systems into designs that work within normal, human expectations.
The user’s mental model, faulty though it may be, is our guiding light. If we don’t invest effort in understanding that model, it’s going to be really hard to know if our work is successful. Design is mainly about empathy…The thing that’s special about the represented model — Cooper helped me see this — is that it’s the only part a designer can control. We can’t control the implementation model, because a good engineer will use abstractions in the codebase to make it maintainable and safe. And we can’t control our user’s mental model, since it’s shaped by their culture and dozens of other unknowable factors.
Plus it features the line “We all feel like idiots now, Feynman. Nice work.” It’s a very good post to read before your next standup or client meeting. So read it!