Published on | Prototyping: From UX to Front End — Medium Aimee Pearcy

How Do You Picture a ‘User’?

What does a ‘user’ look like? Are they a faceless, human-shaped silhouette on a while background? Is their sole purpose to sit around, twiddling their thumbs as they wait for the release of your next product?

The Problem With Designing for ‘Users’

When you use the word ‘user,’ you create a barrier between yourself and the people you’re trying to benefit. You detach yourself from who you’re really designing for: Humans.

Each with unique, complicated lives that you could never be summed up in a few sentences or a set of bullet points.

It’s time to start thinking of users as people instead of statistical metrics. As one of your friends, your mother, your father, your husband, your grandmother, your dog.

Even you are a user.

Because while your ideal user might have a perfectly structured life, the humans who use your product certainly don’t. Things happen. Circumstances change. Life ebbs and flows. And your product needs to accommodate this.

Designing for Humans Instead of Users

What if you made a fitness app that considered when people are injured and changed the way it interacted with them accordingly? We understand that humans can’t always be at the top of their game. Why can’t we incorporate this into our products?

Or what if you designed your new device for left-handed people, instead of just assuming that your users will adapt?

Visualize the people who need your product the most. Give them a name and an identity. Create an emotional bond.

How?

Get out there and meet them. Talk to them and get to know them. Then design something that will help them.

There is no ready-made ‘user’ for your product.

Stop trying to design for them.

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I’m Aimee, a professional copywriter. I help businesses make more money by writing better copy.

Send me an email and say hello: aimee.pearcy@gmail.com

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Stop Designing For Users. Start Designing for Humans. was originally published in prototypr on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Stop Designing For Users. Start Designing for Humans.

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