We are often more certain than the evidence really allows.
More quotesA customer cannot find the export setting. The designer clicks it immediately and says, “It’s obvious.”
Yes. To the person who put it there. That sentence should cost a small fine each time. Experts learn which label is misleading, which exception is normal and which three-step workaround “everyone knows”. Eventually they stop noticing those adaptations and start calling the product intuitive.
An outsider helps only if the insider resists explaining away everything they notice. The new customer hesitates; the team says they are atypical. Support reports the same confusion for the fiftieth time; completion remains high overall. An accessibility review exposes a broken reading order; somebody calls it an edge case. Outsiders can be wrong because they lack constraints and history. Record their different reference point before insiders reinterpret it.
The hesitation still matters.
Show the work without instructions first. Ask the frontline colleague to demonstrate the exception. Let a customer narrate what they expect before correcting them. Compare the completion rate with the repeated support question.
The export setting may remain where it is. Perhaps moving it breaks a more common journey. Support logs the eleventh explanation that week while the product team decides which journey carries the greater cost.