Expectations change how the same experience feels.
More quotesThe most dangerous audience is sitting close enough to buy you lunch.
Peer approval arrives quickly, carries status and speaks the same professional dialect. Actual users are absent, distracted and infuriatingly uninterested in craft for its own sake. So journalists write for journalists, designers polish portfolio bait for designers, and engineers build elegant APIs whose documentation assumes every first-time developer attended the planning meeting.
Professional standards matter. Without them, “customer focus” becomes an excuse for shoddy work. But awards, internal applause and knowing references prove only that insiders recognised the game. A campaign can delight the agency while meaning nothing to the buyer. A dense article can be a joy for fellow writers and a locked door for everyone else.
Bring the missing person into the review through observed behaviour, real questions and comprehension tests. Name the situation the work must improve before debating whether the execution feels sophisticated. Then ask the uncomfortable thing: does this choice help them, or help us look clever to people whose opinion affects our career? If the user would never notice the flourish, decide whether it still earns its cost. Great work may impress peers. That should be fallout, not the brief. The lunch table is warm, articulate and absolutely not the market.