How to Level Up Your Design Skills
Part 3: Re-framing Your Users
Many pain points in our world are the byproduct of poor design decisions. One of which is the notion of designing for the “average”, examples which can be found in women’s clothing sizes, standardized tests and plane cockpits.
For example, women’s clothing sizes pose a problem as there is no single standard but rather a numeric scale based off of historic average. Targeting a group’s average poses a problem for everyone and even the target demographic user who doesn’t fit the mold of “average”, creating an inconsistent and frustrating experience.
Ultimately, the idea of an average person is inherently flawed and creates an illusion which distorts what we should design for.
The implications for UX design boil down to this:
Design for everyone = design for no one.
The closer we can get to observing and basing design decisions from real users, to their observe contexts, moods, things that make it more difficult to accomplish tasks, to gain an understanding how their world affects them — the more valuable the end design.
While there is a time and place for using averages, such as making comparisons between two groups, forcing…
