Think about the last thing that frustrated you for no good reason. A form that asked for the same information three times. A door you pushed that was clearly meant to be pulled. A remote with forty buttons when you use four.
None of those were built by bad people. They were built by people who designed for how things should work instead of how people actually behave. Human-centred design is the habit of closing that gap, and it's shaped how I approach almost everything.
The most common mistake I see is falling in love with an answer too early. Someone has a great idea, and every step after that is about building it, defending it, and explaining why users are “using it wrong.”
I try to work the other way around. Before deciding what to make, I want to understand who it's for, what their day actually looks like, what they're trying to get done, and where they get stuck. The solution comes later, and it's almost always different from the one I would have guessed at the start.
I can bring methods, tools, and a fresh pair of eyes. What I can't bring is lived experience. The person who uses something every day knows its quirks, workarounds, and small frustrations better than any designer ever will.
So my job isn't to have all the answers. It's to ask good questions, listen carefully, and notice the things people have stopped seeing because they've lived with them so long.
Ask someone how they use a thing and you'll get a tidy, reasonable answer. Watch them use it and you'll see the sticky note on the monitor, the shortcut they invented, the step they skip every time.
Neither view is wrong, but the gap between them is where the most useful insights live. I try to spend time in both.
Once I understand the problem, I want to get something in front of people quickly. A paper sketch, a cardboard mock-up, a clickable prototype, a trial run for a week. Cheap, fast, and easy to throw away.
A rough prototype invites honest feedback in a way a polished one never does. Nobody wants to criticize something that clearly took months. Everybody feels free to scribble on a sketch. And every round of “that's not quite it” gets you closer to something that genuinely works.
There's no such thing as an average user. There are people with low vision, people in a hurry, people using something for the first time, people doing it one-handed while holding a toddler.
When you design for the edges, the middle usually takes care of itself. Curb cuts were made for wheelchairs, and now they're used by everyone pushing a stroller, pulling a suitcase, or riding a bike. I think about that example a lot.
This is the part I'd defend: enjoyment isn't a finishing touch. It's part of the design.
When a process feels like a chore, people give it the bare minimum. When it feels like play, they lean in, share more, and stick around longer. That goes for workshops, feedback sessions, and the finished product itself. Fun isn't the opposite of serious work. Done well, it's how serious work gets people's real attention.
Good design isn't about being clever. It's about being useful to real humans, and ideally making them smile a little along the way. Fun, by design.
