Just use it!

During my long career most of my colleagues had no clue about what we were doing.

I mean they knew what they were doing, in their own field. They knew how to write the code, how to design that button, how to do… their thing. Nothing more.

I always had the “weird” habit of actually registering a user account with my private email. Try out the flow, get notifications. Purchase with my own card. Be a daily user. And I think this is a very very underrated thing to do.

Yes you can do user interviews, dig through tons of data, analytics, heat maps, logs, whatever to learn more about user behavior. And all that is legit, don’t get me wrong.

But!

Experiencing the product or service by yourself provides some really important lessons. Especially if you just joined the company and have no idea about what is what.

Ohh, ProtonMail actually throws this into spam. Ohh, my Revolut Visa card gets rejected. Ohh, I can’t even open it on my vacation in Thailand.

Ohh, this pretty much sucks…

The user doesn’t care about your green-lit E2E suite, they don’t care about your QA team’s routine, and they don’t care that you could read that pale gray text on your Apple magic display.

Additionally tech people tend to compare the users to themselves, meanwhile the reality of “technical illiteracy” is a real slap in the face.

According to the OECD’s Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) only about 5.8% of adults reached the highest level of computer proficiency.

A very large group has low or no skills. 26% of adults across OECD countries were unable to use a computer at all in the assessment. Roughly 13% of those who attempted the computer-based test couldn’t accomplish even the most basic tasks (like using a mouse), and about 10% opted out entirely.

So building on confident assumptions even when you yourself never used the product is pretty much shooting yourself in the foot professionally.

Yes, you still get your salary, still close tickets and walk out the door at five. I get it if you don’t care. Not many do.

But think for a minute when you are pissed off by some service or app that you try to use.

Just think about this for a moment.