Designing any product is pointless if it doesn’t fulfil real users’ real needs. This process involves observing, engaging, and empathising with the people you are designing for in order to understand their experiences and motivations. This combined with their physical environment helps us have a deeper personal understanding of the issues, needs and challenges involved.

Empathy

This process involves observing, engaging, and empathising with the people you are designing for to understand their experiences and motivations. This combined with their physical environment helps us have a deeper personal understanding of the issues, needs and challenges involved.

Two possible scenarios:
• Users want a result that they don’t have.
• Users have a result that they don’t want.

Learning

Remind yourself that we are a part of something bigger than ourselves

Assume we know nothing, set up experiments that help us learn about our users, their world and how they navigate this complex digital world.
We can then start putting together a plan
• Remove pain.
• Provide pleasure.

Invisible

Prioritising someone else's experience over competing business needs requires self-control. It also can feel counterintuitive at times. By regularly evaluating decision-making this way, you'll be able to craft increasingly 'invisible design' that customers love.

Invisible design:
• Reduces or eliminates cognitive load for the user
• Doesn't distract users from achieving their original goal
• Prioritizes the success of the user above all other motivations
• Requires minimal input, but delivers maximum output (aka value)
• Results in an inherently intuitive experience