You are not your user. Except when you are.

## The Big Idea "You are not your user" is fundamentally good advice. It's also occasionally wrong, but in a very useful way. ## You Are Not Your User One of the first things you learn in UX is that **you are not your user**. This is usually true, and is worth repeating because (all) people are very good at forgetting it. The more time you spend with a product, the harder it gets to see it clearly. You know where everything is. You know why the confusing part is confusing. You know the history behind that _one_ weird button label, and the customer complaint that led to that one edge case, and the Slack thread where everyone finally agreed to ship the thing as-is because it was Friday and everyone was tired. That kind of knowledge is useful for building the product, but it's terrible for seeing the product. It creates snow blindness. The product becomes so familiar that you stop noticing the parts that are strange, brittle, or needlessly complicated. You stop seeing the first five…