Rich kids should go to public schools. The mayor should ride the subway to work. When wealthy people get sick, they should be sent to public hospitals. Business executives should have to stand in the same airport security lines as everyone else. The very fact that people want to buy their way out of all of these experiences points to the reason why they shouldn’t be able to.

I’m sort of burying the fantastic lede of this article, but a point that stood out to me is how this applies to designers who are responsible for building apps. 

If we’re not actually using the app in the normal course of our lives, we don’t feel the pain of people who are trying to navigate our designs as a very real part of what they are trying to do each day. 

For instance, I’ve helped design and build apps that were quite far from anything I’d have used were I not working on the app. 

The best way I’ve found to understand the pain and challenges of real people is to ask them, talk to them, watch them use the app, and use those learnings to improve, circle back around, and ask them again. 

(Via How Things Work)